I am still pondering Easter, or as I prefer to call it – Resurrection Sunday. Its advent always places me in a deeply contemplative mode. How can it not?

It happens every spring. If we listen carefully, we can hear “there is hope” in the gentle breezes. There are signs of new life all around. A gray, dead landscape shows promise. Green tendrils peek through soil as bulbs announce they are back. Blossoms display their splendor on tree branches that had appeared dead for months. The robin returns to build a nest for her young. Life is on, and everyone walks with a renewed bounce in their step.

How appropriate that our Lord would rise from the dead in the season when His own creation comes roaring back from dormancy to delight us!! Every year the miracle of spring mimics the miracle of new life in our resurrected Lord.

For those of us who have experienced new life in Christ, we have also experienced resurrection power. The same power that raised our Lord from the dead has transformed us. It’s not something we conjured up on our own; that’s not even possible. This power was poured out on us. To our amazement and delight, we are new, alive, and seeing all things with a changed perspective. This is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Not only is resurrection power at work upon conversion, but believers are equipped with the Holy Spirit’s enablement continually. This power comes in so many forms.

I recall trying to study the Bible years ago and struggling with what I perceived as inconsistencies and texts that made no sense to me. But the Holy Spirit has lifted the veil. His Word now speaks to me with relative clarity. And, after more than 40 years of study, I am amazed by the new revelation that comes each time I prayerfully ponder a text that I had reviewed so many times before.

We believers have memorized the words and pondered the sermons. We know it all, don’t we? Yet, the Holy Spirit breathes new life into Scripture, makes it fresh as if we are seeing it for the very first time. There is a re-awakening in our souls, not so unlike the dawn of spring. This is a miracle.

The power is there in daily living as well. So often I have experienced His power lift me above the discouragement of life as I have focused on Who He is, who I am in Him, and His higher purpose for my life. My Christian friends say the same, and we can’t imagine walking through this fallen world without this changed focus.

Lastly, my husband and I have experienced our Lord’s resurrection power in our marriage. We have been lifted out of brokenness to wholeness and victory. This was a long and painful process that required humility and trust –  equal and total surrender to our Lord’s healing, transforming power. The victory is His; the joy is ours.

Resurrection power isn’t just a once-and-done, Easter Sunday miracle. Yes, it is a worthy-of-celebration, pivotal, history-changing event that was part of our sovereign Lord’s plan. But God intends resurrection power to be present in every true believer – a current day, ongoing, life-altering miracle.

 This is what makes us truly alive.

 Joy in Jesus,

 Jacquee