25/3/21 Day 32

TODAY'S VERSE: 25/3/21 Day 32

For God in all his fullness
    was pleased to live in Christ,
and through him God reconciled
    everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
    by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

- Colossians 1:19-20

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.
- Romans 8:1

 He personally carried our sins
    in his body on the cross
so that we can be dead to sin
    and live for what is right.
By his wounds
    you are healed.
Once you were like sheep
    who wandered away.
But now you have turned to your Shepherd,
    the Guardian of your souls.

- 1 Peter 2:24-25

And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. - Luke 14:27

 

TODAY'S DEVOTION:

There is no Christianity where there is no cross. There is no Easter, no hope, no salvation, no eternal life for those who believe in the only Son of God. Since the beginning—the very day he was crucified—this device of torture has been the very heart of our faith… a heart pierced through with a Roman spear. The cross is grotesque. Unfathomable. Unstomachable. Nauseating. It isn’t the kind of thing that you mention in polite company—or at least is wasn’t until time and distance numbed us into forgetting the severe cruelty and shame that was once inseparable from crucifixion. The first several centuries of Christian art shied away from decorating with, or depicting the cross the way we so readily do now because they had a living memory seared with the sights and sounds of crucifixion. The oldest known depiction is a mockery—like an ancient version of a slur written on a bathroom wall. This is what Christ bore for me.

Pastor Ben Mason

TODAY'S PRAYER

How can it be that the Lord of life would die so I might live? Greater are your ways than our ways, and higher are your thoughts, than our thoughts, O God. Deeper is your love than any sorrow; it finds us even in the darkest places. There is truly no length to which you would not go. Our praise will always fall shy, but we give it, and you take it, nonetheless. Thank you Jesus, Amen.



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