How My Heart Yearns Within Me

Easter has passed but the impact of the greatest event in human history still resounds in my soul, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” In his exclamation, Job both expressed the central hope of our faith and the essence of our reason to worship. Paul affirms these truths in his letter to the Galatians. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” For just a moment, focus in on the phrase “The life I live in the body.” Certainly, Paul is referring to our physical life and physical body. But there is another “body” in which we live our life of faith. The body of Christ, His church, must also live together by faith. We must embrace the fact that we have been crucified with Christ. Every time we gather in worship we celebrate His love for us displayed in His sacrifice on the cross. We are uniquely identified as the body of Christ through our common faith in the cross of Christ. A good friend helped this truth come to life for me. He sent a brief article and illustration that I want to share with you. Medical researchers have known for sometime now about a family of proteins that are integral to the structure of our physical cells. Laminins, these cell adhesion molecules, literally hold our body together, one cell joined to the next which is joined to the next and so on. Here is what the structure of laminin looks like.

As Colossians 1:17 reminds us, the body of Christ is held together one person joined to the next which is joined to the next and so on, by Christ and the fact that we have all been crucified with Christ in order that we might have life in Him, now and for eternity. Now that is something to make our hearts yearn within us to worship Him.

Hosanna in the Highest!

This week is arguably the most important week of the year in the life of a believer. It begins with worship just as this week began two thousand years ago. On the day we refer to as Palm Sunday, people gathered to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with the words “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Their shout of praise, worship and adoration, spoken in recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus (Hosanna!), literally means, “Save us now, Lord." We, like they, recognize our need of a Savior, for now and for eternity.

Dr. Robert Webber has said, “Worship is the ‘summit’ toward which we always proceed. For we take to worship the issues we deal with on a day-to-day basis with an expectancy that God will bring healing into our lives. But worship is always the 'fount' from which our lives flow because worship not only brings healing to our life issues, it also empowers us to face the realities of our life in the world with the conviction that the last word is not the death evil brings, but the resurrection Jesus gives.1

Christian Furchtegott Gellert wrote these words to this hymn in the early eighteenth century:

Jesus lives, and so shall I
Death, thy sting is gone forever!
He for me hath deigned to die.
Lives the bands of death to sever.
He shall raise me from the dust.
Jesus is my hope and trust.

Jesus lives – and death is now
But my entrance into glory;
Courage, then, my soul, for thou
Hast a crown of life before thee.
Thou shalt find thy hopes were just:
Jesus is my hope and trust.

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting?” I Corinthians 15:54-55

1 Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God's Mighty Deeds of Salvation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1992), 205.