64. Shine Your Light!

This past weekend many of us celebrated Easter or the Resurrection of Jesus. As I think back to Good Friday and what the Resurrection really means to me, I can’t help but be overwhelmed with God’s goodness and His love. 

When we think back to the Garden of Gethsemane…the Garden where Jesus was praying before He was betrayed by Judas and was brought in to be crucified…Jesus had gone away with His closest disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. As He was praying, the weight of what He was about to do laid so heavily on His shoulders that He actually sweat out blood. He was under such pressure that as He was sweating blood He cried out to God and in Luke 22 verse 42, says, “Father, if you are willing, remove the cup from Me.” Or in otherwards, if there is any other way, I would gladly take it. 

 Why would He pray that? 

Jesus knew the Old Testament and knew that He was about to be arrested. He knew that He was about to be stripped of all His clothes and made fun of. He knew that He was about to be beaten beyond recognition. We read in Isaiah 52:14 that Jesus didn’t even look human—a ruined face, disfigured past recognition.” 

But even with that, that wasn’t the worst part for Him. 

He was willing to do that for us. The part that He really felt the pressure of was that He was about to take on the sins of the world. 

Think about this…Jesus walked this earth perfectly. He never sinned, never messed up. He was perfection Himself and now He was about to take on every single sin that had ever taken place…and every single sin that would ever take place even in the future. He took everyone one of your mistakes and everyone one of my mistakes on His shoulders. Jesus so despised sin, but was willing to take it on so that He could give you His perfection. 

 Why do you need His perfection? Because God is perfect, the only way we can make it into heaven is if we are perfect. Well, I don’t know about you, but I know that I am far from perfect. I mean…have you ever even rolled your eyes at your parents? Or maybe even talked bad about someone…even if they deserved it? Even with just those small things, it would mean that there is no way that we could make it into heaven. If your life was a test and even if you got everything 99.9% right, it’s still not 100%, therefore we can’t make it in. 

That’s a problem for everyone. Romans 3:23 tells us that all of us have messed up…even if it was just once and we all fall short of the glory of God…from His perfection. With knowing just that…that doesn’t give us a whole lot of hope for the future. 

However, Romans 5:8 tells us that while we were still out there sinning, Christ died for us. 

Romans 10:9-19 tell us that all we have to do to receive His free gift is confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead and we are saved! 

And when we receive Him, (whether it's now or it was years ago) your mission has just begun. Now, it's time to shine your light!

CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE

• LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls
• PODCAST RESOURCES
• ABOUT
• MERCH

The UncommonTEEN App is available on the Apple Store! It looks like Google is going to take a bit longer.