Good Friday

It’s 10:20, Friday, April the 2nd, 2010; Good Friday.

Since I was born, I was taught that Jesus loves me, that God loves me, and that nothing I could ever do would change that.

My father is a preacher, and has been for the past 15 or 16 years. Me being 19 years old, that’s all I really remember, was hearing Dad preach. And it wasn’t one of those things where he was one person Sunday morning in front of the church, and a different man the rest of the week; my father lived out his faith, everyday. That doesn’t mean that he was a perfect man, or that he never sinned or messed up, because he did. We all do. Every one of us.

Except for one man. Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite songs is by a band called Needtobreathe, and the song is called ‘Garden.’ The song is from the perspective of Jesus as he is praying in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his death. The opening verse of the song says, ‘Won’t you take this cup from me? ‘Cause fear has stolen all my sleep. If tomorrow means my death, I pray You’ll save their souls with it.’ As I was driving to work this morning, I listened to this song over and over and over, trying to hold back the tears as those words ran over and over again in my head.

If you don’t have any clue what I’m talking about, let me break it down for you…

I am a sinner. You are a sinner. Yes, you. We are all sinners. Dirty, rotten, no good, horrible, pathetic sinners, that deserve nothing but death, hell, and eternal separation from God. BUT! A little more than 2,000 years ago, God sent his son, Jesus, to earth to die a horrible, painful, agonizing death on a cross, to bear the weight of all our sins, so we wouldn’t have to. He died on a cross, then rose from the grave 3 days later, to prove that not even death could keep him down. Jesus died for you. He died for me. He died, so that we could have life, everlasting life, with him.

If you haven’t seen the movie ‘The Passion of The Christ’, you need to. It is one of the most historically accurate movies about the Bible out there. The entire movie is in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, and it tells the story of Jesus’ capture, torture, death, and resurrection, in a way that no other movie could. We just got done watching it here at the dorms in the lobby. There were a few non-Christians there watching it, like I hoped there would be. Through the entire movie, tears streamed down my face. No matter how hard I tried to hold them back, they kept flowing as the movie went on. During the part of the movie where Jesus is carrying the cross up the hill with the guards beating him and the people spitting on him and mocking him, I just kept thinking about all the things I do, that are basically just as bad. Every time I sin, it’s just like I’m the one who was driving the nails through his hands, like I’m the one spitting in his face, like I’m the one who caused him to be crucified. That made the tears pour. But the more I thought about that, the more I was assured that Jesus did all of that, took all the beating, and died on the cross, so that I wouldn’t have to face the penalty for my sin, and so that I could live with him forever. He bled for me. He loved me that much, that he would take all of that suffering for me. Coincidentally, this made me cry even more.

The fact that Jesus loved us so much that he WILLINGLY died on a cross to save us, is the GREATEST story of sacrifice there is.

After the movie was over, we all talked about it for a while. Some people were asking me questions about it, some people were questioning the movie. What I just couldn’t understand though, was that there was one guy, obviously a non-believer, that acted like nothing had ever happened. It was like none of what we all just watched had any effect on him whatsoever. That amazed me. He talked about how he didn’t think it was a good movie because there was no ‘hook’, nothing to ‘pull him in as a viewer.’ I said to him that if the story alone didn’t pull you in, I didn’t know what could. I told him that the movie was not made for any other reason than to better display the story of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, and to better show the reality of what happened. I’m praying really hard that something out of that movie or what I said got to him, maybe just enough for him to wonder.. It just breaks my heart so much that someone can watch that movie and for it to have no affect on them at all.

I am so grateful for the fact that Jesus died to save me. And to know that nothing I ever say or do will take back what he did for me on that day is the most comforting thing in the world.

I hope everyone had a great Good Friday, and that maybe, just maybe, you took the time to think about what happened a little more than 2,000 years ago today, because it was the greatest act of love the world has ever known.

I love yall, God bless.

Romans 5:8 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.