Established and Kept in April

I'm in absolute shock that we are quickly approaching the month of April. One-third of 2010 is gone. Incredible!

It's always around this time I find my heart grappling for those things that are the best to hold on to. Maybe it's the beginning of Spring and that feeling in the air that anything is possible! I'm ready for the best in life. I want more in every area of what we call "life."

Maybe this is because April is a month that holds quite a bit of meaning for me. Call it the month of reckoning and rebirth but it's rich with meaning for me.

In April of my junior in high school, I could no longer walk away from the incredible love, power and grace that I saw in the eyes of Christ, the Creator and Sustainer of life. I had a lot of questions about life, a lot of anger and pain from past experiences and a lot of guilt and shame for things. Ultimately, my flesh cried out for meaning, for purpose, for truth. What I experienced up to that point could not be the sum end of all of life. For if it was, I was done.

For what seemed like the first time, I heard the truth about Christ. The freedom, the love and passion I experienced at that time was like nothing I'd ever experienced in my life. My identity was rocked to the core. There was a reckoning and a rebirth. Becoming a Christ-follower was all I wanted to think about. He became everything to me and I wanted to learn how to walk that out.

April also became the month where, as a Christ-follower, I celebrate Easter. If Christ didn't rise above the elements of gravity, my faith is in vain. Not only did He rise again from the dead, bringing meaning and purpose to the fact that He's a LIVING God, but every morning when the things that want to destroy me, those elements of my heart that are dead inside, when I feel cold to the things that would bring me life, Christ rises again and again in my heart and says "Come, follow me!". He is alive in the world and alive in me. And it's for this reason I celebrate Easter.

This morning I read "But the LORD is faithful, who shall establish you, and keep you from evil" (2 Thessalonians 3:3) and I believe it. I've seen others more noble than me who professed the name of Christ and later found themselves in a ship-wrecked yard in their faith. What I'm looking at this morning as an evil in the world is when my heart becomes cold, callous and unmoved by the words of the Creator and Sustainer of life.

I'm crying out on the brink of another April - the month of reckoning and rebirth - for more! More of Him and less of myself. I'm looking to the one who is faithful when I'm not. I'm looking to the one who is established and strong when I'm not. Life is rich when Christ is the center and that's my prayer today. God, take center stage. You're faithful to establish and keep me. Please do both and deliver me from evil.