Christians around the world have just celebrated Easter, involving the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The story is really quite gruesome at a physical and emotional level; the film ‘The Passion of the Christ’ by Mel Gibson still sends shivers through me.    To be totally honest, the Easter message is only truly understood when we are ‘given spiritual eyes to see’ what was actually happening behind these physical events. Its spiritual significance has not changed at all over the past 2000 years.  It is just as powerful today as it was then. My life was totally changed by it over 25 years ago and it’s still transforming lives today.

In China it is estimated that there are 100 million Christians compared to just 5000 in the 1960’s. The UK is by comparison spiritually dead and this is reflected in our culture and lifestyles

 

Spiritually speaking, we are born with a bias towards being independent and living lives that are self-governing rather than living lives of obedience to God. As a consequence our relationship with God is broken (or non-existent) so if we are to know God and to relate to him we need to fix our spiritual heart condition. God knew that we couldn’t fix it because we are the ones with the problem so he sent His Son Jesus to be our Saviour, to rescue us, by taking our ‘sin’ conditioned heart and replacing it with a new heart that is able to know him personally

 

To that end, the Easter story can be a real celebration that starts in 2012 for you but continues forever. Its meaning when understood offers us a lifetime of hope and joy!

 

So if you want to gain more understanding into the good news that the Easter message has just brought it is important to have eyes that take you behind the events.  Only God can give you the necessary eyes to see, so can I encourage you to ask Him for them by saying this simple prayer:

‘Lord Jesus, please give me spiritual eyes to see and to understand why you came to earth, why you died on the cross, why you were resurrected and how this effects my life’

If you do this, God will take you on a journey of understanding.