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Easter 2011

Easter is a powerful example of what happens when truth meets accusation.  The “Truth” – Jesus – obliterated the false accusations of His enemies and introduced death to its Master.  Hope was given a new and glorious image as death and the grave were proven powerless to prevent a resurrection.  New life, a new start, a new beginning all made possible by an experience called Easter.

It is never enough to say “Christ is risen.”  Each of us must also say, “I am risen.”  Have you risen above your circumstance, your doubt, your fear, your anger, your failure?

At theChurch we together rose to a new level of ministry this Easter as more than 8,000 people joined our Easter celebration and hundreds gave their life to Christ.  Thank you for being a part of this great miracle.  The Noel Project has risen to a new level with our Home for Hope Giveaway and we are anxiously awaiting to see who God has chosen to receive the house.  Christ is risen and we have risen!

The Truth of God!

Genesis 1:1
¹In the beginning God (prepared, formed, fashioned, and) created the heavens and the earth.

What is truth?
How can we know truth?

In America, for many years we had certain presuppositions which influenced the way life was lived.

The basic presupposition was that there really are such things as “Absolutes.”

We accepted the possibility of an “Absolute” in the area of “being” (or knowledge), and in the area of “morals.”

If anything is true, the opposite is false.  If one thing is right, its opposite was wrong.

Today our world is in a “mess” because of the rejection of Biblical absolutes.

The greatest absolute in the entire world is found in Genesis 1:1- In the beginning God…

Without this absolute nothing makes sense.

Man can never understand himself by beginning with himself.
Man can only understand himself by beginning with God.

What every man needs to do is to meet God.  God has revealed everything about himself that we need to know to respond to Him in worship.

Worship of God is always limited to our knowledge of Him because we cannot extol Him beyond our concepts of Him.

Many Christians are more interested in the principles of God than in the person of God. They give to God, receive from Him and work for Him, but never enter into a personal relationship with Him.

The purpose, the reason for man’s existence is found in the first commandment of Christ:

Mark 12:30 - And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. 

This truth causes me to know what man is and who I am.

What will you do to get to know Him better?

“I Love You!” Love, God

Romans 8:39
Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Some things in life simply defy definition.  Love is one of those things.

Love is easy to recognize by the way it acts. Love is the basic principle of spiritual and relational health.

It is the creator of character and the revealer of truth.  It is the solution of all difficulties and the cure of all evils. It is the secret of vitality and the essence of true life.

Love elevates every aspect of our lives.  By loving others we elevate them to a higher plane of living.

The prime fundamental to Christian living is love.  When we say “God is love” we speak of “descending love” and “ascending love.”

Humanity’s condition was not the motivating force behind Jesus coming into this world.  God’s divine love for humanity was the impelling power of the incarnation of Jesus.

With the coming of Jesus, God declared “I love you” and demonstrated His willingness to reveal that love to us.

The heavens declare the glory of God, His actions reveal His grace, nature shows His handiwork, but in Jesus we meet God’s demonstrated love.

His love lifts us from our sin-scarred, life wounded, battered image higher and higher until the image that was lost in Adam is restored in us in Jesus.

Love found us where we were, but lifted us to where God is. Love reached us as we were, but transformed our nature into His nature.

Love looked upon us in our shame but caused us to look upon God in His splendor.

How different is His love from the emotion that we call love. Our love is caused by something in the object of our love, something that meets an inherent need.

We love because we need.  God needs because He loves.