consider yourself dead

It's been said that it takes about 6 weeks to develop a new habit.  Perhaps that explains why Jesus hung around for forty days after His Resurrection, so that His first disciples would adopt the habit of believing that He was and ever would be alive, risen from the dead.  This Easter season can be an opportunity for us to redevelop the habit of actively believing that He is still alive, today, risen, ascended, interceding, and intercepting us in The Holy Spirit.

These forty days can also be a invitation to consider ourselves dead.  Of ourselves, we are dead in our sin, which has infected and affected every area of our life.  As we consider where we would be without our Risen Lord, we realize that, but for Him, we'd be whitewashed tombs.  In six weeks, we can relearn the habit of operating in the Power of His Life rather than our own.

But we can also consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus.  Because we are dead, and He is alive and has given us a new life, we no longer need to let sin reign in our very mortal bodies such that we must obey its evil desires.  Christ's Life has resurrected ours, bringing us into a place in which, though it was once not possible for us not to sin, now it is possible for us not to sin.  We can cultivate this habit of a personal Resurrection perspective over these forty days.