My final prayer is that the church would rediscover the fruit of joy and the praise of God
This
is a dark world to live in. You just have to watch the news at night
to appreciate that. But the Christian message is one that at its root
(at its’ core), in its’ very fiber, celebrates life overcoming darkness
and death.
Easter is the anniversary of this historical reality.
We live in a society that is skeptical about the claims of the church.
The problem of a conscience that says that you can’t celebrate when
there is so much bad and evil is a peculiarly Western one. It is a sign
of the deep guilt that plagues our culture because I have never found a
shortage of celebration in Eastern Europe, Asia or the urban poor of
America which are places I’ve been.
Praise is something that
goes with being God’s church. It is a sign of our celebration of our
future hope. It is a sign of our thankfulness for what God has already
done in us which the Spirit testifies to and prompts us to say, “Come
Lord Jesus”. In short… praise is our down payment on the assuredness of
our future in Christ. Our testimony to those who see our celebration
and want to know what it is that we have. And our witness to the world
of what we know and experience.
Which has been one of the great
contributions of the rise of the Azuza Street Revival… if you go into a
small Pentecostal church somewhere on the wrong side of town you will
see people whose lives have been transformed by their experience of God.
The fulfillment of Luke chapter 4… Sight given to the blind; The
oppressed being freed; Prisoners set free; The year of the Lord’s favor
being proclaimed. That’s worth celebrating.
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