Hello everyone. Welcome to the Honey and Grace podcast. I'm your host, Veronica Waldrum, and I pray that we can taste and see a little bit of God's goodness through today's episode together. Let's do it. Welcome back to the Honey and Grace Podcast. I'm so happy that you are listening and tuning in today. I pray that today's episode will bless you and your day. I'm super excited for this week because it is what we like to call Holy Week. And when I'm recording this, the Holy Week has already started. But this is just a week of all the prophecies being fulfilled leading up to Jesus' crucifixion on Good Friday and on Sunday being Easter. And so this episode comes out right before Easter. I am so excited personally for Easter Sunday. I pray that you are as well and that your church is excited and that we are just going to have a great time in the Lord. Easter is such a good time to reach out to people and invite people that you might not always invite maybe that one friend or that coworker that you know they need somewhere to be on Easter. A lot of people are prone to go to church on Easter Sunday that maybe they don't go on other Sundays and services. So I'm just super excited and I hope you are excited as well. Because of it being holy week and leading up to Easter, I have been doing a little bit of reflecting myself and just reading about this whole week of prophecies that were fulfilled and what each day means and how significant it was. And so today I just want to take a second and kind of walk through that. I think that it's a perfect time to reflect and go through that and see and just read back and look at what happened. So this past Sunday was Palm Sunday, Jesus' triumphal entry. Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey, crowds wave palm branches and shout Hosanna, recognizing him as the Messiah. It is the start of a greater plan. It's a proof that love rides in that love rides in humbly. It is the courage to follow even when it's the courage to follow even when the road leads to the cross. Prophecy is fulfilled. Zechariah 9 and 9 says, See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey. Holy Monday is considered the cleansing of the temple. Jesus drives out money changers and merchants from the temple, condemning corruption. Prophecy is fulfilled from Isaiah 56, verse 7. My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. In Jeremiah 7 11, has this house become a den of robbers to you? Holy Tuesday was teaching and confrontation. Jesus curses the fig tree, teaches in the temple, debates religious leaders, and gives the and gives the olive discourse on which Jesus prophesied to the disciples about the end times and his second coming. From Psalms 118 and 22, stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Wednesday was the betrayal planned. Psalms fifty five and twelve through fourteen. If any enemy were insulting me, I could endure it. If a foe were rising against me, I could hide. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I enjoyed sweet fellowship at the house of God as we walked about among the worshipers. Thursday is the Last Supper. Jesus celebrates Passover with his disciples. He institutes communion, he washes the disciples' feet, he predicts the betrayal. Jesus is the true Passover door. Anyone who enters will be saved. He is also the true Passover lamb. His blood covers those who trust in him. Prophecy is fulfilled from Psalms forty one and nine. Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me. And then we get to Good Friday, the crucifixion. Jesus is arrested, tried, beaten, and crucified. He dies on the cross and is buried. The temple curtain which separates the most holy place from the seed of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom. Earth goes dark from noon for three hours. Prophecies are fulfilled. The suffering Messiah, Isaiah fifty three and five, he was pierced for our transgressions. By his wounds we are healed. Jesus was beaten, mocked, and spit on. Isaiah fifty and six, I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Fulfilled in Matthew twenty seven and twenty seven through thirty one. Holy Saturday in the tomb. Jesus' body rests in the tomb. Guards are posted to ensure no one steals Jesus' body. The tomb burial shows there was no doubt Jesus had certainly died. The guards posted show no room for a theory of Jesus' body being stolen. Jesus fully died to pay the price for our sin in full, once and for all. Silent Saturday is the perfect reminder that the silence of God doesn't equal the absence of God. Prophecy is fulfilled from Isaiah 53 and 9. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. And then we lead all of this up to Easter Sunday, the resurrection. Jesus rises from the dead, the tomb is empty, the stone rolled away. Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene and then to his disciples and followers. Prophecy is fulfilled from Psalms 16 and 10. You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead. Also referenced by Jesus in Matthew twelve and forty, three days in the fish, three days in the tomb. In ancient Jewish timekeeping, any part of the day could count as a full day, so three days means three calendar days touched. Hence Friday, day one, Jesus dies. Saturday, day two, Jesus in the tomb. Sunday, day three, Jesus rises in the morning. Even a small portion of the day counts as the third day. I think this is such a great thing for us to reflect on and look because we get so caught up in Easter and the eggs and the bunnies, which I love, and I'm not coming against that because it's so much fun. We have Easter bunnies around my house and flowers and just all the things. We're excited for our candy rain and our egg hunt on Sunday. But Jesus is the true reason that we celebrate this day. His resurrection and him dying for our sins is worth everything. He did it so that we could live the way that we do and we could serve him fully. I encourage you that if you haven't already this week, be intentional and reach out to someone and invite them to Easter Sunday. Invite someone to be with you in your church. Invite someone to come fellowship with you, even if it's inviting someone to get coffee or something like that. Nobody deserves to go without this beautiful and wonderful truth. Nobody deserves to go without knowing the good news of Jesus Christ and that he died for their sins and he loves and cares for them so much. So be intentional this week and love one another. I also invite you to follow along and join as Dear Girls does a segment in this next month called Graves into Gardens. I am so excited about this segment and I cannot wait to hear from the wonderful speakers they will have and the content they will be putting out. When I think about Jesus dying on the cross for us and coming back to life, I can't help but think about his transformative power and how not only can he bring dead things alive, but he creates purpose and in the worst things and death he brings to life in the darkness, he brings light and pain, he brings purpose, he turns mourning to dancing, sorrow to joy. He can replace your fear with peace and love and joy, and he can turn discord into unity. I'm so grateful for this wonderful truth and this love that God has for us that He would die on the cross for our sins. This past week I have been truly so grateful, and I feel like I'm just walking in the overflow. God has blessed me with so much, and I can't help but think it just keeps rolling on around in my mind that God's love is in the details. His love for us is so deep and so complex and so intimate that he would literally sacrifice it all for us. And every single day he's working on our behalf, he's working things out for our good, he's holding us up, strengthening us, he's protecting us, he's leading us where we're supposed to go. He knows what's best for us. And I'm just so grateful for a father that would love us like that and that would treat us with so much compassion. And I'm just so grateful today. I have some amazing things that are happening that I cannot wait to share with you guys in my life, and I have some amazing testimonies coming up that I cannot wait to tell you all, but I'm waiting for the time to be right. I'm loving every moment of springtime. He makes all things new, he renews everything that has died off, that's not living, that's been down, he brings it up, and I'm just so grateful for him and all that he's done. And I pray that you are as well. I pray true blessings and favor over every listener's life and that God will lead you and guide you and to divine purpose in your life. I am truly so excited for some guests that are coming up on the podcast. I know you guys do not want to miss what's coming up. I'm so excited, and I know that God is going to use them mightily to encourage us and speak to us, not just you guys, but to me, because every single guest that comes on truly speaks a word to me most of the time. And so I'm so excited and I cannot wait. So stay tuned. And if you haven't already, go register for Dear Girls Conference in July. It's coming quickly. It's going to be an amazing time of fellowship and worship, and just it's gonna be life-changing. So be there. I want to keep reminding you until you finally go get your tickets. I hope that I would be able to meet you there. We will have a honey and grace booth, and my good friend Anna with God's Favor Podcast will be there as well. I'm so excited. Thank you all so much for listening today, and I pray that this week we could reflect and draw closer to Jesus in this holy week, and that we would see a great revival and blessing this coming Sunday at Easter at your church and your family and your friends, wherever you may be, in Jesus' name. I'll talk to you guys next week.