Living From Easter

Because once and for all, our debt was paid. - Yeah. - And there's nothing we can do as believers to put that debt back upon us. (upbeat music) - Hello there, you're listening to the Girl Talk podcast. My name is Carol. - I'm Kelly. - I'm Trisha. - We're glad you've joined us today. Does Easter matter when it's not Easter? - Ooh, that's a great question. - Yeah. - And I didn't ask, should it matter? I asked, does it matter? So let's impact that a little bit. The reason I'm asking the question is because I think we get away from Easter in the resurrection and the whole story of how Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. And we kind of forget the gospel. Like the farther we get away from the actual time that we celebrate Easter, we kind of forget what Jesus did for us. - So you mean like Christmas, we're focusing on his birth. Easter, we focus on the cross and the rest of the year we're just laying in it. - Jesus, who? - Yeah. - Even believers I think are like that. - You get caught up in that trap. So why is Easter still important? I mean, the obvious answer to that is it's the foundation of our faith. - Right, right, right. - Yeah. - And there's nothing we can do. Nothing that we can do is believers to put that debt back upon us. Like there's nothing we do that can make it worse for us. There's nothing that we can do to make it better for us. There's nothing after that moment in time, after the resurrection, it's done, it's gone. And it's over. And now we just get to live in the grace and forgiveness of Jesus. Once we've put our faith in trust in Him and given Him our life, made Him the Lord of our lives, we can now rest. And what a beautiful thing that is. - It is. And I just thought of a question as you were talking 'cause you said you can't do anything to make it worse for yourself. And you can't do anything to make it better for yourself. Do you think we have a misunderstanding of the gospel when we feel like this is not the great grace that it is? Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm saying, I've asked that question many times in my life. What can I do to kind of make this better? Can I pray more? And all those things, of course you can. But I think that's the wrong question. The right question is why do I not appreciate the magnitude of God's grace? - Right, yes. Because that is the greatest gift that's ever been given. And so is there a misunderstanding that you think somewhere in there that we've got to either earn it or this thing's better? - 100% think that we all still think we have to earn it. And I think part of that is because we still continue as we should in some ways. Continue to see every sin that we commit as a nail in Jesus's hand. And so we say, okay, here's one more nail in his hand. Okay, here's one more thing I've done that's putting him on the cross. Instead of realizing, yes, here's one more thing you're doing that's separating you from the fullness of your relationship with him. But he's already been to the cross. Like that happened 2,000 years ago. Your sin today isn't what's putting him on the cross. He's already done that. He's already walked that path. There's no sin that you're gonna do that's gonna make him go back to the cross. - Right. - So we have to start to realize that it is, it is painful. It is, it's now our sin separates us from the fullness. It separates him from living in that rest, living in that fullness, living in that those grace filled moments because we continue to separate ourselves from him with more and more sin that we're doing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So we do need to remember our sin. - Sure. - And sin no more. - Yeah. - But we don't need to think that that's what's putting Jesus on the cross. - Right. That's a great analogy. I also, we just read a book about grace as a entire team and it was so good. And he says in one point near the end of the book, he says most people grow up when they have a bad taste in their mouth for religion and the church, they grow up in a tradition that says, God is good, you are bad, try harder, see you next week. And that is the whole of the gospel that we preach ourselves outside of Eastern Christmas. And I was like, oh my word, yes, that is in 100% true. And I think they're probably people listening right now. I'm like, oh my goodness. Like if we ever get our minds wrapped around grace, which we can't, but if we ever understand that we're asking the wrong question, because I think for me when I would ask the question, what can I do to be better? I had a misunderstanding of the grace of God and how great it was. You don't appreciate it. Sure. I think there's a flip side too. What was it? God is good, you're a bad, try harder. I think, I'll be talking about myself, but I think maybe other people maybe have this too. God is good. I'm doing okay, you know, and that is another way of not truly understanding the gospel is that when I take it for granted in terms of how I feel about it, not that I have to do something about it, but I'm not thanking God for this grace. I don't see my sin enough to see how big the cross is. And he had to go on that cross for me. That's another way of not appreciating the cross and not living out Easter. Yeah, and I love that you brought that up because that is also us not understanding the extent of grace. You know, they're again, it's the wrong way for grace. Yeah, I'm doing okay. Yeah, I don't need really Jesus to do that for me. What he did. Yeah, or just one and done, you know, I don't really. Okay, I was all right yesterday. Yeah. Every day, I need to lean on that grace every day. And when I think I don't, I need to do it even more. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's one of the beauties of Easter is that we also, we start Easter with Good Friday. Some churches actually start with Monday, Thursday, which is, you know, even better. But if we really look at Good Friday and the magnitude of what happened between he was arrested on Thursday night and he was crucified and everything he went through, you know, that's, you can watch the Passion of the Christ to really get that feel for that in a way that just makes your stomach turn. And it was so much worse than that. So much worse. So much worse. And he had to take on our entire sendet. Yeah, and be separated from God in his entire, I mean, like he had to be completely separated from God in the way that we separate ourselves from God when we reject him because he had to take on all of our sin. The weight of all of us. Yes. And I think we do sometimes, I will watch that movie and I will focus on the physical pain of it. But the emotional pain like you're describing, that is just so much greater. Yeah. I will tell you, I love that you mentioned Good Friday Services because several years back, our church had a Good Friday service. And I don't think, if I did, I didn't remember it. I don't think I had ever remembered having a Good Friday service. But we went in, we sang a song. They read the portion of scripture about what Christ went through. And that was pretty much it. And as they dismissed us, there was a great heaviness in the room. And that was the first time that I was like this. This is what I'm supposed to feel about what Jesus did for me. And it made me want to go back to that moment, time and time and time and time again, because in that moment, I felt the weight. And I think this goes back to what you said. We get so far away from our sin, not to mention Easter, but we get far away from our bad sins, not to mention our acceptable sins that are culturally okay. But we don't think of those as sin and we kind of justify ourselves. And I remember thinking, I want to come back to this moment because maybe for the first time in my life, I feel the weight of Good Friday. I feel the weight of what I have done. And then knowing that, you can celebrate. It changed my entire celebration that year. It's interesting because as you were saying that, I was just picturing my own experience with that. I've had the same sort of experience with Good Friday and just leaving heavy from that service. And think about Easter. And we do, we celebrate, we worship, it's joy filled. And that's how every Sunday is. Often times in our churches, it's so joy filled. We're celebrating, we're rejoicing what God has done. And we don't spend near enough time dealing with the heaviness of what we did, the heaviness of our own sin. What if our churches had a Good Friday service every Friday? Yeah. Can you imagine how that would transform us if we went into every weekend with the reminder of the magnitude of our sin that we could never pay, the heaviness of that, the heaviness of what Jesus did and in every Sunday morning came to worship with that level of gratitude and overwhelming worship for the one who paid it all. Okay. So I'm going to go somewhere with this. Okay. Okay. So, you know, I know my church staff is overworked and man, they do so much. And so if any of them are listening, they're like sweating bullets right now because they're like, you want to add a service. But what if how can we build into our lives a good Friday? Where we actually feel that way. Well, I think contemplation for sure, wherever, or maybe in the church, but maybe at home, but I mean, what you're talking about to me is like the level of celebration on Sunday has to have something to do with the level of heaviness that we allow ourselves to resonate with on Friday. Yes. Yes. And I also think Saturday is an interesting one set because that day of confusion, silence, waiting. Yes. I feel like that's often where we live in our world today. We're waiting for the second coming of Jesus. And it's a confusing time. I think Paul David Trip describes that as the already and the not yet. Uh-huh. And that's, that is our journey as believers, as we live in light of what's already happened. But what God has promised, and it's the not yet, that's a great way in my mind that you think of that. Yeah. Between the already and the not yet. But every peace is important in order to truly see the cross for what it is. Absolutely. Every peace and holy week, really. But living through the lens of Easter, we have to understand the heaviness of our sin. Yeah. So how can we build, I don't want, it's going to sound like I'm adding something to your schedule. And I know probably most of you are like, I can't do one more thing because we all feel like that from time to time. But how can we make sure that we live from Easter? I'll tell you where a couple of years ago, I heard a sermon and a pastor said, help us to live from Easter. And I was like, that is such a great way to put it. How can we live from Easter because it's such a foundation of our faith. So how do you get back to that? That's a good question. I think part of it is that we have to live from the forgiveness and the grace that we've been given. Right. And we can't keep picking up our sin and putting it back on our shoulders. Right. Okay. I'm going to agree with you there. But I want to insert something in the conversation here. And I believe we've lost the ability and the art of doing this is confession. Yes. Also listening to another rival teacher and they said, when we confess our virtues, we're competitors. We confess our sins, we're brothers and sisters. Oh, I like it. And the point he was making is that confession is not for shame. Confession is Jesus's pathway to life. And so I think that the good Friday portion, the confession portion needs to be a part of our journey because then we will not really, truly appreciate that the depth and greatness of our God and His grace for us until we practice this confession because I don't do it often enough. Sure. I'm going to be honest. I have sinned a plenty even today. And I haven't sat down with either of you and said, "Hey, can I confess to sin to you? Can I?" And so I think that's where we get to the point that you started. We're like, "I'm okay. I'm okay." I mean, it's not that big of a sin. Okay. It minimizes the cross. Sure. But you're exactly right. And a lot of the prayers that I know I pray, I don't do the confession part that, you know, you've heard the acronym may be like Acts, which is Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication, which is basically asking. But that C part, unless I'm going through the acronyms, I won't do that one. Or you say, "Confess, forgive me for all my sins." Yeah. I'm just like, throw that blanket over it and let's go. But when I do that, then I'm not truly taking ownership of what I did that wasn't that wasn't in line with God's word. And not that this, like you're saying, we're not putting another nail in the hands of Jesus. We are already forgiven for that, but we have to understand what we did to appreciate what he did. Yes. Yep. At the same time, we can't make it it our identity. And I think that's part of what I mean when I say we can't keep taking our sin and putting that back on our shoulders, is that we can't keep making whatever sin we've done in the past or we even will do tomorrow, the identity through which we view ourselves or the identity through which we view Jesus. Because then we can easily slip into this, well, the blood can't cover that. There's nothing. You know, he died on the cross for all the sins, but this one, all the sins, but I could never, I can never measure up. And yeah, you're right. That's the point. You can never measure up. But his sin covered all, his debt that he paid on the cross covered all of our sins. Even the ones will commit tomorrow when we shouldn't. Yeah. But we can't make it. We can't make our sin our identity and live in this place of oppression. That's the whole, that's the whole point. The enemy wants us to live in oppression. He wants us to live separated from the grace and forgiveness of God, but Jesus says, stop it. So there's this tension, isn't there, between the forgiveness and the grace and the freedom and the understanding what we've done and how much we've needed Jesus. So there's a tension that we've got to live in. And I think that's, I think that has to be given to the Holy Spirit. We can't navigate it on our own. Right. Sure. Not three steps to finding out the balance. I think part of that is the reason scripture says you must die to yourself. Not only in prideful ways, but also in ways like, like you have to admit that you have an inability to save yourself. And that is not popular. No. Our culture is. That's something to sell books. Right. Yes. Our culture says, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You can do this. Look out for number one. All the things. And I think one of the reasons we got, got away from confession was because of the shame and peace. But also because we have a hard time admitting our inability or I don't want anybody to think I'm incapable. That's probably the worst insult of all. And yet to truly appreciate the goodness of God's grace for me, I have to say I have no ability to save myself without you. I am going to mess this up. And if you don't believe me, just wait a minute because it won't take long, right? So that's yeah, you know, one of the things I was just thinking about too when you were saying that is that we like to think that we have the ability to turn ourselves into good people. When scripture says that there's not one that's good, there's nobody good, yeah, only Jesus is good. And we can't do enough to make ourselves into good people, right? But we think we can by the world standards. And so a lot of this is also getting back to what is God standard versus what the world standard is, that I can make myself a good person. I can do all kinds of great things. And the world can look at me and go, she's such a good person, you know, look at her, she smiles at me and she's so happy and goes to church, yeah, she cares for other people. She speaks to her son kindly and there's none of that that makes me good in God's eyes. You know, Jesus is what makes me good in God's eyes, yeah. And there's nothing like, there's nothing, no part in that I play except bringing my own sin to the table. And Jesus does everything else, yeah, to make me good. I'm thinking about, you know, you'll go somewhere and someone has been delivered from a lifestyle that's completely difficult, right? Those people that have, they know how much they've done and those of us that maybe haven't committed some big major crime, you know, we think, oh, we're okay. It's the people that have come from a background that includes something that, that even the world says is difficult. They're so appreciative of what Jesus has done for them, that's true. We fool ourselves, that we're, you know, it's all right. But someone that's been redeemed from a life, I mean, I, I admire their freedom and their joy because they know, they know, I'm thinking of several people I know who had backgrounds that were so difficult, but Jesus forgave them, they've turned over a new leaf and they're living in such joy and such freedom and they don't fool themselves that they were okay. They know they weren't okay, just underscoring your point and your point as well that sometimes we sort of think, I'm all right, but it's, it's, that's the kind of freedom and joy that we need to experience too, because we have been delivered from horrible things, even if we don't admit it. And I'm as guilty as the next one of thinking, of getting complacent in all of that. I think especially those of us who've been believers for a really long time do, we get complacent Thank you. I mean, yeah, yeah, I'm forgiving. - Yeah, yeah. - And not really understanding the magnitude of it and feeling it. - I want that. - Yeah. - I want a hunger for that, a hunger for that magnitude. A hunger to live from both Good Friday and Eastern. Simultaneously. - Where do you think you lost it? - My mom used to have this phrase and I hated when she said it, but she was absolutely true. If I lost something, she'd say, retrace your steps. And I hated like everything. I would go to her very last, because I knew she was gonna say that. - But there's so much truth in it. And I think that's where you start. If you have known the goodness of God and his grace for you and you've known the weight of your sin, look back to your journey, figure out where you lost it, kind of where you went wrong, where you kind of fell off or you became complacent. And here's the other thing too. I don't think we want to spend a lot of time thinking about those things because they're uncomfortable and they might bring up some hard things, but the only way to get back on track is to identify that. And I think a lot of us don't do that just way because we're busy. That's the buzz word of the day. If you talk to anybody and you say, how you doing, they'll say, oh, I'm busy. I'm just busy. We don't stop long enough to reflect on where we were and what caused us to not get here, right? And so I would say if you're feeling like, I don't even know how to do this. If you've experienced it in the past and you're not now, I would say retrace your steps back to that place and allow God to walk with you and renew your heart in that area. I just retraced my steps back to the streets of New York City when I realized I was hopeless and had to rededicate my life to Christ. I'm glad you said that and that is a great way of going backwards to see what Jesus really, truly has done for me. Retrace the steps. - You know, and that's one thing that the Israelites were terrible at. They forgot just like that, what God had done for them, right? And I would have made a fantastic Israelite. - Same. - So that's a biblical story that we can turn back to as well because they were having to constantly be reminded. I'm your God. I'm your God. Remember what I did. Remember what I did. - And I love God and I love how intimate he is and how faithful he is to show up and remind us of that when we ask. You know, he'll show up and he showed up and reminded the Israelites when they didn't ask. - Right. - Sometimes in painful ways. But he also, when we asked to be reminded of where did we lose it, where did we forget, where have we gone astray? He will lovingly take our hand just as a shepherd does and he will take us back to those moments and he'll get us back on the right path. And we won't have to do it like the Israelites did. So if he wants to get our attention, he will. - Oh yeah. So maybe it starts with a few quiet moments together with you and God that is always fruitful and just asking him, hey, where did I lose that? Or maybe you've never known it at all. And for the very first time today, you're like, I want that what they're talking about. If you had text the word Jesus to 81891, we'll send you a resource that will answer your questions. There even somebody there alive that you can talk to and you can interact with and they can answer specific questions about your situation. And if you are inviting Jesus into your heart for the very first time, surrendering to him and believing that he died on the cross for your sin and paid your cancel to your dad. If that is what you're doing today, we would love nothing more than to hear about that because that's the reason that we do the Girl Talk podcast is it so that you can meet Jesus and grow in your relationship with him. So let us know that. You can get in touch if you got thoughts or ideas or ways that you carry Easter with you all year long. We'd love to hear them. You can email us at [email protected]. You can also check in on the Facebook page. However you choose to get in touch, we love hearing from you. This podcast is for you and we love doing it. We love these discussions. I love talking with you girls. 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