Today is Good Friday!

Today is Good Friday. Today my Savior held a Last Supper with His friends. He blessed the bread and wine and commemorated His body to God. He told us to do the same in remembrance of Him. My husband and I have been having communion all week before breakfast.

Almost 2,000 years ago, Jesus gave up His life for us. He took on all of our sins because He saw us before He even formed the earth! He knew where we would be the weakest and He gave us a way out of being tempted to sin. Why? Because He loves us!!

What He went through for us--such torture, being betrayed by His apostle, praying so hard that He sweat drops of blood, being unjustly accused by the Jewish high priests, and saying not a word in His own defense. He acknowledged that not His own will, his own desire, be done but that His Father's will be done. Submitting to His Father/our Father, and being ridiculed and beaten and tortured until He was unrecognizable and then humiliated, and then forced to carry His own cross - His own method of death!

I think it is horrible to hear stories of how parents would send their unruly child outside to get the 'switch' that would be used to strike them in punishment. But imagine carrying your own cross while you have literally been beaten almost to death! How cruel and inhumane is that?

It's impossible to even imagine carrying such a large cross after such a brutal and sadistic beating, but then to be nailed to it and hung in a fashion that would prevent His diaphragm from functioning correctly so He would have to try to re-position His torn up body to breathe. And then to get stabbed in the side through His ribs.

All this. And then He asks His/our Father to forgive them all, that they didn't know what they were doing. Imagine His loneliness when God turned His eyes from Him, His Son, He who took on the sins of humanity and because of that was too dirty and sin-filled for God to even look at Him. His last words were, "It is finished."

We have come to call this Good Friday. How in the world can it be 'good'? On that day almost exactly 2,000 years ago Jesus demonstrated the goodness of God for forgiving our sins. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

Imagine all that was sacrificed because God so loved! He wanted us to be with Him forever and He still does, not that one be left behind. But we couldn't do this on our own because we are carriers of sin. We need our heart and soul forgiven. We need to repent and turn to God in humility just as Jesus did, and ask for His forgiveness. And we need to acknowledge that Jesus died for us--for the forgiveness of our sins. He is the sacrificial Lamb that Passover is all about.

So today is a good Friday. So much was lost for our gain, only because of Jesus' love and sacrifice. He is worthy to be honored and glorified. There is no virus or disease or plague, not even death that doesn't bow to His name. He is the Christ, the Messiah.

Today as we are staying apart from others because of the coronavirus, take some time to dust off your Bible and read Chapters 17-19 in the Gospel of John. Read about how Jesus prayed for YOU (17:20-26, below) even then, and how He still does now.

May God bless us as we come to know the magnitude of why this day is called Good. And if you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you can easily ask Him into your heart simply by doing that.

Please join me again Sunday as we celebrate the Resurrection! Oh what a glorious day!

John 17:20-26 NKJV Jesus Prays for All Believers

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word: that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.

And the glory which You gave Me I have given to them, that they may be one just We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You love Me may be in them, and I in them."