Holy Week – Good Friday?

I was having a conversation with someone in a coffee shop a few years ago and when they found out I was a pastor, the questions started the fly. It was near Easter and they asked, “why on earth would you guys call the day your God died, Good? I just don’t get the whole Good Friday thing”. I’ll tell you like I told them… it’s good unlike any other good you have experienced. It’s good for reasons we can try to explain, but often struggle to comprehend.

I think John 12:32-33 explains the goodness best when it says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.”

Jesus said that when He is crucified for the sins of the world… He will draw ALL people to himself, and that my friends is the Good in the Friday our Lord, God, and King breathed His last.

It’s good because it means the story isn’t over.

It’s good because as I look around my world, there are way too many people who don’t know that goodness and they don’t know what they’re missing, and the story isn’t over.

It’s good because everything God wants for you and me are possible because of that Friday 2000 years ago.

It’s good because in our pursuit of being “good people” we finally realize that good is in the eyes of the beholder and Jesus is the ONLY one who is truly good.

It’s good because there is time for you and for me to fully trust Jesus and finally find that good person we have been trying to show the world.

It’s good because no longer do my sins count in God’s economy of right and wrong.

It’s good because that fact is true for anyone who trusts in Jesus.

It’s good because God decided to die the death I deserved before He asked me, and did it all in-spite of me.

It’s good because a man laying down his life for his friends is NEVER called bad.

It’s good because God chose dying for the entire world and granting the ultimate pardon, over punishing them for their crimes.

It’s good because God IS good, and there’s no better way to prove that than seeing Jesus beaten so badly he was unrecognizable, mocked, and nailed to a cross only to say to the father with one of his last breathes, “Father Forgive them they don’t know what they are doing.”

WOW!

So today consider why you celebrate the day your God died. And may the goodness of God and His peace rest on you and in you. Celebrate Good Friday with an anticipation of Easter Sunday and go celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with a faith community that will challenge and encourage you to find your goodness in the Love of God and not your own ability to achieve goodness.

Good Friday To You Friends!

Peace

Finished Friday

This morning I have been pondering the 2015 Lenten season being over and that today is Good Friday. I can’t lie, I’m pretty happy Lent is over, I passed on coffee for more than 40 days this Lent, with hopes that it would draw me close to the ONE who gave it all for me. My friend Dustin told me Jesus would not be pleased with my choice of giving up God’s perfect bean… at least it’s Easter and I have something to repent of : )

Then I had this other thought… we know today to be “Good Friday” now, but nobody could envision good coming out of the senseless death of Jesus on that faithful Friday some 2000 years ago. A righteous man murdered simply because he challenged the way religious people lived their lives before God and others. They didn’t like His way of love, so they chose their own way. One of intolerance and violence in the name of “god”. We can all judge the people responsible for the killing of Jesus and think to ourselves, “how could they” especially as we see 2000 years removed the senseless murder for what it was.

However, I choose my own way everyday… I chose my own religious path instead of the one Jesus revealed as loving and truthful far too often and choosing my own way tends to leave a path of destruction behind me. People close to me get hurt, I claim superiority over people I have never met… but mostly I  hurt myself. When I judge others, I become more intolerant. When I hold myself up as the model of perfection, the view I have of myself gets more and more distorted… and the truth of my imperfection that I need to confront gets lost in the fantasy of how I see myself.

Good friday is about a death that ends all death… because of the sacrifice of Jesus, death does not have the final say. If we trust Jesus… eternal life as God intended it to be is ours. But Good Friday goes beyond that. It points to a God who loves you and I in-spite of our imperfections, and allows His truth to illuminate our need for not only saving, but transformation into the people God wants us to be.

May your Friday be full of the awareness that Jesus died for you, and a desire to see yourself In The Truth and begin to be transformed into the man or woman Jesus desires you to be.

Peace