Yes, the REAL Jesus

G: Mommy, why can’t we come to re|engage {our marriage group} with you?

Me: Because baby, it’s awesome for grown ups but super boring for kids. BUT! Thursday you get to come to a cool church service with Jesus and all the disciples.
J (froze in his tracks): THE REAL JESUS?!

It was so innocent and pure I couldn’t help but laugh. Santa, Mickey Mouse, the Easter Bunny, they’re all real… so why wouldn’t this Jesus be just as real to him too? I explained to him the man he would see would be an actor portraying Jesus and he seemed just as satisfied.

But yes buddy, the real Jesus. Angels and stardust, flesh and blood, breath and life, death and resurrection, reign forever Jesus. Break the chains of sin and death Jesus.

Holy week has always been special growing up in the church. After forty days of beautiful music, reflection, prayer, and some type of fasting, Holy week brings a rising energy that has always stirred my soul deeply. From the brightness of Palm Sunday, where the crowds celebrated Jesus and his teaching, to the Last Supper, Jesus’s march to the cross, His death, and finally the wonder of his resurrection, my heart spills over in gratitude that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to be a ransom for many. For ME.

While it’s always been meaningful, in my most recent adult life it’s become powerfully personal. Our faith walk is intended to be powerfully personal, so perhaps that seems a silly statement. But it took powerfully personal experiences to bring me to a deeper understanding of the full impact of Holy week. It took meeting the real Jesus. I needed to witness his miraculous work in me and my family.

This baby boy I have in heaven is my greatest hope and knowledge and beyond-doubt proof that we serve a God who loves us. (We all are created with spiritual gifts and my #1 off the charts is Faith – crazy dumb eyes wide open faith) I believe with every fiber of my being that God is using this baby boy for miracle work, for kingdom work, bringing beauty from ashes. His fragrance blows in with the wind when I least expect it and it’s even sweeter every time.

I believe I will hold this little baby again someday because of the power of the real and risen Jesus. I believe that same power works in me and in you to draw the world back to himself. Never before in history and never again was that power so evident as it was on the cross. He won the victory for the world over evil and death and He promises to do the same in my life too.

I have had the opportunity to gloves-off reckon with God. He can take any punch I throw and returns only love. Truth: I’d much rather read the story of someone else’s spiritual encounter and take their word for it. But alas, I am a “learn by doing” creature. And so it’s through this personal rumbling with God that I learn more about myself and His nature. And if I can sum it up briefly, I believe that nature is crazy love. Crazy love that meets me at my worst and nurtures me into the person He planned me to be. We are all broken without Him. And while my life is far from perfect, it is full of hope and peace with Him in it.

So I have an open love affair with baby boys who came to change the world – the one whose first and last breaths I felt, and the One who grew into the Son of Man who claimed victory over the grave. For every time I have fallen to my knees under the weight of a burden I thought I couldn’t bear, there is a Savior who buckled under the weight of a cross. For every moment I have felt alone, there is a Savior who cried out to his Father not to leave Him. For every tear of grief and despair I have wept, there is a Father whose own heart broke over the death of his son.

And for every hope I’ve ever dreamed, there is an empty tomb on Easter morning.

A promise that there is nothing more powerful than the real Jesus.

Happy Holy Week, loves. Make it personal.

HP,

J

Reading List

The Case for Easter by Lee Strobel (the science and history in support of the resurrection)
Spiritual Gifts Assessment (Thank you Reverend Susan Kent)
Reckless Love by Cory Asbury (song, please download legally)