A Tough Act To Follow

LORD, we’ve all had that feeling when someone sings like a pro at the karaoke and you’re up next at the mike. Or when someone comes to the end of a sterling career and you’re the recruit to take their place. Or when someone’s dad has made a lifetime of giving royal treatment to his wife and you’re the groom about to marry his daughter.

Talk about pressure!

Now, there’s more to that, too, than just intimidating mastery. The standout gets to set a standard. This shining one gets to be champion, top of the heap. This one gets to show up on everybody’s cross hairs with a target painted across his chest saying “The One To Beat.”

I’ve been asked, Father, given all the media play on the smorgasbord of religions available, why I put my money on my LORD and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Well, in the “market place of gods,” no one has ever pulled something like this off other than the Son of God:

1 Corinthians 15:3-6 (NIV)
“...Christ died for our sins...he was buried...he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures...he appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred...at the same time,...”

No other person with a claim to the title of “god” has ever done that. Neither has any prophet nor any wise teacher.

No one else has predicted by hundreds of years exactly how and when he was to die, came, died, got buried and walked away from the grave afterwards, with multitudes to testify to it, except Christ. No one else could tack on to this special way of dying (and rising from the dead) the quality of being adequate in satisfying the perfect standard of the Father for a sacrifice good enough to wash away the sins of mankind.

Now, just try and top that.

That’s why your believers praise you, LORD. That’s why your saints exalt you.

Be exalted, O God above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth.

In Jesus’ Mighty Name, I pray. Amen.

Read about the sad cable TV host who in his ignorace believes that he is “enlightened” in thinking that belief in God is a neurological disease.

Please continue to pray for Christian attorneys as they prepare for next week when the US Supreme Court hears oral arguments on two cases involving the public display of the Ten Commandments.