Today celebrates the significance of victory over death available for EVERY person, both who walk on the face of the planet and who is asleep in the grave! "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement."- Hebrew 9:27 Why is there judgement you ask, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"- Romans 5:12. Adam and Eve made the choice to be independent of God and that choice brought death, which they had been fully warned in advance that that is indeed what would happen. "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."- Genesis 2:16-17 God was looking out for our best and desiring a dependent relationship with Him of us but we chose differently. Essentially we chose death, both spiritually and physically! Do you think your independent free spirit would have chosen differently if it had been you instead of Adam and Eve? I don't think I would have, I would have been deceived too by Satan disguised as a serpent! Choosing something that looked pleasing for the tummy and would "make me wise like God, knowing good and evil" twisting the truth, that it won't bring me death!
BUT God made a promise immediately, working on our behalf, because even though we chose to turn our back on Him, He was still determined to make a way for us to be with Him for eternity! I know some of you out there don't know what to believe when it comes to death and what happens to us, let alone what to believe about this thing called eternity! But God has written for us exactly what happens to us after death and what eternity will be like, how gracious of Him to do that for us, we could have been neglected here on Earth left with no idea of either death or life thereafter! What is His promise you ask, "And the LORD God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel."- Genesis 3:14-15
I am so grateful for that promise made sooooo many years ago, so many years before Jesus even came to Earth to live the life of a Man, with the power of being God, dying the death that I deserved because of MY SIN along with the SIN OF THE WHOLE WORLD: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE SINS, being buried in a tomb guarded with soldiers, yet He rose again & rolled away that stone that covered His tomb. Because He was a man, He can relate to you and to me and all the temptations we are faced with every day to live a life independent of God. But because He was God, He was PERFECT, without sin, AND He therefore defeated the power of sin and death!
Though I have definitely made mistakes in life that I regret, I definitely think God had His Hand over my life even before I knew the meaning of the Cross and all that entailed for me. I could have made many more mistakes in my life than I did. I was raised in what I would call a good home, my parents worked hard for what we had and to keep their marriage together. Praise God they are still married today! My parents took us to church every Sunday from what I can remember and sometimes we even attended classes to learn more about the faith we were raised in but we also grew up learning and knowing the value of hard work. Dairy farming is no walk in the park, it is day in, day out hard work and you rarely get a vacation because you don't want to leave the health and well being of your lively hood in someone elses hands because you may return to find your herd a mess physically.
For me as a child, God was real, I believed He existed somewhere out in the galaxies but we were "left" on the Earth hoping one day that somehow we would get to experience heaven! I had heard of Jesus but He was someone hanging on a Cross and why He was there I did not know for sure. I had heard of sin but that was something only "bad people" did, which only consisted in my mind of murder, kidnapping children and whatever else you did that constituted being put behind bars! I only really prayed to God in heaven when I was sadly missing my first horse who had died from an accident or our first family dog that I remember who had died. Otherwise who was God and what would He really want with me? I had no idea. I hated school when we moved from IL to WI and at one point in my 8th grade year I contemplated suicide because I hated school so much and the mean bullies that were there.
But when I graduated high school I completed CNA training and worked in a nursing home in WI. I began dating this man there who worked as a Physical Therapist Asst. and he was a Christian as much as I could tell at the time. Although we did things that two unmarried people shouldn't do because God created sex for marriage, he still showed me things about Jesus that I never knew! Over time I became more and more aware of the problem all humanity faces: Sin, and the solution God has for our problem: Jesus. I had also started schooling to be a LPN and I "just happened" to have a teacher who was a Christian and two classmates who were also Christians! And when I found myself in a hopeless spot in life I knew where to turn and that I needed to respond to what God has offered for each one of us. So I can still remember so vividly in my bedroom in Rewey, WI when I prayed to receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was just a mere 19 years old but I had already been places in my life that I should've never been. I immediately became so hungry for God and His Word, if you will, and I was still in the relationship with that man and I told him that "we were not having sex anymore because I read clearly in God's Word that that is not right"! "For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication" (sexual intercourse between a man and woman not married to each other).- I Thessalonians 4:3 I remember going to my parents and telling them the news, I was so excited, and my parents' response was, "Carrie, you are already a Christian!" But I knew that was not right because even though America in general is considered a Christian Nation, many Americans have no idea what a born-again* Christian is or what it means to live following Christ. And I went to my younger sister too and asked her for forgiveness of all the mean things I had ever done to her and she just kind of laughed at me as she graciously gave that forgiveness to me. Well for the next year while I remained at home with my parents it became very difficult for us to get along, my life was changing as God desires more for us that just salvation, He desires to make us more like His Son each day we live. And I was so excited about this change and I wanted my family to experience it too and I was trying to change them instead of letting God do it.
So I moved to Montana where my aunt (my dad's sister) and her family live who I always knew were strong Christians because of their annual Christmas letters, yet I barely knew them. When I called to tell her the news a year earlier about my faith in Jesus, she thought I was going to tell her I was pregnant! But she was so happy to find out different news, Good News! I came to visit her family for 2 weeks about a month before I moved out here to see what their family was like and I loved it and I loved their church. I lived with them for about a year and a half and got to know my aunt and uncle and their four children in a way that I don't know any of my other relatives. I felt like I was part of their family and they encouraged me in my relationship with God in ways my own family had no idea how or why they should even do so.
But soon enough the time came to move out on my own officially and I lived with a house of girls from my church which was such a growing experience for me! But eventually I desired to go to school at a school that simply studied the Bible, that was my deepest desire since I first believed. I didn't want to go get a degree to be something, I wanted to go somewhere where you were immersed and saturated with the Word of God and I heard of New Tribes Bible Institute where you could do that and it was inexpensive AND it was in WI! By this time I had lived in Montana for four years and my younger sister was pregnant with her first child! So it was perfect timing to move back to WI to go to school and my soon to be niece would be born just before my 2 years of school started! New Tribes was an amazing experience for me, I wanted to be there for the purpose that the school exists: where Bible education and missions are one, as I also have an interest in missions.
So that is my story, my testimony, of how God has worked in my life on my behalf! How has He worked in yours? If He hasn't, what is keeping Him from doing that, are you just living life independent of Him? Thinking that there will not be any consequence? Well there will be, because although God is a loving God, He is in fact the very definition of love, He is also a just God and He would not be God if He wasn't true to His Word! Our problem: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,"-Romans 3:23, that ALL includes you and me. The solution:"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."-Romans 6:23 Sin earns a punishment of death! BUT God has provided a way out of that punishment, although we all have to experience a physical death, we don't have to experience a spiritual death! You can have eternal life in Christ AND it is free, you don't earn it by doing good merits OR so many Hail Mary's OR being a "good person" cuz America knows best about being a "good Christian". AND it comes no other way you notice except in Christ Jesus our Lord, not your good ol granny or any other human being you look up to. Our response: "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation." Romans 10:9-10
So I hope you are happy to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ because without it we would ALL be doomed for eternity in hell, where it is described as weeping and gnashing of teeth, great pain & agony for an eternity!(See Matthew 13:42)
To read more on my testimony after Bible School and how I met my husband who is beyond anything I could have imagined for myself go here.
*born again- having received new life, or spiritual birth, a phrase used to describe someone who is a Christian, one who not only has a knowledge of Jesus Christ, BUT whose life has been changed by God. A person is born again by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God.
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