Devotion - Wednesday April 8 - We Love Jesus Because He Gives Us New Life

In sports or work life or school project, when it looks like we are going down, not going to succeed, we often say, “I’m dead”.  Yet at times we are given a reprieve and we say “I feel like I was given new life”.  Has that happened to you before?  Do you remember the sense of relief and hope and excitement that stirs in you as you experience that “new life”?  As we continue to explore this week the reasons that compel us to love Jesus, new life has to be right up there at the top.

God has made it clear that in our un-regenerated, natural-man state we are dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1), incapable of rescuing ourselves.  That’s what dead means; dead people can’t do anything about their condition!  But Jesus has come to change our condition.  Jesus tells Mary, as they discuss what will become of her deceased brother; “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26).  It is this new life Jesus brings that enables us to be freed from the bondage of sin, to see this world in its true state, to see the glory of God, to understand that this current life is just a glimmer of what our real life with God in the new heaven and earth is going to be.  This new life brings hope and peace.

Questions/Actions:

1. What comes to your mind when you read that Jesus is the resurrection and the life?  Is it a personal statement to you (fill in your name, I have enabled you to have new life from your dead state)?
2. In your own words, express to Jesus what new life means to you.
3. How does the new life enabled by Jesus draw your affections and love for Him?
4. How does gift of your new life enable you to obey Jesus’ commands?