“…He is risen, He is alive!” (Luke 24:6).
Easter is the most spiritually-uplifting holiday Christians celebrate. It represents rejoicing. It isn’t so much that the word “Easter” is the highlight but what happened on that miraculous day in history. 1 Corinthians 15:4 says, “And that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.” The resurrection of Christ Jesus is the promise of eternal life. It represents hope and joy in loving and forgiving. It gives me strength to carry on and an ability to serve when my flesh wants to be served.
I remember one day sitting on the front row of a church meeting. I don’t remember the preacher’s name, but I remember what he said. It changed my life forever. He was talking about what Christ did on the cross and that He did it for me. This was at a time when my marriage was very weak. I was frustrated with things I could not change. I had gone to that meeting in hopes that my husband would change. As I listened I heard of God’s love like I had never heard before. It was as if the preacher was speaking directly to me. My heart was convicted, and I said, “God, you love me that much? I have made a mess of my life. Will you please take my life, be my Lord and Savior, and teach me how to be a Christian and teach me how to be a wife?”
Although we went to church on Sunday (because that was the thing to do), we lived worldly lives through the week. According to 1 Corinthians 6:19, I am a new vessel actually housing the living God. WOW! I knew my life would change, and I was excited. Because of this change, I wanted to be a Christian everyday and not just on Sunday.
I embarked on a long, arduous journey of becoming the wife God wanted me to be and the wife my husband needed. I am still on that journey. I won’t “arrive” until I get to heaven. So, I keep on trusting the living God to guide me on the journey. I keep my eyes on the “hope that is before me” (Hebrews 12:2).
There are five simple things that helped me during those early hard and lonely days. Perhaps they will encourage you, too:
1. Keep a Bible Open to a Portion of Scripture You Love
Lay it in a place you pass by often during the day like the kitchen counter. Psalm 1 and/or Jeremiah 17:7-8 speak of a woman who is planted by the water and her roots grow deep and her foliage is green. I want to be like that. Read a verse each time you pass by.
2. Write in a Journal
I like writing in a journal. You can choose a beautiful one of your choice (it can even be a spiral notebook), and take a few moments daily to write a word or sentence from what you learned from your reading that day. This helps you reflect on God’s Word and apply it to your life.
3. Pray
Pray that God will help you focus on your role as a wife and not on what your husband is or isn’t doing. God gives us strength to persevere in the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58). As a wife, our marriage is our work of the Lord. Ask God to help you apply what you read to your life that day. Ask Him to especially help you apply it to your marriage.
4. Develop a “Thankful” List
Choose a particular page in your journal, and write down things you are thankful for. Don’t forget to thank Jesus for dying on the cross for you and for reaching all the way from heaven and choosing you to be His child (John 1:13). Thank Him for rising from the dead to give life eternal. Sometimes the most obvious things are the ones we forget.
5. Choose Friends Who Are of Like-Mindedness
We are to be like strawberries and roses in a little story by Marjory Holmes. She writes:
“During my small town childhood almost every family had a strawberry bed, and most kids really liked to pick them. Darting to the patch with a pan was almost like hunting Easter eggs. To me, strawberries were like little people hiding under their delicate umbrella of leaves. Plump, ruddy dads and pink-roughed mothers and aunts, and flocks of rosy-cheeked children. Were they playing games, having a picnic or gathered in a big jolly family reunion? I sensed even then their nature. Strawberries are companionable things ‘And this is true,’ says a friend who raises them, ‘Whenever I plant two touching each other they grow twice as big and have twice as many berries.’ She tells me strawberries are of the rose family. Once, when she accidentally set out two rose bushes in the strawberry bed, the roses smelled like strawberries and the berries tasted like roses. Like the strawberries and the roses touch each other and become entwined with each other, we can sweeten one another’s lives as we walk in this sin driven world in anticipation of our going to heaven.”
It is impossible to be a godly wife and to apply even the simple steps above if you don’t know Jesus Christ as your Savior. “With Christ you can do all things” (Philippians 4:13). Christ died on the cross for me and for you. He paid the ultimate price (His life) and rose again so we can have the hope of eternal life. Focus this Easter season on Who He is and what He did for you. Christ can change your life. He did mine. “…He is alive.”
Glenda Hotton
Nahum 1:7 – “God is good.”
