HOW TO CELEBRATE EASTER WHEN YOU’RE LIVING GOOD FRIDAY

The Bible says that there is “A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance”. Ecclesiastes 3:4

Whether you are Godly or ungodly, you will go through times of weeping and times of laughing. You will have days that you want to mourn and days that you want to dance.

In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul writes, “Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?....... No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.” Romans 8:35-37

The Bible also says in Job that -”People are born for trouble as readily as sparks fly up from a fire.” Job 5:7.

These two scriptures are not a contradiction, it’s simply a fact of life that God has made us to have incredible victory in spite of our miserable failures.

Our Christian experience, no matter how powerful, is full of good and bad days.Days when the Power of God is obvious and days when the Power of God is not so obvious.

That’s kinda’ the difference between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.

THE POWER OF GOD IS JUST AS REAL ON BOTH DAYS!

Good Friday: a day of betrayal, false accusations, standing alone when he should have been surrounded by friends, beatings, torture, pain, having to keep your mouth shut when you are more than able to defend yourself, the sky grows dark, despair, shame, anguish and eventually, death!

Resurrection Sunday: a day of new beginnings, great Hope great Joy, unexpected surprises, your enemies have been defeated, you get a clear word from the Lord, and doors that you thought would never be opened again have been blown off of the hinges. A day when the Power of God shows up in a mighty way. It’s then that we are blown away at the Power of God. AND Death gets slapped in the face.

BUT ON YOUR GOOD FRIDAYS YOU HAVE TO HANG ON UNTIL SUNDAY

How do you live like he’s risen when you feel dead yourself?
How do you dance for Joy when you’re knocked down to the floor?
How do you celebrate Easter when you’re living Good Friday?

Living in Christ means living beyond your means. The resurrection power that comes from Christ is a “life in spite of death” power. Resurrection power means “life in spite of death” power.

There is no such thing as a testimony with out a test.
There is no such thing a resurrection without a death.
There is no such thing as an Easter without a Good Friday.

Realize where you’re at in your Christian life and know that bad days are part of it. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that you are not supposed to have bad days. No, see you’re supposed to have victory in spite of your bad days. Look at the person next you and tell them “it’s ok to have bad days”.

It’s just like the song Trading My Sorrows says, “We are blessed beyond the curse”. The curse is real but the blessing is greater than the curse. Good Friday is real but Easter outweighs Good Friday. Your problems are real, but the reality that God keeps his promises will out shine your problem. The trouble you face is genuine but the reality that God’s power is going to change everything is greater than your genuine trouble.

When we face these troubles in life, the first thing we need to do is check our life and make sure that we are being obedient to the Lord. Make sure that we are where we are supposed to be and we are doing what we’re supposed to be doing! In other words, we are walking with God in the matter that is plaguing us.

Once you’ve done this, then the next thing you’ve got to do is realize that if you are walking with God, he is leading you to better places. And you’ve got to have hope for that. He is our Shepherd and if you remain walking with God he will lead you to a place that is better than where you currently are. He will take you into a place of victory. You need to review your walk with God in past and ask yourself has there ever been a time when I was really walking with God and he took me to a worse place. Has there ever been a time that I trusted him and he tricked me.

We serve a merciful God. Our Jesus is full of mercy. Our Jesus is full of compassion. We have to believe that he wants better things for us. We have to believe that he is planning on better things for us. We have to believe that if he is leading us as our Shepherd that he is taking us to greener pastures. We have to look at the history of Jesus and ask, “has there ever been a time when he didn’t have mercy. When he didn’t have compassion. When he didn’t want to help us even when no one else wanted to help us”.

We need to understand that there is something better coming and that all we’ve got to do is hold on. Until then there are 4 things that will help us keep our head right on our Good Friday days:

(1) Understand that just because you feel like a failure doesn’t make you one. You are not what you feel you are, you are who God says you are!
(2) Learn what God’s Word says. Learn those specific scriptures concerning your specific area of attack and fight back with the Word.
(3) Share your hurt and your conflict with Godly friends and ask for their prayers. “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results”. James 5:16
(4) Make a list (mental or physical) of the areas where you are walking in victory and of the things you have to be thankful for. One of the things we find out is that we devote 95% of our heart and our mind to less than 1% of our life and when the other 99% is completely blessed. This is a big sign of spiritual immaturity.

Your devotion to a particular subject should be proportionate to the importance that thing has in your life. If its not, then you are letting one little thing affect all the rest of your life. This means something is bad out of order.

If you can do those four things on Good Friday you can make it until Easter Sunday.

He is risen!