You're Dead part 3
You are dead, and your life is hid with God in Christ. New Life. A life of love. Being loved and loving with that same love. Receiving it and releasing it. That's a big thrust of my ministry; trying to help us understand the Divine Order of things. But tonight I want to focus on Revelation 2:11, "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." And, really, before I even get into THAT, I want to say THIS: "And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death" (Revelation 20:14). Ok. So, if hell was cast INTO the lake of fire, it makes sense that hell can't BE the lake of fire. Right? But I just want to drop that here and leave it. Because I want to talk about how we can experience the second death--the death OF death--without being hurt by it. And, in a word, its about overcoming. Right? He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. So let me say this and put it as clearly as I can. JESUS is the overcomer. We are not empowered to overcome. Jesus already overcame. We don't need to overcome. And if you believe--as I do--that Revelation (the Revelation of Jesus Christ, mind you) is simply an in-depth look at the cross, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, then you can see that HE is the one who was not hurt by the second death. HE is the one who overcame death by dying and being raised again. Let me say it like this: "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). One more time. Who overcame? Jesus. What did He give us? Peace. In the midst of our tribulations. We don't have to overcome. He already did that. We don't have to die. We already did that. Twice. And here's where I think the second death "hurts" us... I think we find it hard to give up that old life. To let go of that stuff that we've spent so much time and effort accumulating. Even though we know that stuff isn't good for us. We think its all we have. We think its better than nothing. We get--unfortunately--comfortable with it. And it can be painful to step out of our comfort zone. But nothing great ever came from staying in one's comfort zone. You have to go out on a limb, because that's where the fruit is. You can't walk by faith without walking. But there's a difference between letting go of all that stuff that's been holding you down (so you can set your affection on things above and not on the earth), and fighting in order to try to overcome. Too much fighting. No good. Too much trying. No good. Spiritually speaking, all we're supposed to do is rest. Our life is hid in God. So we don't really have to worry about anybody getting to us. We will have tribulation, but we have been given peace. We can get through what we have to go through. We can go through stuff without letting stuff go through us. Because we're dead. Because we've been freed from all of that nonsense. Freed FROM sin. Freed TO love!