Is Christ Real For You?

On This Palm Sunday, as Holy Week begins:

Do you know Christ? I thought I knew Him. When I am challenged with trials and tribulations in my life, He becomes more real to me. I see Him working in my life! I see Him arranging my life in order to bless me and to bless others. This always brings me great joy and happiness. My selfish concerns and my pride melt away. I experience God’s divine and infinite love and nothing else matters. 

 

As I studied the Beatitudes from Matthew 5, I learned what is necessary to experience God’s love. It is knowing Christ and choosing to allow the Holy Spirit to work on our hearts. This requires a relationship with Christ, a two-way relationship. When we talk to Him, we do not give Him a laundry list of things we would like Him to do for us. Instead, we pray in thanksgiving for all of the ways He has blessed us. We pray in sincere repentance for all the times we have allowed pride and selfishness to rule our actions. We pray for those we love and for those who are sick. We pray for those who have hurt us or offended us in some way. We listen. We open our hearts to the Holy Spirit and allow Him to stir our conscience. We open our eyes to notice how God has worked in our lives. We allow the Holy Spirit to show us how the adversity in our lives has blessed us, for God takes the suffering in our lives and always finds a way to bless us! 

  

What do we know about Christ? An excerpt from “A Journey Toward Perfection” illustrates Christ’s humility:
Contemplate this: Christ, our all-powerful, incorruptible and Holy God who created us, willingly left His place of glory, His throne, where He was worshipped by all the angels, and He chose to become an ordinary human like us, one of His creatures. This is humility in perfection. Our God chose to become an ordinary man. As a matter of fact, our God did not only come to live among us, He came to serve us. He knowingly chose to take on corruptible flesh which can die, and astoundingly, He chose to allow Himself to be despised, rejected, persecuted, beaten, disgraced, and crucified with criminals. And why did Christ our God, choose to allow Himself to suffer these indignities? Because He loves us that much!

  
Christ was the only perfect human being. He was perfectly humble, meek, merciful, compassionate and loving. He never sinned, which means He never lied, or envied, or desired “things.” He never hated anyone. He forgave everyone and healed everyone. He never turned anyone away. This loving man, our all-powerful God, willingly hung on the cross in excruciating pain for you and for me. He died to save us. He died so that we could be with Him for eternity! He died, so He could love us face to face, and so we can stand in His presence washed from our sins, able to fully love Him in return. 

  
Whenever life gets tough, I visualize our beautiful compassionate loving Lord on the cross, suffering for me!

 

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