The Whole Story of Easter

People often want something for nothing. We want to take, to be accepted without expectations. We want only the happy, pretty parts of love. And we certainly don’t want to face that we are sinful or unworthy.

So, we may be tempted to look for that in our relationship with God also. Heresies abound claiming we can earn God’s favor, manipulate his power, or gain his salvation on our own terms. We may even attempt to redefine God’s love in a way that makes sense to us.

But thankfully for us, Jesus’s view of love is so much richer than our self-centered ideas. He laid down his life for our salvation. He shows us we can’t have the joy of Easter or the power of the resurrection, without the sorrow of sin and the gut-wrenching reality of the cross. We may wish to teach our children only the nice parts of the Bible, but in doing so we lose all meaning. Telling people of their sin and Jesus’s agony helps them better understand the true sacrifice.

The love of Jesus healed, blessed, served, extended compassion. But it also did the hardest things. It paid the awful price to get us back from the garbage heap of sin and separation from God.

Just as the Father knows me, I know the Father, and I give up my life for my sheep.

No one takes my life from me. I give it up willingly! I have the power to give it up and the power to receive it back again, just as my Father commanded me to do.

John 10:15,18 (CEV)

We wish we could grow our children in a garden of love, with no death or troubles or sin. We wish we could tell them only the stories of mercy and blessings. We wish we could have only Christmas, never Good Friday. But to tell our kids only part of the good news is to rob them of the depth of true love and jeopardize their salvation, which is available only through Jesus’s shed blood.

So, this Easter, tell your kids the whole story. Celebrate Jesus’s death and resurrection, as it is the only way they can appreciate what Jesus did and have the joy of salvation.

PRAY

Lord, thank you for Jesus’s death, which took away my sin. Thank you for his resurrection, which conquered death and made the way for me to have eternal life. Please help me teach my children the cost you paid to love them. Amen.

TIME TO TALK

Conversation starter for kids: Provides you with questions and prompts to facilitate a time of applicable discussion with children to lead them towards knowing God and his Word more deeply.

Question(s): What do you think about when you see a cross?

Apply: Consider having this discussion while doing a cross decoration craft of some kind: color a picture of a cross, wrap flowers on a wooden wall cross, or make a mosaic cross by breaking pottery and then gluing it to a wooden cross. As you have the conversation, share from your heart, and the Bible, what the cross truly means.

KEEP IT GOING

Related passages: These additional verses will help parents expand Scriptural knowledge and place on the armor of God’s Word to tackle each day. Swipe to read the passages today.

Isaiah 53:4-5

Isaiah 53:4-5