Citizens & Saints - Join The TriumphSample

YOU BROUGHT ME BACK TO LIFE

It was early morning in May of 1990 when my brother and I awoke to the news that my young (Christian) father, was dead. Now as you can imagine the pain of that tragedy was traumatic. It affected me in the most burdensome of ways. As I went on in years and began to discover more of who God was and the love he had extended us through Jesus, I slowly started to replace God, with “dad.” I often refused to believe that he was dead, and on the days when I reluctantly accepted that truth it was not without first acknowledging that Jesus was a pathway to my dad not to God. It was a total lie. An idol that I lived for. Truly in my heart I did not want God because I believed God took my dad away to punish me, and I was too young and hard-hearted to see that God was just as broken hearted about it all as I was. If not more! Eight years later, almost to the day, I made a very rare trip to my dad’s grave. I always hated going there because it just felt like a punch to the gut and an ugly reminder of what God “had taken away.” Something was different about this visit though. With every step inching me closer and closer to my dad’s gravestone I was slowly being introduced to a feeling I had never known. That feeling was met with transformative truth; dad was dead, Jesus IS alive. Dad was my loving mortal earthly father, God IS my gracious immortal heavenly Father. In that same moment the Holy Spirit helped me to realize that though my dad was dead in an earthly sense, he was alive in Christ, which meant death no longer had any type of eternal dominion over him.

The burdens of sin and death are heavy. So heavy that the only one capable of carrying that burden for us was Jesus. Jesus bled and died on the cross that we should have been nailed to. As he lay lifeless in the tomb, no one expected to see him again. Yet they did, in all his glory; our risen king! When Jesus saves us, we are brought out of death and into eternal life as conquerors over death. The effects of sin and death may still sting at times, but our day is coming when they will be no more. Rejoice! Jesus has won and invited you to share in his victory!

To listen to the album Join the Triumph on TheOverflow please visit theoverflow.com/JTT-Devo