Make a Fresh Start Series
Personal Resurrection
As we have been discussing in our new series, every now and then we have to make a fresh start. Sometimes we choose a fresh start.
• It might be a commitment to get our household affairs in order.
• It might be joining a health club or fitness program.
• Maybe we decide to get a new job or career, even go back to school to get better prepared for a new career.
• Maybe you decide that its time to start a family.
Sometimes the fresh start chooses us.
• You get laid off or fired from your job.
• The doctor tells you that you have a serious illness or need a major surgery.
• Maybe its good news – you’ve just inherited a ton of money from a long lost relative.
• Maybe it’s a note from your wife who’s gone off to Florida without you – The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.
When the fresh start chooses us it is much harder to adapt to it than when we choose the fresh start.
On the heels of Easter Sunday, I want us to think about the fresh start the disciples had. It was certainly not what they would have chosen, but the end result shook up the world!
Leading up to the crucifixion, the disciples were riding high and feeling pretty good about things. Jesus was going around performing miracles – healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding multitudes with loaves and fishes and so on. Just over the horizon however, was a storm of doom and gloom. As Jesus was arrested in the Garden and ultimately crucified, the disciples became cowards and scattered in hiding. Peter would deny that he even knew Jesus. With Jesus in the tomb, their faith was dead!
Three days later we read this:
John 20:1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!"
3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
On Friday things looked pretty bleak. Jesus their leader was dead. Now on Resurrection Sunday, the impossible had happened. Jesus had risen from the dead and was alive! Their faith had been resurrected as well.
It took awhile for it to dawn on them, but the disciples eventually recognized that they were being given a fresh start. Their faith in Christ was renewed and refreshed as they realized all that Christ had tried to teach them on the other side of the cross.
As He gave them a fresh start, He is giving us one as well. Maybe you’ve been on this walk of faith for awhile. Maybe you don’t feel the joy you once had for being a Christian. Remember when Christ saved you? You were bubbling over with excitement of your newfound faith. You read your Bible regularly. You went to church every time the doors were open. You were delirious with joy.
Now you’re more mature – you don’t have to act like a child about your faith. My friends, Jesus said that unless we had the faith of a child we would not see the kingdom. It’s OK to be excited about Jesus!
John 3:16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Whoever believes gets a fresh start! Earlier Jesus had told Nicodemus that he “must be born again”. He was talking about a fresh start, a new beginning. For every sinner the promise of a fresh start is given. The Bible says that, …if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Even believers need a fresh start. As we mentioned last week, Paul said:
Romans 12:2 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
I’ve been accused of being enthusiastic, I know you find that hard to believe. Why is that? Because I’m excited about my relationship with Jesus. Just ask me to take out the trash and see how enthusiastic I am. Jesus came that our joy might be full – are you full of His joy?
When we begin to understand the awesome grace of God, then we have a new enthusiasm, a new joy, a new hope. Some folks only look at Jesus as a ticket to heaven. They think that joy and peace begin when we get on the other side. They don’t make the most of the fresh start that Jesus gives us and they are really missing out on the blessing of joy here on earth.
How can we experience the joy of a personal resurrection? How can our faith be renewed?
1. Understand that faith has nothing to do with assurance.
Do you remember the story of Thomas? Even after the disciple had enthusiastically proclaimed the Lord’s resurrection, he doubted the resurrection. Then Jesus appeared to him and the other disciples. He had Thomas put his finger in the nail prints and his hand into His pierced side. Then Thomas believed.
Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
Sometimes we lack in faith because we are looking for assurance through some sign or witness that Jesus is alive and working in our lives. We are doubting Thomas’s.
If we want to experience the joy of personal resurrection we must understand that it has nothing to do with assurance. It has everything to do with faith.
When you were saved, did you already know everything the Bible had to say? Probably not. Did you understand fully God’s grace and mercy? Probably not. How much knowledge does a person have to have to receive salvation? Very little. You received your salvation by faith. Now as a seasoned believer, you want more knowledge and evidence that Christ is working in your life. That is robbing you of the joy Jesus wants you to experience through faith.
2. The second thing needed for personal resurrection is hope
When Jesus died on the cross, hope seemed to die with Him. But on the third day as He rose gloriously from that borrowed tomb, hope returned. As Christians we need to grasp the fact that Christ gave us great hope.
As a pastor with some significant youth ministry experience, I look to what we are doing with our young people as a glance into the future of our church. Tell me what our youth are doing on Sunday’s and I’ll tell you what the future looks like for this church. As I look at our youth I find hope for the future. I find that hope as I see the Lord working in their lives.
Isaiah 40:31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Hope renews us in Christ Jesus. Hope that tells us “joy comes in the morning.”
I mentioned in my Easter message what Paul said, “If we had hope in this life only we were of all men, most miserable.”
We experience renewed faith as we begin to contemplate the hope we have in Christ.
This past week I conducted the celebration of the life of Mary Jackson. Some of you here remember her though her health has kept her away from us for several years. At her service I told the family that if Mary could come back, she wouldn’t. She has come to realize that hope she had for so many years – that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
When you begin to shrink in your faith and joy, take time to think about the hope you have that the world does not possess.
3. The third thing we need to make a fresh start in our faith, is power.
I remember playing a football game when I was a senior in High school. We only had 22 players on the entire team and most of us played offense and defense. We were playing against West High school. It was a tight game and we had a chance to win against a much larger team if we could just last long enough to finish strong. I remember in the third quarter asking the coach to take me out of the game because I was completely exhausted. I had played every down and I just didn’t have any energy left. My legs were weak, my head was spinning, I could barely go from the huddle to the line of scrimmage. I sat out a couple plays, got some water and took some deep breaths on the sidelines. I was able to go back in with a new sense of energy and power. We eventually won that game with five seconds to go in the game and I was able to snap the ball for the winning field goal on the last play of the game.
Sometimes life beats us up a bit and we feel like we don’t have any faith left. We need a new infusion of power before we can go on. Look at what it says in Acts 1:8:
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
When we get weak, we must depend on the Holy Spirit to renew and refresh us.
Paul wrote to the Romans, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)
The Holy Spirit is our source of power. He is the one that fills us with joy and peace until it is overflowing. We will grow weary and faint if we try and live this Christian life in our own strength and might.
It is that power that enables us to be witnesses to the world of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is that power that we need to take the Good News to all nations and to make disciples for Jesus.
It is not by personal might and not by personal power, “but by My Spirit, says the Lord.”
4. Lastly, if we want to experience a personal resurrection of our faith, we need to see it through the eyes of a new believer.
There is no greater feeling for a Christian than to show someone else how they can be a Christian also. (Tell the “Randy” story preaching on the street corner)
As the disciples were having their faith restored after the resurrection, Jesus came to them and said:
Matthew 28:19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in [a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
I love the wide eyed enthusiasm of a new believer. I love the questions they ask. I love the excitement they show as they begin to learn of the love and mercy of Jesus. If your faith has gotten stale and you feel it needs to be resurrected, share the gospel of Christ with one who’s lost and spend time helping a new Christian grow in their faith. You will be blessed as you see faith through a new set of eyes.
Prayer: Lord God, renew our faith. Revive us again. Let us feel your Spirit as a refreshing rain. Wash away our apathy and condescending attitudes and resurrect our faith. Transform us by the renewing of our minds that we might know Your good and perfect will for our lives.
