Living Every Day with a Resurrection Mentality

Living-every-day-with-a-resurection-mentality

When I was in middle school, I got the coolest gift that I ever could have wished for. I had wanted one for soooo long. I honestly wasn’t expecting to get one. But lo and behold, that Christmas of 2005, I opened a Light Pink Nintendo DS, Nintendogs and all. I couldn’t WAIT to bust that thing open and start training my dogs ASAP.

And for the next many many months, I sat in my room with Rocky the Dalmation, Stella the Golden Retriever, and all my other fake pups and trained those dogs for HOURS upon HOURS at a time. (Ask my mom how she felt about all the time I spent training my fake dogs when I had two actual dogs at home that I never trained hahaha). I remember thinking to myself, “This is the coolest thing ever. I’ve never played anything this fun. I’m never going to get tired of this”.

Can you guess what happened not too many months later? I got bored. I stopped playing. Even though it was the same amazing game, I grew so accustomed to seeing it and playing it that it just got OLD.

You know when you enter into a new relationship and it’s all butterflies and racing hearts and sweaty palms? When you feel physically ill because you are just legitimately lovesick from the most perfect person in the world. This person does no wrong. It’s super cool because God made them with ZERO flaws and placed them straight in your path. People tell you, “that’s going to end at some point. Your puppy love is going to be over eventually.” “No waaaaay… you just don’t know usssss”, you tell them back. But sometime, somewhere, your perfect love starts chewing weird and you both have to work every day, and that newness and spark you first felt eventually wear off.

In the same way, we as humans often get so accustomed to hearing something that our minds stop grasping how significant and incredible that message is. During Easter Sunday, we nod along to our church services and say our “amen”s and post our pictures before we move on to Monday. But today, I want to challenge us to rewind back to the very first time that we heard the message of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Think back to the very first time you heard that Jesus suffered, and died, and actually CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD. I remember realizing that because of Jesus’ resurrection, I could actually be forgiven of all the stupid things I had done and that I could live forever in Heaven with the God of the universe. I was absolutely overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude. My prayer for us is that we as Young Adults would never let the message of the Gospel get old, but instead that we would live every day with the same fervor and passion that we first had hearing that message.

 

Here are three ways to live out your every day with a Resurrection mentality:

 

1. Figure out your story.

When I say “your story”, I mean how your life was changed because of Jesus. We believe that YOUR story is the second best story ever told (after the story of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus). A lot of us live in ambiguity when we think about our stories. We think, “I don’t really know when I accepted Jesus” or “My story isn’t super interesting”. It’s a really vulnerable and scary thing to understand and share your story with other people. But know this- when you figure out your story, and get the confidence to share it with the other people, you are helping them on their way to finding and following Jesus. In short, your story should include these three main parts:
                    - What did my life look like before Jesus?
                    - How did I meet Jesus and when did I accept him as my Savior?
                    - What does my life look like after meeting Jesus?

 

2. Set up pillars of God’s goodness in your life.
In the old testament when people wanted to remember something that God had done for them, they would put up a pillar or a group of stones, in remembrance of it. Now, while we aren’t going to physically set up pillars in our homes, there are ways to remember and celebrate God’s goodness in our lives. We can set up pillars in our life by writing down and recording when God moves in our life and the lives of those around us. When we have incredible stories of God’s goodness, we can set up pillars by telling these stories to people. You know how your grandpa has that one story that he tells approximately once a week? You probably know the story by heart because you’ve heard it so many times. That’s the way we need to be with telling the stories of God’s goodness in our life to other people.

 

3. Always take your next right step.
Jesus didn’t save us so that we could stay right where we are. His Salvation comes with a command — to go and make disciples of ALL NATIONS. When we are adopted into the family of God, we are adopted into new values and a new way of thinking. In order to live every day with a resurrection mentality, we have to (1) grow as a disciple of Christ ourselves and (2) allow God to impact the people around you.

A couple of questions to ask yourself to help you assess if you are succeeding in this area:
                     - How am I different from where I was last year in my relationship with God?
                    - Who have I impacted spiritually in this last year?

We all are able to take our next right step. No matter where you are on your walk with God.

 

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Let’s be a community of people who live out our every day with boldness and confidence. Especially in this time, people need to hear the incredible hope that is Jesus. We love you Young Adults and are praying for you and cheering your on in this season and always.

-Kyla Lyons

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