First, we asked God bless our attendance for Easter Sunday...not just with numbers but with names, names of friends, coworkers, loved ones, and neighbors who needed to hear the message of hope we have in Jesus. Well, not only did we have the largest overall attendance in many years, both services were full with many guests who had been invited to come by those who regularly attend our church. What we saw Sunday morning was something that God clearly was blessing.
Secondly, we asked God to speak into our hearts in deep and powerful ways. Each week, God faithfully spoke through our Snapshots of a Savior series messages that would shape and mold us more into the people that God created us to be. For our Easter Sunay message, I sensed that God wanted me to preach the scandal of the Gospel message with full impact. In the days preceding Easter, one person from our leadership team saw my outline and commented that I wasn't planning on "holding back" for Easter...I honestly never considered that the message might be a bold one...it just seemed to be what God was laying on my heart.
So as we turned to the last page of our Snapshots album, we found Jesus walking those final steps to His death on the cross. In order to fullfill His mission, Jesus had to overcome...overcome His human frailty and fear, overcome the torture of the cross, overcome the evil schemes of Satan, overcome the power of sin and death, and finally overcome the grave. Walking through this with Jesus, was certainly a powerful message, but God saved the best for last as we looked at Revelation 12:10-11...
Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
Even though Satan thought he had won the battle as Jesus hung on the cross, Jesus had won the battle before time began. From the very beginning of time, it was Jesus' mission to invade His world and redeem His people. Yet, when he came to earth as a human, 100% God and 100% man, He would face the final steps with the power to overcome both death and the grave.
So since Jesus has overcome, Revelation says that we also can overcome by the blood of the Jesus and the word of our testimony. God led 13 amazing people from our congregation to share their testimony of how they have overcome different struggles through Jesus.
And then we celebrated that through Jesus, we have and can continue to overcome!!!
Honestly, I had no clue how this would speak into the hearts of our people, but I was trusting God that He would be faithful to speak deeply into our hearts. Again, when we learn to trust God, He will work miracles that we could never take credit for. We will never know the true impact that these testimonies had in the lives of both those who shared and those who were there in attendance that morning...but may we all learn that Jesus died on the cross so that we could have life, real abundant life!!
What an awesome Easter weekend !!!!!(Good Friay Tannenbrae service was amazing as well!) As your pastor at Downtown Fellowship, I am both very humbled and very grateful for what God is doing among us...may we continue to ask Him to come among us and work miracles we could never take credit for!!!!
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