I must say, that I am guilty of being grateful for the wrong things on occasions. Well, let me take that back. Not grateful for the wrong things, but I have expressed more gratitude for the wrong things. Does that make sense?? Let me explain.

It’s sometimes hard to hide your emotion when you get really really excited or are really thankful for something. For example, have you ever been able to go on a roller coaster you love, and not have a huge smile on your face (prior to getting sick)? Doubtful. Or how about opening a present that you really, really wanted, or really needed and possibly shed a tear because you were so grateful and happy? Rarely. I get really excited if there’s a mistake when I go through the drive through and find I was given an extra order of French Fries!

My point is simply this. How easy is it to overlook the best gift we have ever or will ever receive. I”m talking about the cross. It’s almost as though we don’t fully understand the Gospel. We no longer are under the same laws as old testament scripture. I mean, before they could even go and worship God they had to bring a sacrifice of some sort. That may sound simple, but it was a very complicated process. I could only imagine what it would be like.

Walking around one day, and wanting to repent of our sin and worship God. So, immediately I start to think, hmmm, what can I take to the high priest as a sacrifice. So after hours of the constant weight of my sin, and draining mental process of thinking of a sacrifice good enough. I take my sacrifice to the high priest only to hear….”oooohhh, I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work.Come back when you have something better” AAhhHH, WHAT! Get the crap out of here! Now out of anger I go and sin again, and THEN, I have to find a sacrifice to cover the first sin, and because of my jacked up first attempt, I gotta find TWO!

Ok Maybe it didn’t look exactly like that, but you get my point. Here’s the beauty behind the cross. We no longer have to go through the very narrow process to worship God! We can just say, “Hey!” and we’re talking to God. Just say “I’m sorry”and God hears us. Actually no matter what we’re doing, we’re in His presence. We serve the God of Jacob! We can wrestle with God, we can listen to God, we can seek Gods face! Isn’t that flippin awesome! Do we really understand what it means when we say, “The price has been paid!”? Do we understand what was paid when we say, “Jesus, paid it all”? So, if you visualize a cross before you worship, or if your church has a big cross behind the pull pit, do we just think of the name Jesus or do we think of what Jesus did? Some may even overlook the constant reminder of what that means, and say, oh yeah that’s just here cause it’s a church. Some may say, “Yeah, Jesus died on the cross.” OK, true, but that’s wrong. We should say, “YEAH!!! Jesus died on the cross!!!” OK! Do you know what Jesus CHOSE to do for us because He loved us? He became our sacrifice that was taken to the high priest, so because of Him, we can actually worship freely! Because of Him, forgiveness is an easy thing to get! We’re not under old testament laws, only though Jesus can we get to God! Look at what it says in John 14:6