Vanity thy name is

Doing my devotion this morning and was really touched by this thought. When we consider our relationship with Christ do we have vanity and pride. Do we take seriously that Christ died on the cross for us. If we do not treat this act of love for us seriously, we are making a mockery of Jesus Christ dying for us on the cross. Does your life have meaning or is it empty and void? If your life feels empty, put down the vanity and pride and seek Christ in His true form and come with an open heart ready to receive. Here is some I typed from the book that really hit me:

"One of the best of the old gospel hymns opens with these lines:
Years I spent in vanity and pride
caring not my Lord was crucified,
knowing not it was for me He died
at Calvary

Perhaps you can identify with spending too much of your life in vanity and pride. Vanity simply means that whatever you do ends in emptiness; there's simply nothing there. And pride won't let you admit it.

But though all this can be true about us, God marshals the resources of heaven to pursue us and rescue us. It's all grace; it's nothing we deserve. Simply because He loves us, He begins to draw us to Himself. Suddenly, the lights come on and truth dawns. We experience great grief over how we've treated Him, how we never really cared that He was crucified.

Inevitably, every Christian comes to stand at what the hymn calls Calvary a name for the place where the cross of Christ stood. There, as you let God open your understanding, you see the truth: 'It was for me He died!" By faith, we accept that this was God's plan, God's purpose. This was God's way of providing salvation for us.

It changes everything. Your heart receives and knows what before you knew only in your head. And it begins to affect the whole of your life."

"Are you believing all that He says about the cross and responding to all that He is in His grace and love, as demonstrated in the cross? If not, you're in danger of making the death of Christ a mockery.

Be assured that the death of His Son was not a mockery to God- it was His supreme and solitary provision of salvation, fully adequate for every person everywhere in the world, at all times, under all conditions, and totally effectual to bring any and every sinner into a vibrant relationship with Himself.

So the question I keep trying to get believers to ask themselves is this: Where is the evidence that my life has been transformed?"

Taken from Experiencing the cross by Henry T. Blackaby