Powerful Reality Expressed in A Powerful Story

I read this story yesterday and it touched an emotional chord for me. No illustration can completely describe the wonder and power of the cross but stories and illustrations are important to help us grasp realities. I found this story helpful for me to appreciate again the love and goodness of my Saviour. I hope it does the same for you.

Written by Scott Wenig

 I used to have a good friend named Debbie Johnson. Debbie was beautiful and bright and gifted. She was a wonderful mom to a couple of young boys and the wife of a good friend of mine named Dave. Dave was a pastor here in town. In early 1994 Dave and Debbie Johnson got a call to leave their pastorate in Denver and go back to Minnesota and serve the Lord in a church there. About six months after they went to Minnesota, Debbie was diagnosed with cancer, and about eight months after that she died.

But she didn't have to die. They caught the cancer early on. All they had to do was give her radiation and chemotherapy, but she wouldn't take it. Two months before she was diagnosed with cancer, she found out she was pregnant with their third child, and the treatment for the cancer would have killed the baby, so she said no cancer treatment. She went full term, gave birth to that baby, and then she died. She died so that baby could live.

That's exactly what Jesus did for all of us. He made that huge journey from heaven to find us but also to forgive us of our sin. There is no one in this auditorium who does not need to be found and to be forgiven of sin. You know this as well as I do. Sin grabs us and holds us. It binds us and tangles us up, and then it pulls us down.

One Of The Most Powerful Days of My Life

I was sitting in a church I didn't normally attend along with a couple hundred young people listening to the youth pastor describe the cross of Christ. I had heard this story thousands of times before but this time it hit home like never before.

Maybe because of the graphic description of Christ's suffering. Maybe because I personalized it for the first time ("Jesus, you did that for me."). Maybe because I sensed the Presence of the One who died for me with me as it was being described. Maybe because God chose that night to make that truth a revelation to my heart.

Whatever the reason, Christ’s cross became real to me and I have never been the same. My life forever changed. I hope never to get over the cross of my Lover and Lord.

Gal. 6:14-16 "For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can't you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!"