Why are you miserable, when you have Jesus on your side?
5th Sept.’ 2010
Luke 24:13-35
The message of the Gospel of Jesus and his Resurrection from the dead is not easy to understand, when people hear it for the first time. Like the disciples they may pass through stages of belief.
At first they may think it is a fairy tale, impossible to belief, they may try to check out the truth about the story, but would still be puzzled by it. Only when they encounter Jesus personally in their lives, will they be able to accept the fact of the Resurrection (Christ died and rose again)
Resurrection is the heart of the Christian Faith, that gives an assurance that Christ has overcome death on our behalf. Therefore, death is not an ultimate end to life, but a new beginning to life eternal.
The trend Christ has set for us by his death and resurrection means when we also die, we shall rise into a radiant appearance to be with him in heaven.
This is the reason why it is important for people to understand that if resurrection is eradicated from Christian theology it would undermine the divine purpose of salvation God planned for mankind.
Therefore, nothing trivial or otherwise in our lives should be allowed to cloud our judgement to put a question mark over our relationship with Christ.
Because as some people cast doubt on this theology, it is important to note that if Christ didn't rise again, then, our faith is baseless, and there is no hope for us, and our faith has no divine reward. Read 1Corinthians 15:12-19
For, as Christians, it is our discipleship mission to persuade people with the gospel and bring them to the knowledge of Christ.
Then, as they commit themselves to Jesus and devote their lives to serving him, they would begin to fully understand the reality of his presence with them.
The story in this passage was about two disciples who were consumed by grief and disappointment when Jesus was crucified. In their lives, as followers of Christ, their faith and hope were extra-ordinarily raised because of the ‘Spiritual sovereignty’ Jesus seemed to control, in terms of his ability to dissect the scripture for even a lay person to understand, and his ability to relate to the downtrodden and invoke the spirit of hopefulness in their lives.
Above all, the power to perform miracles that was only experienced in the days of the Old Testament days of Elijah, and the prophets; this Spiritual clout Jesus had, especially his ability to expose the hypocrisy of the Pharisees (the right wing religious people) who thought to have the ultimate spiritual mandate of access to God; all contributed to raising his profile to celebrity status among ordinary citizens and disciples.
Now, the kind of cult figure He became made people assumed he was the one with divine and physical authority to lead the Israelites into a state of rebellion against the Roman Empire, and deliver them from their control.
However, having seen Jesus crucified, their hearts were broken, and their hope dashed for the Messianic (redeemer) empire they thought he was going to establish over their enemies. The amount of grief that engulfed them reduced Jesus in their thinking to an impotent religious figure that had generated false hope; and expose them to the mercy of their enemies. But what many, including the disciples failed to understand was that the divine purpose of Jesus was not about overcoming earthly kingdoms, but spiritual kingdoms symbolized by unrighteousness.
Many times as people, we fail to understand the purpose of God on our lives, and had our own view of what his purpose should be, and if that fails we tend to coil into a misery mould, lose faith in him, and fail to recognise his presence in our lives.
The reason for their misery was that though Jesus was with them for some years, and talked about his death and resurrection, the disciples didn't believe that was going to happen or was possible. And therefore, never envisaged Christ could rise again from the dead and possibly walk with them on that road.
Such attitude of grief could get people into a state of misery when they have strong conviction over a situation in their lives that there is no solution to it. This belief influences their resolve to form a mindset of negativity, that their life might be over; and bottled them into a life of hopelessness.
Whatever life throws at us, if we focus only on the disappointment, then, it is going to be difficult to recognise that Jesus is walking side by side with us. Having Jesus walking with us in life is not physical experience of feeling someone is next to you, nor is it a matter of eradication of problems; however, it is spiritual sense of inner peace that assures you that your situation is being taken care of.
Another thing that compounded the problem of the disciples was that they were walking in the wrong direction, away from the fellowship of the other disciples; Emmaus was seven miles away from Jerusalem the seat of the fellowship of Christian church.
One thing is certain, if you walk in the wrong direction of the fellowship of Christ, you would miss the strength given through his fellowship. When Christ becomes centre of your life, everything changes, and you experience peace of mind, even in the time of adversity. At the same time your faith grows to know the purpose of God in your life. Confidence also built into your day to day life. You respond to the challenges of the day with boldness and nothing frightens you. And finally your security is firmly established in Christ.
Philippians 4:4, says Rejoice in the Lord always, I say again rejoice, this statement is total rebuke to any spirit of misery that would cloud our mindset to undermine the power of God in your life.
What we must understand also is that God is not always there to solve our problem, but he is with us to help go through problems. Therefore when sometimes God seems far away from us pray, Psalm 10:1, and sometimes you could pray to release tensions of emotional stress, Psalm 62:3-6.
Graham Bennett, 05/09/2010