April 4, 2017

Greetings My Friend, In a few days we will celebrate Easter and as a Christian I celebrate Jesus life, death, burial and resurrection. I learned when I was baptized in the Russel Fork River about how I symbolically go through Jesus' life death and resurrection, before I go under I am in the world, going under is my death and coming back up I have rose with Jesus. Before I was baptized in the river I had accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior one day while I was listening to a Christian radio station. I felt the same although slowly I started changing inside, thinking different, reading the Bible more frequently and the growing process was exciting. I was baptized as a baby so my baptism was more for my parents than for me. They made a commitment to raise me in the church which I am grateful for because the church started my walk of faith even though it took me a long time to understand my life in Christ. I have always felt better going to church on Sundays because this habit was instilled in me as a young child. Along the way God planted in my heart to pray through the last hours of Jesus' life. I had a back and forth with God telling Him this was difficult to look at what was done to His Son and through the years I had questioned "why". To me this was a barbaric act and it made no sense for anyone to have to go through what our Lord endured but God kept repeating for me to pray. Anytime I have these moments of reasoning with God I find that God will always prevail and in the end I wind up doing as I am told. Today I question less and "just do it," strangely doing as I am told to winds up teaching me profound lessons and my journey through the cross was enlightening to say the least. For the longest time I focused only on the nails in Jesus' flesh. That sounded awful and I could almost feel the nails being pounded into my flesh. Through the years I have read the Bible's 4 Gospel's accounts of all that Jesus endured and a few teachers have taught me some depth to what Jesus endured. Jesus was scourged, He was whipped with a whip that had several strips of leather on it and on the strips of leather was tied things like stones, broken pottery and such. Next I was taught that those objects dug into the flesh and pulled off of Jesus' body, possibly His flesh was torn to the bone. After the scourging, a crown of thorns was placed on Jesus' head, a robe put on His very tender back and the staff He was given was used to beat His face until He was disfigured. I learned that the crown of thorns were pushed down roughly on His scalp which penetrated his skin and blood more than likely dripped down into His eyes. The salt in the blood had to sting His eyes. While the Soldiers were beating and mocking Jesus they shouted insults like "If you are God then save yourself." When Jesus had to carry His cross He could not, more than likely He had lost a lot of blood so He was very weak. On the Hill the soldiers pounded the nails into His flesh and my heart aches for my Savior, I find I had no doubt that Jesus loves us because He left heaven came down and lived among us and ultimately died for my sins. After praying this prayer for a few years I found myself learning how ugly sin is to God. I learned Jesus loved us so much to leave heaven where He lived in perfectness. He put up with our sin nature and I learn the smallest sin in my eyes is major to God. Along the way I found myself grateful to draw closer to God because of Jesus' loving life, death and resurrection. I was growing in my relationship with God the Father and I started hearing the Holy Spirit's love and guidance. My love grew healthy instead of needy and God taught me how precious I am in His sight. Confessing that I am a sinner was not so scary, God was teaching me how to walk away from my sins and I found freedom for the first time in my life. These days I am thankful for the time spent at the cross. I know I am not alone as I deal with Parkinson's disease and I can face this disease because God loves me and uses my story to tell other's about the love of a Savior. I come to Easter with joy and thankfulness. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet