Cross

Chad, a dear friend and spiritual son, texted me some photos the other day. One prompted a mixed-emotion smile. When the second photo came through, I immediately began to cry. The imagery too confronting, too powerful, and too tender.

He had been asked to make a cross for the Resurrection Sunday Celebration at New Wine Church. Chad explained how he had looked at his lumber options. He considered a beautiful piece of seasoned oak or a lovely piece of planed cedar. But the Lord directed him to a more humble offering. Here is the first photo:

This plank of wood is from my parent’s house and my childhood home. It was a shelf in my mother’s pantry that held all manner of kitchen goods. Mom was ever cooking wonderful meals for her family. And, like every good Depression-surviving woman, she had to have ample supplies in her pantry. “Just in case,” she would say.

Chad remarked about the shelf, “Under all the multiple layers of paint, dust, grease, and preservatives there was this beautiful slab of wood. It just took a little work to get there.” Selah.

This is sweet. Special, even. A symbol of my mother’s hard work and wisdom. However. Before it was a pantry, this small space was my bedroom. And before that, this small space housed both of my brothers in a narrow bunk.

In one moment, all kinds of memories blitzed my heart and head. Wonderful meals, cramped spaces, poverty as a child.

For reference, this is the room once the shelves were removed and the house was “all dolled up” to put on the market.

My heart was in a blender already when Chad’s second photo came through.

I still can’t look at this picture without choking up. (Thanks, Chad.) The transformation is stunning. The metaphor is wrenching. It was the Cross that redeemed all that poverty, brokenness, and lack. God took my parent’s best efforts and worst frailties and shaped their offering into something beyond their wildest dreams.

It’s a prayer every parent can relate to. I can relate to. Oh God, make us aware of our inheritance to our children, good or bad, and may the Cross transform it all.

God breaks very real generational curses, redeems relationships, and restores fortunes lost or squandered. But wait there is so very much more.

Look at where Chad placed the cross. All greater things are grown out of the cross.

Greater Things is literally grown out of God’s relentless love as well as the love of those who have raised us in the faith. It’s our joy and honor now to continue to multiply all that we have been given.

Don’t miss this.

All of us, and I mean ALL of us, are ALWAYS climbing on the root system of someone before us. Someone else sacrificed and persevered and believed to the point of tears. Jesus himself believed to the point of blood.

The belief that God will bring beauty from our ashes, joy from our mourning, a double portion for our shame, and freedom from captivity is our unending anthem. In a word, transformation.

One final kiss. On Resurrection Sunday, the families each brought a flower and adorned the cross. Not that we could ever add to God’s glory — but we celebrate the power and beauty of our Life-giving, Chain-breaking, Death-defying King Jesus.

Have you ever noticed when God is talking to you that He brings the message to you again and again? God has been washing me with a truth as steady and relentless as the waves of the ocean rush upon the shore. Be careful that you don’t dismiss this. The blood of Christ is the only total and complete payment required for forgiveness. His blood payment has taken us from one place to another place, from death to life.

And because He did that, there is nothing I can do to get More forgiveness and nothing I can do to get Less forgiveness. I know we all heard this upon salvation. But between God’s revelation in the Bible, recent songs, and this amazing book, The Naked Gospel, I am realizing I have been seduced by a partial gospel, even a false one.

Forgiveness ONLY comes by a blood payment. Only blood makes the way for payment of sin. So when I ask for forgiveness from others, am I offering to cut my skin so that blood drips out? When I demand or want others to seek forgiveness from me, do I really want them to rip their flesh to satisfy my offense? Heaven forbid.

And when we, in our half-gospel state, go to the Everlasting Father and “ask for forgiveness,” do we really want Jesus to go back on the cross and suffer for us yet again as if somehow His agony was not enough the first time? Was the blood payment made by Christ too impotent to pay for my sin, or your sin? Again, Heaven forbid.

So forgiveness is a done deal. It is THE blood payment that we stand on again and again for our own offenses and for the offenses of others. His blood paid for the sins of the world. There is truly that kind of power in the Blood.

But WHY did Jesus make this total and complete blood payment? What bill was He paying? He paid for our inability to keep the law — any part of the law — even the good parts we like to measure ourselves by. Let me say that again: Jesus paid for the sin that came when we lived under the law. And now we no longer live under the law because He has fully paid for our inability to keep it AND He has ushered in a new system, a new covenant.

If there is now no law, something must have taken its place. Christ in you. Not in a religious way. Not in a philosophical way, but in a living, breathing way. In the same way that we learn to bank our whole relationship on the blood of Christ, NOW we bank our whole living experience on the presence of the Spirit inside us. We once were dead. But now we live because His Holy Heartbeat is within us.

Does anyone else need to go run around the building naked and screaming??? I have lived too many years trying to keep some laws and being free from others. I have lived too many years trying to do the right thing according to someone else’s standard. And now with greater and greater intensity, I see that the Holy Spirit is leading my every step because His goal is to walk me into more and more freedom. Yes, I fail. Blood payment. Yes, I will sin. Blood payment. But I am no longer dead because of my sin. He has taken me from death to life, His life in me.

Let the word of God speak to you:

He Tore Down the Wall
^1-6It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.^7-10Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. Ephesians 2, The Message.

Friends, there is more, so so much more. Listen to this song and Rejoice. We are free indeed.

Christ Has Risen

“And bled for us

May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:17

This is now an answered prayer. In the Old Testament, it was a whispered hope. “May this please happen. . . .” God’s people were still looking for the lasting atonement, a sacrifice that did not need to be repeated year after year. They still walked a tight rope of law and mercy. They yearned for the irrevocable favor that could not, would not be lost because of their behavior. God’s mercy was certainly irrevocable. But they were very aware that their behavior, their sin, their choices had to be paid for. A blood payment.

Today through the eternal, once for all, blood payment of Jesus, the tight rope was broken. What pre-Christ saints could only hope for, we can boldly dance in — the favor of the Lord. We could re-write that verse:

The favor of the Lord our God rests on us;
He establishes the work of our hands for us —
Yes, He has established the work of our hands.

Here are some word dissections. Favor also means “beauty.” The beauty of the Lord our God rests on us. We don’t have to work it up, which means we can’t lose it. His beauty lays on top of us, covers us, is on us in every way, every area. Establish means “to make permanent.” He makes permanent the works of our hands for us. We matter to Him. Our efforts matter in the eternal scope of the world, for our works are ultimately His works.

Of course the enemy would have you only see your weakness and sin. You know why? Because if he can make you think you still have to get it right, you are, in effect, discrediting the Cross. It is the Cross that crucifies the question, “How do I make this right?” Jesus is the only way to make anything right and it is the joy of the Holy Spirit to now lead you in the path of God’s favor.

Are you still living Old Testament favor? Worried that God is mad, or will be? That you are still needing atonement or might fall off the tight rope? Are you still begging God for mercy?

Or are you dancing in the overwhelming reality that His favor is 100% ours because of the blood payment of Jesus? How will you step into your life differently today just because you know the beauty of the Almighty God covers you, rests on you like a royal robe? He loves you. He likes you. He favors you. This is the permanent work of His nail-pierced hands.

Jana Spicka

Lover of God, Author and Speaker

Redeeming the Generations

Blood for Life

Old or New?