Present Risenness

I loved Resurrection Day this year. I enjoyed church and then family get-together, visiting with friends. But I think what I enjoyed most was that night when I picked up Brennan Manning’s “Abba’s Child” and discovered that I had stopped in my reading exactly before the part on the “Present Risenness” of Jesus Christ. Wow! A God-incidence to pick that up on Easter. I was glad that I’d changed the traditional responses in the bulletin that morning to: Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! Christ is risen. He is risen in me!

There is nothing more exciting for a Christian than to get a revelation of His present risenness in us...those times when you find yourself doing something you know you wouldn’t choose to do but you do it anyway because it seems right – and later you find out that it was His Spirit within you ministering to one or more of His other beloved children.

Easter afternoon, Gary and I went by to pray for a good friend before his heart surgery on Monday. (He is doing fine, Praise the Lord!) and the friend introduced me to a lady I’d never met by telling this story:
He went to a “Christians in Government” group to hear a woman who had left her position in state government to go into the housing projects to minister on a regular basis. She had a passion for helping the poor – not by just giving them things but by helping them become all God created them to be. He liked everything the woman said because it matched his own thinking and he knew she would be a good person to head up a pilot project he had in mind.
He asked the person who invited her to speak at their meeting if they would invite the speaker to her house along with him and several other Christians. To God he said, “Okay, Lord, I think I’ve heard you saying “XYZ” (private message) to me. If that is you and not just my imagination, have that woman confirm it by saying it to me also."
When the time for the meeting at his friend’s home came, he got there a few minutes early and when the woman arrived, she spotted him and immediately came over and handed him an envelope. “God told me to give this to you,” she said. He put the envelope in his coat pocket. It was a wonderful meeting and at the end, the woman agreed to come back to work for state government and head up the pilot project.
When he went home, he pulled out the letter which began “ I have said to you “XYZ” and again I say to you “XYZ”.
I was the woman and after he finished, I went on to tell his guest the other part of the story. The night before the meeting I felt a strong leading to listen to the Lord on his behalf. “XYZ” came to me over and over, so finally I prayed and then obeyed. I felt silly. Here was this important man – a Commissioner – and I was writing him this long letter that opened with something that could have made him think I was crazy…if God had not said “XYZ” to him before. But I knew I had to leave it as it was.

What if I had let the fear of being wrong, the feeling of silliness, cause me to stifle the ministry of the Lord Jesus? There would probably have been no close thirty year friendship. Our pilot project was only for a year and we couldn’t get additional funding – but we did reach some people with life changing concepts. And at least one county in Kentucky is still holding meetings for government, church, and private programs to come together and share insights and help. Those things could have been missed if feelings were bigger than faith.

The Present Risenness of Christ, it’s the most exciting thing in the earth. I confessed to my congregation Easter Sunday morning that sometimes still I am tempted to put duct tape over Him who lives inside me. Sometimes I bind His hands. Oh, but when we don’t! When we let Him speak and give and love through us…that is Glory in all it’s meanings – honor, praise, manifestation of God in this physical realm.

…the mystery…which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27
He is risen indeed.