For the believer, Easter represents the annual celebration of Christ’s victory over death. Each year, as the Jewish people commemorate God’s merciful and miraculous deliverance out of Egyptian slavery, Christians identify with another miracle. Throughout Church history, a called-out people have staked their faith in the Person of Jesus Christ as the very same emancipating God of Israel. The same covenant-keeping God that liberated Israel from Egypt, Christians claim, put on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ on a mission to free not just one nation, but all of humanity.

Christ’s resurrection, for the Christian, is God’s emphatic confirmation that Christ was, and is, who he said he was. In the resurrection, all of Christ’s claims, teachings, and previous miracles are presented before a doubting and enslaved world. To reject the resurrection is to reject the Christian faith, as it’s been preserved and handed down through the ages.

However, there’s something even greater at stake than embracing or rejecting the Christ narrative. The purpose of Christ’s coming in the first place was not to convince a watching world of His divinity alone, but that through a believing heart, the human heart might be renewed. To RE-new is to make new again. Renewal is the byproduct of engaging with and in the life-giving Creator. He came to bring us all back to life, in THIS life!

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, “You must be born again.” Jn 3:6-7

This week I’ve been experiencing something of a renewal in my own Christian faith. It’s not a renewal of thought, or of any particular set of actions, but something deeper down in my soul. My soul has been rekindled, like a moth to flame. A love and gratitude for life and the Life Giver have been emanating from my being in a way that is inexplicable to my enlightened-shaped, rational mind. I feel as though I’ve been released from a prison of discouragement, apathy, and doubt. It has come surprisingly, mercifully, and I welcome it! I think of the Israelites who, after 400 years of enslavement, were suddenly thrust into the open air, leaving their past behind in an instant.

The real question, perhaps the most important one to ask ourselves as we approach Good Friday and Easter Sunday, is this: Is Christ’s resurrection my renewal?

This is God’s desire over us, to fill us with renewable, life-giving, and love-producing energy! I have spent the past few years in missionary mode, tending to the needs of others while settling for a mundane and menial amount of authentic, inner spiritual life. My well has been dry, for the most part. I’ve known of the mercies of Jesus analytically, but haven’t been experiencing them with any regularity. Whatever has happened, I am grateful and now asking God for the wisdom to steward this renewing moving forward. Only after we come in contact with authentic, refreshing life, that kind that sets our hearts to singing and brings everything in our lives into proper focus, do we then realize just how barren we were. The human heart adapts to death, to compromise, and to unbelief. Yet, when we come in contact with the Savior, everything is renewed again, like a flourishing garden and gushing river.

Come, Lord Jesus, renew us again as we remember you.