1 Peter 3:8-9 Finally, be all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but instead blessing; knowing that to this were you called, that you may inherit a blessing.
As we approach Resurrection Day this Sunday, our hearts are drawn once again to the glorious mystery at the center of our faith—that death was not the end. On that first Resurrection morning, everything changed.
In the days of Yeshua (Jesus), the cross was an instrument of death, and crucifixion, a horrible method of torture. Over the next 200 years, in light of the Lord’s resurrection, the cross became identified with Christian faith and was transformed into a symbol of life and hope. Yeshua was able to turn it upside down, transforming an instrument of death into a symbol of life.
The tomb, a house of death where His body lay for three days, became the exact location where death was destroyed forever, replaced by resurrection life, an entirely new kind of life with no decay, sickness, or imperfection. In His death and resurrection, Yeshua inverted the very nature of biological reality and turned the tomb from a house of bones into an empty place of testimony to resurrection life. He turned it upside down!
This “inversion” of reality is a pattern of God’s activity. It is a “way” in which He works, a convention of Divine intervention into human affairs. And we ourselves are permanently invited to participate in this activity in innumerable ways.
Yeshua is, by His indwelling Spirit, through faith, giving us the authority, opportunity, and power to turn things upside down and inside out. Not indiscriminately, without His explicit guidance and direction, but through discernment, wisdom, and often real endurance, we experience and participate in turning tragedy into triumph, misery into joy, failure into success, mourning into dancing, and death into life. We turn curses into blessings, loss into gain, despair into hope, and even hatred into agape love! Praise God! For by His power and will, we too, can turn it upside down!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]The revivalist D.L. Moody was on vacation in England from his ministry in Chicago. At one point during his sabbatical there, a local pastor prevailed upon Moody to speak at his parish church. So D.L. went to preach the next Sunday morning. That afternoon he recorded in his journal that it was the deadest crowd he had ever seen and the only thing worse than preaching to those people was that he had promised to speak again the same night.
Yesterday, my family and I had the privilege of being among the nearly 300,000 individuals at the March for Israel event in Washington, D.C. As many in the crowd stood in solidarity with Israel, I reflected on our role as believers. In these last days, we are simply called to be watchmen on the walls.
During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe rained down about thirty-five thousand bombs upon London during nightly air raids, causing terrifying fear and tremendous destruction and mayhem in large parts of London.
Over the years I’ve often gotten emails asking “Do you think revival will ever come to the United States?, When do you think it will come?” While re-reading Charles Finney’s lectures on revival recently, I was reminded that a key aspect of world revival is revival within ourselves.
Jonah the prophet ran from what he considered a difficult and abhorrent assignment from God, thinking he could escape to a place where he couldn't be found. He refused to obey the Lord and he boarded a ship headed in the opposite direction. But YHVH's irrevocable gifts and callings were faithfully resting upon His servant Jonah, and He provided the drama needed to bring his man around. He sent a great storm which rocked Jonah's boat and then a large fish which ate him! These persuasions changed Jonah's attitude.
The word for builder in Hebrew is “bo-neh”. It is also translated repairer. When our Messiah came 2000 years ago, He came to repair lives — to do a complete restoration of all that is broken in this world. Interestingly, the Hebrew words for son, “ben” and daughter, “baht” both also come from the word “bo-neh”.
When the apostle Paul compared our lives to clay pots, he focused not on the earthen vessels, but rather the contents of those vessels. Jars of clay deteriorate over time, become chipped, cracked, and eventually broken. However, the real value of those ancient pots was not in the clay containers themselves, but in what they contained.