What Now?

in three services for Easter. On Palm Sunday they had 16,728. What now? More than likely their attendance will go back to that 16,000 mark.

Easter 2002, Mattoon Christian Church. We had very good attendances for our various services. What now? We must go back to work. We must go on living. We must go on living for Christ, and hopefully, we will go on living even more passionately.

Most people are very passionate about many things: sports, hobbies, music, politics, etc. And hopefully, we can and will become more passionate about living for Christ!

Many times after Easter is over in our churches there is a letdown, but rightfully, there should be a stepup! We should be more excited about Christ and Christianity. We should be more committed and more passionate. And we should want to work harder. We should want to go forward even more. We should want to press on to greater heights in Christ!

PROP.- Let’s think together, reason together about living for Christ on this side of Easter. Here is what we should do:
1- Trust God
2- Judge not
3- Make disciples
4- Love always

I. TRUST GOD

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." Prov. 3:5-6

ILL.- When they wheeled a man into the operating room and raised his gown, the surgeon found a piece of tape across his stomach with the following word written on it: THINK!

Sometimes we don’t trust our doctors, especially, those who are going to cut on us. But life is a matter of learning to trust people.

ILL.- I have a bad back, that is, a missing disc. (and I know that some of you think I have something else missing too!) I went to Dr. James Kohlmann, orthopedic surgeon, about my back to see if he could do something. After checking out my MRI, he said, "I’m not going to operate on you. I could make you worse than you are now."

DO YOU THINK I COULD TRUST HIM? Well, of course, I do! He makes his living cutting on people, but he doesn’t want to cut on me! That sounds like he is an honest man and is very trustworthy.

Whether we realize it or not, we all live by trust in life or by faith. We must learn to trust our doctors, our pharmacists, our banker, the people we worth with, family members, all people, as many as possible.

ILL.- A young Christian father said, "One day, while my son Zac and I were out in the country, climbing around on some cliffs, I heard a voice from above me yell, ‘Hey Dad! Catch me!’ "I turned around to see Zac joyfully jumping off a rock straight at me. He had jumped and them yelled ‘Hey Dad!’ I became an instant circus act, catching him. We both fell to the ground. For a moment after I caught him I could hardly talk.

"When I found my voice again I gasped in exasperation: ‘Zac! Can you give me one good reason why you did that???’ He responded with remarkable calmness: ‘Sure...because you’re my Dad.’"

Brothers and sisters, that little boy felt like he could trust his daddy and that’s why he jumped into his arms.

I think we can trust God as our heavenly Father too, but of course, this doesn’t mean we should go jumping off cliffs to see if He will catch us!

ILL.- A man went shopping to buy a gift for his wife. He picked out a very pretty sweater, but after looking at the price tag he asked the saleslady if she had a more expensive sweater.