Praise the Lord. He is Risen. He is with us at work at worship and even during the disappointing, disheartening, times of lives. The Lord blessed us with a wonderful day in His house yesterday. We had Witness Sunday; several people gave their testimonies during both morning worship services. I came home blessed, filled, and challenged to love the Lord with deeper passion and serve Him with obedience and zeal.
I was reading this morning from Luke 24, where the account is given of two whom Jesus encountered on the way to Emmaus. These two disciples of Christ were going through Post-Crucifixion trauma. Something happened on Easter Evening. . . the Risen Lord met them. Their herats began to burn within them as the Risen Savior expounded the Scriptures to them.
Life has many distractions - hard work, routine, tiredness, ill health - which can so grind us down to the point that we carry on mechanically, never lifting our eyes or minds from the dust of the earthly road we travel. We become unaware of the glory and strength of His presence with us. Life loses its meaning and leaves us washed out, but the story of the encounter on the Emmaus road gives us hope.
Regardless of how we are feeling at the moment, Jesus is still there with us. He is the unseen "stranger" walking with us, listening to us, and, if we are willing to hear his voice, revealing himself to us.
As the two disciples spoke of the Cross, Christ took hold of their bewilderment and sorrow and gave them a heart-warming experience. How did He do it? He pointed them to God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures. Luke tells us, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself. As we fast forward the drama that was unfolding, the stranger was invited by the two to spend the night with them.
There, as we know, the guest became the host. In Luke 24:30 we read about how, as they sat down to eat, Jesus played the part of the host, for the host would break the bread at the beginning of the meal. It says, “… He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.” Perhaps it was in doing this that their eyes were opened. For verse thirty-one reveals, “Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. (32) And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"
Mark Buchanan wrote of his own experience in his book entitled, “Your God Is Too Safe”. He wrote that when he was saved, “I hit the ground running. Immediately, I volunteered for everything, anything, that I felt vaguely interested in and marginally qualified for. I led the youth group; I helped with the music, I taught Sunday school; I wrote the church newsletter; I became a camp counselor; I served as a mentor to several young men. But something, somewhere, went awry. The zeal fizzled. The fire in my bones became only an a ache in my joints. My running became plodding. My lightness became heaviness. My joyfulness became jadedness. I joined the ranks of the murmurers and faultfinders – those that did not like the music or the sermon or the color of the azalea’s behind the church – and I found their number legion.” [Mark Buchanan. Your God Is Too Safe. (Multnomah, 2001) p. 9-10]
The truth is that the Risen Lord wants to set our hearts on fire. He wants to give us a burning passion for life. We all long for the eternal but are two easily contented with the temporal. We all want to be a part of something worthwhile but waste our time, our talents, and even our treasures on the trivial. When we invest in the things that charm us most we miss out on the eternal treasures. In 2 Timothy 1:6, Paul told Timothy, “Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you..” This verse can be summed up in three words, Again,… Alive,… Fire. Perhaps this same direction is what we need.
The Lord gave these Emmaus disciples a passion and a purpose where all there had been was pain. It emanated from spending time with Him in worship, in study, and in fellowship. In these things a burning heart is found. The result in the lives of the two disciples was that, although by this point it was had a burning need to tell someone what has happened. They had to share their experience and no one in Emmaus would understand. (One of the best signs of recovery from depression is a desire to be back among other believers.) They had to go back to where the other disciples were gathered. Verse thirty-three tells us that they decided that they must return at once to Jerusalem. “So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem…” The long, discouraging, walk to Emmaus now became a joyous run to Jerusalem, with renewed strength, vigor, and encouragement.
We are reminded of the story of the two lepers in 2 Kings 7:9, “Then they said to one another, 'We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, and we remain silent. …. Now therefore, come, let us go and tell…'" Their grief had blinded them. Their attention to their own loss and sorrow had prevented them from focusing on God and finding out what God was doing for them at that very moment.
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHmiFaX_pk
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