MONDAY 6 APRIL
Acts 4.32-37
The Life Changing Power of the Resurrection
As we read from this passage we pick up the most wonderful atmosphere there was in that very early church. The people were all drawn into having a wonderful personal relationship with the crucified, risen Lord Jesus. They were reaping the benefits Jesus had released for them by dying for them on the cross and rising again from the dead. As people accepted the risen Lord Jesus into their hearts, a great change took place. Their whole lives were miraculously transformed. The amazing grace – the life-transforming power of Jesus – was working amongst them in a mighty way.
The big change that took place was that Jesus was making them ever so loving, ever so kind and ever so generous. People just let go of all their money and possessions and showed a willingness to share everything they had. Because of this there was no needy person amongst them. Lots of people including the great saint Barnabas, that great encourager of the infant Church, sold their land and gave the money to the apostles to distribute.
Jesus is exactly the same today. The risen Lord Jesus is knocking at the doors of our hearts. As soon as we let Him in, His grace begins to work the same miracles in our hearts. We find ourselves able to let go of our money and possessions and become generous in a way we could not do before we knew Jesus.
PRAYER: Crucified, risen Lord Jesus, I invite you to come into my heart. Pour your grace into me and miraculously transform my whole being. Make me more loving, kinder and more generous than I have ever been, Jesus my wonderful Saviour and Lord. Amen.
TUESDAY 7 APRIL
Psalm 133
How pleasant to live together in unity!
When men were consecrated as priests in Old Testament times, they were anointed with oil. The pouring of oil was a symbol of the pouring out of God’s Holy Spirit. At Confirmation services, when the Bishop confirms the candidates on , he makes a sign of the cross on their heads with holy oil. Again this is the symbol of the anointing of the Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit of God comes into our lives we are filled with God’s power. This is the power of His love. We immediately sense an incredible unity with the Lord Jesus and God the Father. We find ourselves having a strong desire to praise and worship God and to read His Word in the Bible. Our hearts are filled with joy as we worship Him. God’s love first pours out all over us and we find ourselves enveloped in His peace. Then we discover other people who have had the same anointing of the Holy Spirit. We find ourselves being drawn to them. Even though they may come from different Christian denominations we feel absolutely one with them. This was my experience when I came into charismatic renewal and was filled with the Holy Spirit in 1973. We met up with the Spirit-filled Catholics Pentecostals, Methodists, Brethren, Baptists, Presbyterians, and many others and felt absolutely one with them. As the Holy Spirit is the unifying force in the blessed Trinity, so He binds us all together with cords that cannot be broken when He fills each one of us.
PRAYER: Father God, may your Son Jesus, the baptizer with the Holy Spirit, re-fill me now. May He pour His Holy Spirit over me so that I may experience a greater unity with you and be united with all other Spirit-filled believers with cords that cannot be broken. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 8 APRIL
1 John 1.1-2.2
The Word of Life – the Eternal Life
I love these beautiful descriptions of Jesus by His best friend, St John. He was very close to Jesus and gives us such a first hand picture of our Saviour. Jesus is the Word of Life. When He spoke the word, all life came to be. He keeps on giving life. Evolutionists and scientists know a lot about life but then never can tell us how life began. We have to go to God’s Word, the Bible, to find this out. It makes it so clear. Jesus is the life giver. Satan is the life destroyer. He comes in to steal life and to take it away from us. Jesus is eternal life. Once we turn to Him and accept Him into our lives, our lives become eternal too. We all suffer from a life-threatening disease called sin. If we let it go without treatment, it destroys our life and snuffs out the eternal life God has given to us. Sometimes we try to kid ourselves that we are without sin, but this sort of self-deceit does not get us anywhere. If, on the other hand, we confess our sins to God and put all our faith in the power Jesus released after He died on the cross, He pleads to the Father on our behalf that we may be accepted by Him into eternal life; and we are!
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank you so much for giving us our life and then coming into our hearts to give us eternal life. We confess we have sinned and trust your blood to cleanse us. Please ask your Father to secure a place in eternal life for us, Jesus our life giver and life restorer. Amen.
THURSDAY 9 APRIL
1 Corinthians 15.12-26
Death is destroyed
God designed us all to be eternal. He loves us all so very, very much. He does not want to lose us. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they spoilt God’s design for all men. Death came to the people God had made. When He could see we were all being separated from Him by death, God was full of grief. He loves us all so much. He couldn’t stand losing us. That’s why He sent His Son, Jesus, into the world. Jesus is eternal. He was one person who never had to die; yet when His Father sent Him to the earth, He was sent to die. His death on the cross and His rising again after three days has destroyed the power of death over all people. When Jesus died and rose again the last enemy of God – death – was destroyed forever!
Since Jesus died to defeat death, all of us have a choice. We can choose life or we can choose death. If we choose to surrender our lives to Jesus, we receive the free gift of eternal life. If we reject Jesus and refuse to trust Him to take our sins away, then we choose death; we will be lost by God forever.
Let us pray that God will make us powerful witnesses to persuade all those who are heading for death that Jesus is the only One who can give them eternal life and that only those who know Jesus are in heaven.
PRAYER: Father, thank you for loving us so much that you let Jesus die for us to destroy death. As we surrender our lives to Him and put all our faith in Him, we rejoice that we will never die. Help us to persuade others to surrender to Jesus to gain eternal life, through Jesus our life giving Saviour. Amen.
FRIDAY 10 APRIL
Luke 24.1-12
Why do you look for the living among the dead?
What a fantastic surprise awaited the women who were sent to anoint the body of Jesus early on the first Easter morning. The stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty. What a wonderful message the angels gave them; that Jesus was not dead, but alive! He had risen as He predicted He would when He told His disciples about His coming death (Mark 8.31). When the women told the disciples, they found it almost impossible to believe. They were so shattered by the grief of losing Jesus that they forgot completely Jesus’ promise to them that He would rise from the dead on the third day. The fact that the disciples doubted at this point is evidence that Jesus did rise from the dead. If they stole His body they would have reacted differently. We can be absolutely sure that Jesus rose again and that one day we will rise to be with Him in heaven! When Peter saw the strips of linen cloth lying in the tomb, he was so puzzled. The way they were lying, Jesus must have come through them. Later, all his doubts and wondering came to an end when Jesus came through the closed door of the upper room to be with His disciples.
Many people doubt the resurrection of Jesus. I once met a man who was absolutely sure He would rise again because he had been through the experience himself. Edmund Wilbourne, once head of the Church Army in England, died and went to heaven where he saw that only those who knew Jesus on earth were with Him in heaven. Jesus answered the prayers of His aunt and let him come back to life. He sat up on a mortuary slab and went on to live a wonderful life for Jesus.
PRAYER: Father, thank you for raising Jesus from the dead so that we can all be raised. We look forward so much to being with you forever, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
SATURDAY 11 APRIL
John 20.19-31
My Lord and my God
The disciples were so filled with joy when they saw the risen Lord. This joy increased as He breathed on them the Holy Spirit. The power Jesus generated when He died and rose again came into the disciples, forgiving all their sins and giving them the power to love and forgive. Now they were truly born again – Jesus had made them into new people – they were so happy!
Poor old Thomas wasn’t with them at the time and he found it hard to believe that Jesus had been with them. He doubted so much that he would have to see to believe. A week later he was with the Twelve when Jesus appeared to them. Immediately, all his doubts disappeared as he cried out, “My Lord and my God!” He fell down and worshipped Jesus. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that Jesus was God! Thomas, the doubter, was the first one to recognize this wonderful Christian truth. Jesus told Thomas how blessed he was because he saw and believed, but said to him how much more blessed would be all those who had not seen Him and yet believed. That is all of us! John made sure we would believe. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, he wrote his wonderful gospel. As Jesus was God, so the gospel is God’s word. When we read it we are filled with faith: “Faith comes by hearing God’s word” (Romans 10.17).
We are not only sure that Jesus rose from the dead, but are also absolutely sure that all of us who know Him will have eternal life and will be with Him for ever (John 17.3).
PRAYER: Jesus, your word, in the gospels, gives us so much faith in you. We fall down and worship you, with Thomas, declaring, “Jesus my Lord and my God.” It’s so wonderful to know you and to know that you love us so much you will never let us go, Jesus our fantastic Saviour. Amen.
SUNDAY 12 APRIL
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER
The Risen Jesus, Our Lord and our God, makes Himself known
The first Easter Day must have been the most joyful day in the whole of history. Just imagine the extreme joy experienced by the Apostles when the Risen Lord came into the upper room to be with them.
As Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit they experienced the cleansing power of God filling their hearts. They were receiving the power Jesus released when He died on the cross to take all our sins away. Words can’t express the fullness of happiness and joy that they were experiencing. They had been with Jesus for three years never able to fully comprehend his revolutionary teaching now the were fully one with Him, They were saturated with God’s love , joy and peace. Their’s was JOY UNSPEAKABLE.
Poor old Thomas was not with the disciples on Easter day. When they tried to share their experience with him he found it too hard to accept. He just could not believe unless he could see for himself. He would have to put his finger into Jesus’ nail holes before he would believe.
A week later Jesus made Thomas’s joy complete and took all his doubts away. As Jesus opened Thomas’s eyes of faith he gave him a greater insight than the others. He could see that Jesus was God! He didn’t try to look for the nail holes, he just fell down before Jesus crying out, “My Lord and my God!”
Although we too, Can’t see Jesus, we can have exactly the same experience as Thomas and the apostles. As we acknowledge Him as saviour and Lord and believe that He has taken all our sins away and as we invite Him into our hearts with repentant spirits, then Jesus breathes His Holy Spirit into our hearts and their JOY UNSPEAKABLE becomes ours!
(Every time I printed ‘Thomas’ while typing this message the computer automatically said, “Press enter to insert Thomas Hall” God knows each one of our names. when a person asks Jesus to enter his or her heart God automatically enters their name into His Book of Life!)
PRAYER: Father God thank you so much for the power released when Jesus died on the cross and rose again. As it transformed the lives of the disciples gathered in the upper room so that they were born again so breath the Holy Spirit into each one of us that we may experience the transforming power of Jesus in our lives. Through Jesus, our most loving Saviour and Lord. Amen.