This past weekend we not only celebrated the realities of the gospel but experienced the new life the gospel promises. We had a record number of people in our Good Friday service (just under 800), 2500 people in our Sunday services, well over 300 kids in our children’s classrooms, and a record 11 new families registered for the first time. We also witnessed a couple dozen first time commitments to Christ in our services followed by the distribution of every Bible we had in stock except one. (We have more coming.)
On the morning of Good Friday, nearly 90 Browncroft students joined close to 300 other students (and 400+ adult volunteers) from churches across the city to share testimony about the work they did over four days at Flower City Work Camp. Another great year of serving families and individuals in Rochester in the name of Jesus (34 worksites, 11 sidewalk clubs, 4 agency teams, a basketball camp, a soccer camp, and a skate camp). Many homes were fixed, hearts healed, and lives changed.
Because the resurrection has happened as an event within our world, its implications and effects are to be felt within our world, here and now.
–N.T. Wright
For the first Christians, the resurrection of Jesus was the immutable fact upon which their faith was based. And their faith in large part depended on the testimony and transformed behavior of those who had seen the resurrected Jesus. The resurrection is the culminating event that brings the disciples out of the old covenant era into the new one. From this point forward, faith trusts Jesus as the resurrected Lord. In John chapter 20, we see Jesus carefully leading the first disciples into this faith.
This journey of faith begins for us where it began for them, in the areas of our spiritual weakness and vulnerability. In this single chapter, the resurrected Christ appears to three people, each immersed in their own emotional state—Mary Magdalene, grief; the Disciples, fear; and Thomas, doubt. Together they model for us timeless limitations that must be faced and overcome if we are to live the quality of life the resurrection offers us.
We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Romans 6.4
There are many of us who have a saving faith but know little of the resurrection in our lives. Our ultimate destiny has changed, but our daily life has not. We have appropriated little of the gifts of Christ’s resurrection—intimacy with God, a new purpose for our lives, and a new power, namely the power of the Holy Spirit.
Are you still overly self-conscious, self-centered, or struggling with sins at the same level you did years ago? If so, the gifts of Christ’s resurrection are available today. If His life can become your life, you can do things you thought you could never do.
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. John 14.12-14
For the remainder of April, we will build off the Easter message by looking carefully at how Jesus leads His struggling disciples to a deeper faith. Here is an overview of the next three weeks:
Living with God as Father (Mary Magdalene) / John 20.11-18
The very basis of your faith is the reality that you are a child of God
Living in the Power of the Holy Spirit (The Disciples) / John 20.19-23
As a disciple of Christ you have not only been called to gospel ministry but empowered for it
Living with Doubt (Thomas) / John 20.24-31
Your doubts are not a block to your faith but a way into it
We plan to share the gospel and invite people to faith in all these services. If you have friends that could not make an Easter service, or friends you didn’t invite but wish you had, these Sundays would be a perfect opportunity to bring them.
Pastor Rob
