Revival means Resurrection!

I’ve been told that this weekend is the annual “superbowl” for pastors, so “sweat extra” preparing the sermon to impress the CEO christians (“Christmas & Easter Only”). After all this is only one of two chances you get to communicate to those who may consider returning into worship again.

As I read through some emails from different pastoral sites this week, I wondered to myself if many have not missed the point. Seems that since the medieval obsession with the physical sufferings and death of Christ many are still carrying on this idea that this “passion week” is to commemorate the death of Christ. I wonder if we had emphasized the cross too much, to the exclusion of the life and glory and power of Christ’s resurrection.

It’s almost as if Christians are happy filling their mind with pictures of Christ in weakness, Christ upon the cross, Christ dying, Christ suffering, most of all Christ hanging dead...Why do we concentrate on that passing episode that lasted a few hours as if that were the last word and the final scene, as if the curtain dropped upon the horror of disaster and defeat?

Christ is Alive. He is Risen! Halleluiah!!! To the end of unending eternity Christ is alive, Christ rules and reigns and triumphs. Think on this! Act like this! Let Him be present in your today experience. The resurrection is the most essential part of the Christian message. The Salvation has not been finished in the price paid, but in a deliverance from life of death and sin to a new life of righteousness in God by the Holy Spirit.

The Church itself makes sense only when the church is headed by the risen Christ. The Church came into existence upon the resurrection, Ascension, and Reception of the Holy Spirit. Our doctrine of last things, of end times hinges completely on the Resurrection. The practical, applied side of Christianity is nonexistent without the truth of the Resurrection. Apostle Paul says that our hope is vain, except Christ is risen from the dead (1^st Corinthians 15:14).

The miraculous conception and birth, the sinless life, the perfect teaching, the sacrificial death, and the victorious resurrection of Christ must be taken together, or we strip the gospel of its power, its sufficiency and its transforming grace.

Remember the Resurrection. Have you met Him? You know, because your life since cannot be the same as before. He is alive! Have you been revived?