Resurrection Power
April 11, 2023
I hope you and your family had a wonderful Easter. Perhaps you made it to one of our Easter services. I hope you did! If so, you know we really celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Seeing Jesus alive forever changed the lives of the disciples. It happened instantly and was evident to everyone who knew them. They were no longer men controlled by fear. The days before that event had been marked by fear:
- Fear of people’s opinions.
- Fear of people’s disapproval.
- Fear of people’s threats.
- Fear of death.
But the resurrection literally transformed them….
It wasn’t Jesus’ wonderful teaching that brought this about. He taught for three years prior. It wasn’t the miracles, as wonderful as they were. They saw things we can barely imagine—He had control over nature and the human body. Those things thrilled them and impressed them. But the teaching and miracles didn’t change them.
It was His resurrection that turned everything upside down.
Faith happens when the unexplainable meets the undeniable. If the resurrection is undeniable, then it changes your discomfort with the unexplainable. There are many things in life I don’t understand—I don’t understand why one thing happens and another thing does not. I don’t understand the resurrection and how it happened, but I’m with Andy Stanley. He says, “When somebody predicts their own death and resurrection and pulls it off, we should go with whatever that person says.”
I have made that choice—to go with whatever Jesus says. At the center of Christianity is not a new moral code or a new perspective on life, but an empty tomb that literally changes everything. The resurrection proves Jesus was who He said He was.
It changed everything for us today too. Romans 6:10-11 record’s Paul’s confidence by experience that the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead now lives in every person who has put his or her faith and trust in Jesus Christ!
So now the question becomes, “Have you experienced its power in your life, and does your life show it?” According to all the writers of the New Testament letters, eyewitnesses to the resurrection, the resurrection is not just a fact of history past; it is the power to make us new in the present.
According to them, the gospel, Paul says, is not a new philosophy to live by, a new set of moral regulations, or new resolutions to do better. It’s about something much bigger and better. It is the infusion of resurrection power. The power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is available to us. How foolish to limit ourselves and deny ourselves the life full and overflowing that God has made available through His resurrection power!
There is no other place where we need this power more profoundly than in our relationships. Starting Sunday, we are working with God on that. We are kicking off a series called Marriage: The Healthy Way. We will discover what it means to be healthy and learn how to live it out.