Fri 5.5 – Jesus taught us how to deal with it…

Today’s Readings: Colossians 1.16-22, 2.12-14, 3.1-7;

As you know, Sunday is the Christian celebration of “Easter”. Although Christ actually died at the Passover, because of pagan celebrations and worldly influences through history, Christians adopted the name to compete with festivals for false God’s. (I don’t even know why I put that out there…guess I just thought you’d want to know?) Anyway, since Easter is coming in two days, I wanted to take a new approach to the thoughts we’ve been looking at in Colossians by looking at them through the window of the MORTIFICATION OF CHRIST. While we have talked about MORTIFYING our FLESH, and making that a spiritual principal, Christ ACUTALLY mortified His flesh. However, many of the same principals applied. That FLESH (the human body of Christ) had to be mortified before the SPIRIT (the Holy Spirit of God) could reign in life (by indwelling the believer, see John 16.7 ).

So, here’s how today is going to work…get our your Bible, get out a pad of paper, click here, and here, for some awesome background music, and prayerfully consider these passages. We know how our FLESH lusteth against the SPIRIT (Gal 5.17), so let’s consider the ultimate battle between ALL FLESH and the SPIRIT HIMSELF as Christ was suffering on that cross…as he bled…as he groaned (Rom 8.23)…as he was mortified… and consider these verses…

Philippians 2.5-8

• Imagine the power it took for CHRIST JESUS the LORD to be on that CROSS!
• How should that invade and influence our MINDS?
• What did the cross signify in Christ’s life? (specifically v.

Hebrews 12.2-4

• Consider the HUGE statement that Jesus Christ is the AUTHOR and FINISHER of OUR faith!
• What made Him mortify that flesh?
• How are we to gain strength from meditating upon His death for us, and how far He was willing to go?

Ephesians 2.14-17

• What has been removed between God and us?
• We were at ENMITY (absolutely against) God, what did Christ do to remove that from us?
• What was the instrument Christ used to RECONCILE us (or bring us back) to God? And what did that tool do to the ENMITY?
• Because of Christ’s work, now we no longer have ENMITY between God and us, but rather we have something amazing, undeserved, and unreachable without Christ…what is it?

Before you leave your time with God today, spend time thanking Him…because He mortified, we can mortify…because He died, we can die…because He suffered, we can have peace…it is truly, NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD, and I pray we will YEARN for Him more today because we realize that more and more!