Pastor's April 2012 Message
  Getting a Handle on New Life  Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 

2 Corinthians 1:9 (ESV)

 

       How do we capture the spirit of Easter? Or maybe it would be better to say, “How can the Resurrection of Jesus Christ capture us?” Many of us are so familiar with the Easter story, we have gone through the cycle of Lent - Holy Week - Resurrection, that we can do it with our “eyes closed.” How can we be touched as were the Emmaus Disciples who walked with the resurrected Jesus and afterward said, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). Luke says that they got up immediately and ran back to Jerusalem to tell the others. That’s Passion. That’s being ABLAZE.    It seems to me that somehow we need to experience death, or some death-like event, in order to appreciate New Life. We do get a small taste of that every spring when the trees and flowers that looked so dead begin their cycle of new life. My guess is that people who live up in the cold north may appreciate that new life that comes in the spring even more than we do here in Charlotte.    Paul and his companions experienced what Paul calls the “sentence of death.” The experience helped renew his appreciation of Jesus’ resurrection victory that results in deliverance from death. I think that many of us can identify with Paul as we have felt death’s cold grip on our life. We have cried out for deliverance, and when that deliverance has come, we have once again experienced the liberation of new life. Maybe, like Paul, we needed to be reminded. Maybe we thought that we had life under control, that we had “our act together.” Maybe we had lost the passion of what it feels like to be delivered and set free. Maybe we had begun to take new life for granted.    You and I have been saved from death at the cost of the life of the Son of God. We didn’t deserve it. We can never repay it. But what we can do is remember it. When we experience the cycle of death and life - death-like experiences and God’s deliverance that brings life - we can remember what it means to be saved and we can let that salvation impassion us to live lives that are on fire for Jesus.