I pray that all of you had a great day on this Resurrection Sunday!  I got to enjoy a great time of worship with my family and my church family.  It was a great day and God gave us a beautiful day to remind us of the beauty of His love for us and what this day means to us as believers and followers of Jesus Christ.  Throughout this day, and the days leading up to it, I found myself reflecting on Easter.  Reflecting on the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the full finished works of Christ.  In worship this morning, we dove into Luke 15 and the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coins, and the prodigal son.  It illustrates for us an unending pursuit for us that God orchestrated and Jesus explained how the Father will go to whatever lengths to pursue those He loves.  That being us.  Everyone of us.  Jesus came to restore what was lost at the fall.

I found my way back to Galatians 4 today where Paul provides the illustrations of Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael.  When Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, this was mans attempt to fulfill God’s promises.  verse 23 says, “The son of the slave wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise. But the son of the freeborn wife (Sarah) was born as God’s own fulfillment of His promise.”  All through the Old Testament we see where man continued to find their own way and live outside of God.  God, however, had another plan.  He was, from the outset out to pursue us.  Abraham was just one of the many examples God used to show where He fulfilled His promises and was out to free mankind of the slavery, sin, and death.

Let me back up a little.  Go to Eden, before the fall.  God had given man full domain of the earth.  The only commandment given was not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  With Satan’s intervention, man decided to not choose God first, ate the fruit and thus the fall happened.  We were cast out of the garden lost in sin and a world where we no longer had dominion as was intended.  We all know this.  So from that point God set out His plan to restore that which was lost.  To find the lost sheep, to bring back the lost son.

Isaiah 61, the Lord came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free.  We are all broken and have been enslaved by our own sinful nature and wounds.  God had another plan for us.  We were never meant to be this way.  To be lost to our own sins.

What does all of this say to me?  Despite everything we have been through in our lives.  I don’t care where you are or what you have been through, God has a love for all of us like we could never fathom or comprehend.  We chose to turn away from God, but God never turned away from us.  He has always been out to pursue us and the works of Jesus Christ has been the fulfillment of that pursuit.  It is so wonderful to think about.  Yes, God care about each of us.  He loves each of us.  That means you too, no matter where you are.  We can take joy in Christ’s resurrection that through Him we are now dead to sin and alive to God.

Just think about how great this is.  Jesus IS Risen.  He IS Alive.  “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13-14).  He Rescued us from darkness.  Only real love would do such a thing.  Hell was never going to be the final solution and this is not what God wants for any of us.  He has been out to restore us from day one because of His great love for us.  We have to choose, however, whether we accept this and choose God once more, or take the final act of self-contentedness and refuse to follow.  Do we love God as He loves us and choose to live in the freedom of His love in Christ or do we choose what God does not want for us, which is death?  Me, I choose live and I choose God.