Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! I’m joyful and excited this week, like a little kid on Christmas Eve. Easter week includes so many fun things to enjoy. Today we had Women’s Connect at church, which is always a fun and encouraging experience. We are usually around 50-100 women per meeting and it’s a powerful thing to see so many women come together to walk through life’s ups and downs together encouraging each other. On Friday, my friends and I are planning to have a picnic in the park after the Good Friday service, hopefully the weather will be nice! On Saturday, we will have family over for Easter dinner and on Sunday we go to church again to celebrate the resurrection. This whole week feels like a party to me.

This week we are reminded of how amazing, loving and kind God is. We serve a God who isn’t a distant God. God chose to come down to our level and walk with us for 33 years. The all-powerful God Almighty himself chose to take on human flesh for a short period of time. What would you do if you had all the power in the whole universe? My guess is you would not use it to walk in humility and love like Jesus did.

If I was God I would be a terrible God, in the garden of Gethsemane I would have given up and said: “That’s it, I’m not doing this. I don’t care if people will go to hell unless I get on that cross to save their souls. I’m NOT doing it!” Jesus was fully human, and at the same time fully God. I’m just human, I’m imperfect. I’m grateful and in awe that God would do what he did for me, that he would give up everything to save my soul. He laid down his life for me and now he is calling me to do the same for others. I’m called to stop living for my own pleasures, wants and dreams alone and to live to love God & love people. We can’t please God without committing to loving people. We can’t love people well without committing to God.

I have a heart that is divided. I’m loving and at the same time I’m selfish and cold. I have strengths and I have weaknesses. I have beautiful gifts and talents but I also have some really messed up issues. I’m a mix of good and evil, we all are. The day I decided to ask Jesus to come into my heart I decided to give him access to my whole heart. I didn’t wake up a saint the next day, I still have my issues to work on, but God started to do a work in my heart from that day forward. God will continue to transform me until the day I die, all I need to do is spend time in his presence and let him soften my heart and make me new. God’s spirit (the Holy Spirit) now lives in me. The more I let God transform my heart the more the fruit of the Spirit will appear in my life.

“But the fruit of the Spirit [the result of His presence within us] is love [unselfish concern for others], joy, [inner] peace, patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Galatians 5:22-23 (AMP)

This week is a very special week, it’s a week when I take the time to go to church twice and praise God for everything he has done in my life and will do in the future. It’s a time when I’m in awe of how holy, righteous, kind and gentle God is. I’m also reminded that although the darkness in this present world is widespread God is bigger. God has the last word. This life will be difficult, painful and overwhelming at times but no matter what I’m going through God will be with me giving me strength to keep fighting the good fight. Life in this present world will be difficult, but it’s temporary. When it’s all over I will stand in front of God and be allowed to spend eternity in heaven, not because I’m a good person but because of Jesus’ work on that cross. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross opened the door of heaven wide open. Today, because of Jesus, anyone who chooses to believe and to ask Jesus into their heart will receive the Spirit of God and be forgiven for all their sins. I can’t think of anything more beautiful than that. God’s love for each one of us is the most beautiful love story of all.