Topic: Hope Of Resurrection [Saturday June 30, 2018]
Text: 1 Corinthians 15:12-28 (KJV)
Key Verse: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19).
MESSAGE:
On one occasion, Michelangelo, the great artist, turned on his fellow artists in a spirit of indignation. He said, “Why do you keep filling gallery after gallery with endless pictures on the one theme of Christ in weakness, Christ on the Cross, and most of all, Christ hanging dead? Why do you concentrate on the passing episode as if it were the last work, as if the curtain dropped on Him with disaster and defeat? That dreadful scene lasted a few hours. But to the unending eternity, Christ is alive; the stone has been rolled away and He rules and reigns and triumphs!”
The Christian life is lived in anticipation of a better life to come. Apostle Paul emphasised the centrality of the hope of resurrection to our lives as believers. If Christ had not resurrected, then our salvation and hope for eternal life is in vain. In fact, the hope of resurrection is the reason we are in faith until now. The expectation that the day would come when our mortal bodies shall put on immortality and the corruption put on incorruption stimulates our faith and makes us count our present trials and tribulations as light affliction which cannot be compared with the eternal weight of glory which is to come (1 Corinthians 15:53; 2 Corinthians 4:17). According to Apostle Paul, this hope alone removes the fear of death, because death shall be swallowed up in victory.
Christians are strangers and pilgrims in the world. For the believer, life does not consist in the abundance of the things we possess. That is why all possessions are held with loose hands. What we hold fast is our faith in Christ anchored in the hope of a better life after our departure from this world. Heaven is the prize; and the hope of resurrection to be with the Lord becomes so important that without it, our entire Christianity falls apart. Sinners do not have this glorious hope. Sinners and backsliders must genuinely repent of all sins and forsake them before this hope can be activated in their lives.
Thought For The Day: Our future is far greater than our past.
Bible Reading In One Year: 2 Chronicles 19-23
DCLM Daily Manna was written by Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi; is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church situated at KM 42 on the busy Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Nigeria.
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