Happy Good Friday friends! Despite all the fear and hopelessness that is flowing around the world today, we can find peace, joy, and love in the celebration of all Jesus did for us on this day, almost 2,000 years ago. I want to share two things with you today. The first is a beautiful song with brilliant lyrics, such as “Six hours on a tree, hung the God of Innocence. Was it fair that He should die for someone else’s sins?”
Several of our favorite churches are streaming live Good Friday services tonight. Below is another music video from one of my favorite Easter weekend songs, Crowder’s Golgotha Hill. This talented YouTube artist made a great video using scene’s from the ultimate Good Friday movie, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Today is a day of great praise and worship for all the Prince of Peace gave in His desire to make the way to eternal life. Spend the day in prayer and thanksgiving.
April 10-Good Friday
25“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:25-26)
John, due to his first hand account, offers so much marvelous detail into the events from the Last Supper to when Jesus is arrested at the Garden of Gethsemane. There are five chapters of Jesus speaking to His disciples, and just before Jesus is arrested, He prays a final prayer for all His believers. The verses above are the last prayer Jesus speaks in the presence of His disciples. For whatever reason, John is the only Gospel from one of the disciples to be included in the canon of the New Testament, but he is not the only Disciple to write a gospel. “Doubting” Thomas and Mary Magdalene wrote their own Gospels and can be found as part of the Gnostic Canon. I enjoyed reading the Gnostic Gospels because it gives even more validity to the life of Jesus Christ.
While our reading plan is still several chapters behind for keeping up with the Holy Week, if you have extra time today and want to jump ahead and read all the events of Good Friday you will find them in John 18 and 19. If you have never seen Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, today is the day to watch it. Gibson did thorough research to accurately portray the brutality Jesus suffered in the rule of Caesar and Roman occupation. Passion plays at your local church will never display the true cruelty of the act of crucifixion and nothing you ever watch will even come close to making you understand the pain Jesus took for all of mankind. Jesus hung on a cross for six hours with nails through His hands and feet, His body broken and bloody. If you don’t understand how painful and awful the punishment of being crucified is, you should look that up today as well. Jesus suffered all of this for all of us. He loved mankind more than anyone on Earth could ever realize. Through each crack of the flog, through each strike of the nail, through each minute of agony on the cross, Jesus endured it all for you. For me. For the entire world. The least we can do, in the comforts of this world we live in, the very least we can do, is love Jesus back. And love people like Jesus did. And love God above all else.
Reading plan: John 7:35-53
Deeper reading plan: 2 Kings 4, 5, 6
Prayer and meditation: Bow low today and thank the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace for all He endured today to save our souls for all eternity.
Fitness challenge: no fitness challenge today. Spend the day in prayer and in the Word.
Common Sense Reborn 