Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Matt 28:20 (NLT)
The disciples thought they'd lost everything. Jesus had been crucified, He was buried and His tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers. Everything had changed in the space of a few days.
Many of you know what that’s like.
I can’t imagine what would have been going through the disciple's minds… and while their heads were spinning trying to grasp what their new ‘normal’ would look like, Jesus rises from the dead!
The power of God is not just physical, its subversive, its lives in a realm that transcends what we can see, touch and hear… it rides on the waves of the supernatural and is not limited to the cold hard facts of this world. Jesus' death proves this. Many believed He came to bring social and circumstantial change. But He came to do much more than that. He broke the hold of death, He injected the world with a peace, grace and love that moves beyond the seasons and circumstances of our lives. Through any season, change and hardship we go through, He is present and able to help us rise above in our hearts, making us strong and faith-filled in the face of anything.
When Jesus was with the disciples after He rose, looked into their hearts and saw all their questions, doubts, fears and hopes, He gave them this charge… “Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life… I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” Matt 28:18-20 (MSG).
As we live life, with all its twists and turns, we bring His way of life into the world around us, not by placing it in peoples hands like toys or weapons, but by sharing our hearts full of faith, hope and love. And through it all, we are not alone.
He is with us.
Just as Jesus was with the disciples even after He ascended, He is with us now. And nothing that happens in the physical realms of this world can remove Him from our lives in this age or the one to come.
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