How much has Christ risen in you?
Christ is Risen! The response during Eastertide is “He
is Risen indeed!” Often the thought of the presence of the Risen Christ
bothers me. Where is the Risen Christ now? This seems to be a silly question –
of course, Christ has been ascended and is seated at the right hand of God the
Father, as described in Rom 8:34. What I really am interested is ‘Does
the Risen Christ have a place in our lives?’
Some of the shocking news in recent headlines
is the financial scandals and immorality with church leaders and in churches. Unfortunately,
such scandals also exist everywhere both in our own churches as well as in
other places. God is very sad and probably regrets in making us. On another
note, we are frequently reminded that we are a fallen race and we really and
desperately need Christ to save us from the fire and damnation. So then how
much are we saved – quarter, half or fully saved. In other words, one can refer
this as ‘How much has Christ risen in each of us?’
The Scripture calls this
Sanctification. ‘We were saved, we are being saved, and we will be
saved’ – a famous quote used by many great leaders. Sanctification is a journey
or a process; and it starts at the point of salvation (for many do not exactly
know where the starting point is) and ends at the time when we meet with Christ
face to face. In the process of sanctification, each one of us will still have much
vulnerability and can also succumb to temptations (the reason for asking to be
led away from temptations in the Lord’s Prayer). All leaders are usually
subjected to greater temptations and are main targets of the evil one. Much
prayer is needed for them. They are usually in the front-line and are facing the
fiery darts directly. Leaders are also frequently subjected to greater and
stricter judgment. (James 3:1)
However, Easter should always remind
us that we need the Risen Christ to rise from within our lives. He should rise
from our inner most thoughts, world view, behavior, habits, manners, secrets,
social life, spiritual life, relational life, prayer life, recreational life,
time management, mind management, leisure management, health management, etc. From
what we can observed, it is not sufficient to score an ‘A’ in our preaching or
time management or pastoral skill or theological knowledge and fail in our money
management or health management or leisure management or moral management.
Our life is liken to a wooden barrel which
made up of many staves. It is not good to be a water holding barrel if one
stave is very short while the rest are in full length. It seems rather better
to have all the staves at half length equally – in this manner, the barrel can
at least hold half barrel full of water. Our aim is to lengthen and strengthen
the staves until they reach their maximum length i.e. to have Christ risen in
our whole lives.
May this Easter be a reminder for us
to strive towards the raising the shorter staves of our lives!
