Take It With You 03.27.2016

Here is my #crossstory:

I’m a performer.  I realized a long time ago that God could and would and wanted to use my love of performing to share His love with others in various different ways.  But recently I’ve come to realize that God doesn’t just speak to others through my performance; He uses performance to speak to me!

Years ago, our youth group saw another youth group perform an interpretive movement to the song “Arise, My Love” by New Song.  It was powerful!  Susie Reeder, who was the youth minister at the time, found the instruction video for that piece and a group of us in the Snyder youth group learned it and we performed it a few times over my last two years in high school.  Of course, I knew the story of the cross that is told through that song; the story of the Resurrection morning.  But somehow, God revealed to me, in a new and unique way, the power and the glory of that moment, through the moves of that song.  As we performed it, I was overwhelmed by the truth and power of the line “the grave could not hold the King!”

This year, it’s happened again.  You wouldn’t think that a story as powerful as the Easter story could get old or stale, but we all know that sometimes the same words can fall flat on our ears.  My mind knows how important it is, but my heart fails to be moved quite like it used to be.  Until Jeff asked me to play the woman caught in adultery for the Maundy Thursday service.  As I spoke the words of a woman condemned to die that Jesus literally saved from an imminent, horrific, humiliating death, God revealed to me anew the true power of His love that He demonstrated on the cross.  Jesus didn’t just die to fulfill some ancient rite of atonement for sin…He died a horrific, humiliating death because He loves me!

I am so thankful for a God who loves me enough to save me.  I am also thankful for a God who desires a close relationship with me and knows me intimately enough to know just how to get through to me, to speak to me in a way that He knows I’ll hear, loud and clear, even in an unexpected moment!

Praise God…the grave could not hold the King!

– Katie Herring