CHAPTER FOUR

ARE YOU CRUCIFIED

I feel that there is a reason why some people will come to a church become moved by the sermon run to the altar in an emotional state of mind. Give themselves to Jesus, maybe even get filled with the Holy Spirit, then attend a couple more services and suddenly! C YA By! Their' yesterdays news and no one knows why or where they've gone. It is easy to make someone feel guilty, because we are all guilty, especially before we are saved! But there is a reason why there is a difference between a convert and someone saved. Remember that works without faith are vain. I think that there are some things in common between a person who comes to the alter because of guilt and a person who remains in church for years even, but stops feeling that fire that initially got them on their knees. One is a failure to be completely in love with the Lord and Savior. Number one requires faith. Faith to believe without doubt that the word is the word of God and completely true. A faith to believe that you, yourself can honestly become a true child of God, ABBA, Father! Think about our relationship with Jesus like the Bible tells us to, it is a marriage. Think back, to when you first fell in Love with someone, you wanted to always be on time for each date, every moment that was spent together was precious. You would gladly go out of your way to make that special person happy. In a way you worshiped this person, you would buy gifts for them, and you just couldn't get enough of their company. Always they were on your mind. You believed every word they would tell you because you wanted to trust them completely without doubt!

Now we are suppose to feel this way for our Lord Jesus! But you could see this person you love or loved, you could hear them talk to you, and feel them respond to you. But Jesus you can't see, Jesus you didn't get to meet in person so how else but through pure and blind faith, (Which is the substance of things hoped for yet not seen.) could we love someone who no longer lives in the flesh of our world.

We know also that in order for a marriage to have longevity, the couple must continually feed the fire of their love for each other. They could not do that if they lost sight of why they feel love for each other Or if their love was not real in the first place. And the most important thing of a successful marriage is a continuing trust in one another. We humans learn to live and learn from our perceptions or our five senses. Taste, Touch, Hearing, Sight, and Smell. But when it comes to Jesus before we Taste that the fruit is good, or get touched by the anointing Holy Spirit, or See the real truth within the word of God, or Smell the sweet fragrance that tends to fill a room where intense worship of God is happening. Jesus tells us that we must make the first move. We must take that initial "Step of Faith"! Until we do we are hearing only parables!

In the book of Matthew 13:10-16 Jesus clearly explains why we humans must make the first move towards conversion, towards Jesus. Before blinders and deaf and dumb spirits will be lifted from us. Lest we be converted then His word falls on deaf ears, blind eyes, and closed minds. Read this for yourselves.

So it takes a "Step of Faith" to reach Jesus and then once we prove ourselves faithful, wham O! He begins to give us things through the Holy Spirit, which bear His testimony, which build our faith! But just like God, the Holy Spirit cannot inhabit our lives whenever we allow sin back in. Why? A good analogy to explain why; would be to look at the nature of the elements of Fire and Water. If you have one of these occupying a space, you cannot have the other as well. It is black and white put water and fire together and one of the two is destroyed. If you have a small bucket of water and you throw it on a lit match, poof! The match goes out. But if you take that bucket of water and throw it on a raging forest fire? The water gets evaporated. So we need to be a "Raging Forest Fire"!

Now how do we become that on fire for Jesus? I want to share with you what has motivated me.

I look at why I fell in love with Jesus in the first place, because he carried my sin and its' judgment up to the cross and left it there. But I go a step further with that knowledge; I look at the details of what that put Jesus through. Our world has managed to sugar coat every thing once bitter. Our world has developed the "Political Correct Language" that is easier for us to stomach than just coming right out and saying the truth.

It is easy to proclaim that Jesus died on a cross for our sins to be forgiven and was risen on the third day to defeat death. But that is just words without identifying with it. Can you or have you tried to imagine it, have you tried to see it in your own mind, imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to endure.

Think about John who was able to watch His Leader, Shepherd, Teacher, be tortured beaten whipped like an animal and then Hung from spikes through his flesh off of a splintered wooden cross. The Son of God, and the most loving, gentile, caring, and enlightened man John ever knew and would ever know. A man who raised the dead and had complete mercy and love for even his most dangerous enemies. A man who knew that He would have to go willingly to such a fate because he so loved His Heavenly Father and the people to. And Jesus still took the time to put his own self, second the night before to wash the feet of his disciples. It is clear that in the account of the crucifixion Jesus, hanging limp and bloody from that wooden cross, looked into heaven and said "Father Why Have You Forsaken Me?" The one whom Jesus pledged his first love and his total dedication to, his Father God in Heaven. The one he would not do anything without the approval of first. The one He so closely trusted and loved. Had to leave him all alone in the most horrifying experience Jesus had to endure in all of his 32 plus years. A time when He needed someone to be there on his side, someone to comfort him. But God could not look upon His beloved son because on that day his son was covered in the darkness of sin that spanned not just his earthly lifetime but also all of Mankind's lifetime from Adam to Armageddon.

I think about this when I need to be reminded of why I love Jesus so much. I try to imagine what it must have been like for Jesus. The absolute isolation from your parent, the first time you had to live in utter darkness of sin, and the very Devil that you rebuked now has you bonded in chains in the courtyard of a roman building. And these mammoth sized roman warriors are whipping you with a weapon comprised of several separate braids of Leather each capped with a sharpened and barbed piece of metal or bone. And these drooling, demon possessed, men are screaming out obscene insult after insult, while your tied to this column, naked. Each time the whip impacts your flesh it rips away chunks of meat, tearing them off of you and sending lightning bolts of pain straight through your nervous system.

But you love your Father and his people so much that you refuse to summon a host of warring angels to completely wipe these people off the face of the earth. No you love these people and the pain you feel goes beyond the flesh, it comes up from your broken heart and sears your mind with images of the futures of every one of these poor lost souls who will never except the only truth that will save them. You look into their eyes and you see their entire fate. And you are so dead to yourself that your love and your father's will overrides your fleshly desire. A desire that screams to be let go! To be released from this agony. This one-day is longer in your mind than the some total of years that you have lived as a human. Like a thousand years of Hell and persecution in one day! Just so a faithless nation of spoiled children might one-day come home. And a crown of thorns is pounded down on your head, the thorns dig deep into your scalp penetrating to your skull, the blood stings your eyes as it flows down your numbing head.

Eventually your drug to your cross, a tree that you had helped your father create and plant on a once beautiful earth, a wonderful memory of a wonderful day with daddy helping him with his most important creation now an agonizing burden that you must drag through streets, up a hill covered in dead men's bones and then you get to finally die on. The people you love so much and even some you recognized from your sermons in the tabernacle are throwing stones with practiced accuracy at your bleeding and pulverized body. As you walk you wince from the stones that bounce off your head and back, and the bottoms of your feet are sliced open on the sharp stones and bone on the ground. The cross gets heavier every step you take and a soldier continues to flog you with a rod over your head. You can no longer see cause your eyes have swollen shut from the trauma of their own injuries. Your flesh is sticky with your blood that now covers nearly all of your body and even the horse flies and mosquitoes have made you open game. The world hates you and has given a murderer freedom from his bondage over you the Son of God. But you still continue to climb that hill and drag that tree and endure your blinding pain for their sake. Because you know you are the only one who can bear the entire worlds' past, present and future sins at once! You scream inside, "I must go on!" "Because I am their father and a true father should lead by example. How could I ask them to endure for me if I could not endure for them."

And then you feel rough callused hands grab your body and you wince again in pain. They push you to the ground atop the cross you were carrying. You feel a cold, sharp object being pushed against your left wrist and before you realize what's coming next you feel it, white hot, boiling, maddening pain as the hammer falls and the spikes drives deeper into your wrists breaking bones cutting tendons and veins. You try to scream loud enough to drowned out the sounds, but you can still hear the hammer meeting metal and the metal breaking your bones and ripping your muscles. People who hate you, satan's very own disciples, surround you! And you could call the fury of Heaven's wrath upon them! But still you refuse because you love them anyway.

Someone pours a bucket of vinegar and gall on your face and you begin to regain the use of your eyes. Your body and its' cross is hoisted into the air and the weight of your body immediately begins to both suffocate you and tear at the holes in your wrists and ankles. You know the battle of endurance is nearly over now. And hanging in mind numbing pain from your prison of wood you take the time to witness and help the condemned men who are hanging from crosses next to you. You look at the crowd below you and begin to cry for these people you begin to intercede for their souls. Your heart is breaking for them and you pray to your Father, "Please forgive them Father for they know not what they do!"

And your tears mingle with your blood making clean streaks down your face and looking down you see your beloved mother and your friend and disciple and all you can think of now is ensuring her safety and happiness. And so you say to your mother, Woman behold your son! And you say to your friend, Behold thy mother! And now that you know that your mother's future is secured you leave your cross for Heaven.

This might seem harsh to most that read it but remember that if we forget the cross then we make null and void the persecution Jesus went through for us. If we forget how great Jesus loves us then we make an open shame of him in Heaven and after what God had to put His most esteemed and precious Son through for us, do not think that you would get away with a mockery of Jesus now.