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He has risen. Now I am super glad that I've been doing squats before I tried doing that.

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Oh my word, that's shorter than I thought it was. Okay. Did you get a picture of it?

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That's okay. There you go. A man walks into a bar and it's empty. And it's just him and the bartender.

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And he sits down and orders a drink and he hears somebody whisper, I like your tie.

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And the man looks around but doesn't see anyone. That color looks nice on you.

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And he asks the bartender, excuse me, but are you speaking to me?

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And the bartender rolls his eyes and says, no, sorry about that. It's the peanuts. They're complimentary.

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You're welcome. This morning we have the joy of hearing more than peanuts.

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Fortunately, it's not the bar that's empty but the tomb.

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And the messengers of God are yelling it from the hills that he has risen.

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He has risen indeed. Hallelujah.

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Now we have been spending the last several weeks preparing for this day.

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We celebrated Ash Wednesday as we acknowledged that our bodies are merely dust,

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that we're just atoms that are bonded together that can easily separate and become nothing.

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Even as we know that someday these bodies will turn to dust and become nothing.

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Not because we're trying to undercut anyone's self-esteem, but rather because we know our insecurities.

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We know our struggles. We know our weaknesses and we know how often that we feel like we are incapable of handling the things that are in our lives.

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But more than that, we know that we're constantly being controlled by and conformed to the world around us.

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How often do we make our own decisions, but rather than actually making our own decisions,

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we're just doing and thinking exactly the way we've been trained to do and to think by the commercials and the celebrities

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and the marketing campaigns we're not even aware of.

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And even if we can get past everyone else's poor influences, how do we get past our own sin nature that keeps dragging us down?

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How can we discover a new perspective and realize that maybe the way we have looked at the world doesn't have to be the way that we continue to look at it?

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So with the season of length that we've been going through, we've been spending time sacrificing certain things to try to break our typical habits,

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maybe fasting for one day a week or maybe giving up something that we're obsessed with or trying to replace one habit with another.

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But then as we moved through length, we came to Holy Week.

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We were beginning with Palm Sunday where many people waved their palms in anticipation of the coming Messiah.

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But while Jesus did come to Jerusalem, the people had expectations that did not meet what he had come to do.

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So as he celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples, originally instituted to celebrate what God had done

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in bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt and foreign conformity and slavery while saving them with the blood of the Lamb,

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Jesus instituted his new covenant supper, celebrating what he would do the next day.

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And with that, we came to Good Friday where Jesus would allow himself to be arrested and taken to the cross of Calvary.

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This was so different from what people expected of the Messiah, being surprised that the Messiah would be killed at all,

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since their view of resurrection did not include the Messiah rising in the present time.

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But the issue for the Messiah was that fighting the authorities like a military leader, it would have distracted

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from the message of hope and forgiveness and transformation of each person because of God's Spirit.

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And people, they would have been so focused on military warfare and losing their lives that they would have forgotten about the kingdom of God,

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which these thousands of years later we know is exactly what would happen.

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So instead, Jesus allowed the leaders to do exactly what they thought they were supposed to do, to kill a false prophet

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who was trying to pull them away from worship of the one true God and to claim himself as the Son of God with God's authority and divinity for himself.

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And if the leaders had been correct about Jesus, then this would have been the right action to take.

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So then, how could Jesus prove them wrong?

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And that is where we find ourselves today.

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Today is when we celebrate that Jesus took everything and flipped it on its head.

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Whereas a false Messiah would have stayed dead, Jesus rose to life.

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Whereas a false Messiah would not have been able to predict his resurrection, Jesus was raised to life by his Father in heaven,

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who had declared, this is my Son in whom I am well pleased.

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Whereas a false Messiah would have been unable to revive after such a terrible torture and execution on a cross

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with a spear to the heart and lungs to boot.

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He was healed and brought back into his perfected body as the first of all those looking forward to the resurrection to come.

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There are so many of you today that are coming from many different backgrounds, many different perspectives.

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I don't know all of your backgrounds and all of your perspectives.

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Some of you, you may have grown up in the church and you've maintained the claim of saying you are Christian because that's how you see yourself as Christian.

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But maybe faith also has been just a thought or an idea.

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It's just something that you express because you're supposed to.

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But it's not necessarily something that actually changes you.

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Or maybe for some of you, maybe you've come here with the perspective of wondering why all these Christians have to make such a big deal out of this narrative

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of someone coming back to life, something that in your perspective clearly couldn't have happened.

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And there may be some of you that are still recovering from the pancake breakfast.

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I feel you.

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Well done, by the way.

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But whatever place you may find yourself in, this is where you need to be.

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Every year we come back to this question about the resurrected Jesus.

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If you have never questioned the idea of whether Jesus did or did not rise from the dead,

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if you've never questioned that, then it means that you have never placed yourself in the position of the disciples.

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Who found themselves doubting and questioning what was being spoken plainly to them.

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We see Mary and other women as well, according to the other Gospel accounts,

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being told that Jesus is no longer in the tomb, but even so,

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she cannot see in front of her that her Messiah is right there in front of her.

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The women go to tell the twelve, and they still struggle with the idea of believing without being able to touch and see for themselves.

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They're even so focused on other things, they're just worried who actually reaches the tomb first.

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And just in case, John made sure he wrote it down twice in his Gospel, I won.

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But you see, Jesus didn't leave it at that.

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He appeared to the rest of the disciples so that they would be a testimony to what he had done for those of us who are not able to see it for ourselves.

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But you see, our own responses to this resurrection, in so many ways it's more revealing about us than about what happened.

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In our responses, a perspective on what we think of how God will or will not work in the world today,

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we end up seeing more of what we expect.

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Just like Mary, why is it that we struggle to recognize Jesus, who he is, what he is doing,

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even when we know he is right in front of us?

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Why do we struggle to believe that he is present in our world today?

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Is it too amazing to believe?

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Is it too amazing to comprehend?

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You see, the idea of something being unexplainable, inexplicable, that's not something new.

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That's not only the resurrection.

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This is not different from other things that we cannot explain.

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But that can open our eyes to the possibility of God working outside of our understanding.

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We have theories about everything.

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We have theories about the universe coming into existence with a large bang.

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But we can't explain where that bang came from.

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We can't explain how it turned into matter and energy.

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We can't explain anything, and yet we know that there had to be something because everything exists.

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We have discussions and views on how creation could come into being into everything that we see today.

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And many people would say that it requires us to view the world from a very naturalistic and evolutionary point of view.

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But even if that is true, even understanding how everything could have shifted and developed into what we see today,

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it still requires an embrace of so much that is unexplainable.

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Things that we still don't get, but we know that something had to happen.

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So when you have people who witnessed the brutal, bloody, terrible death of an individual,

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and then within a few days see that same individual being healed and alive,

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even if you can't explain it all,

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instead of discussing the explanation,

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some people would rather focus on saying, no, that couldn't possibly be real,

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and ignore the thousands of people who saw it for themselves.

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And yet just because we can't explain it doesn't change when we see what has happened.

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But what has been one of the biggest reasons for believing that Jesus truly did rise again?

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Those people who were willing to give up their lives because they saw something amazing.

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That was the reason that so many people believed in Jesus rising from the dead.

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Would it make sense that all this stuff would have just been made up

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when people are willing to give up their lives for it as if there were no reason to do so?

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The reality of a risen Messiah stands out in so many ways,

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but we oftentimes bulk at the idea.

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We struggle with God working in the world around us,

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because when we look at the world around us, it's so much easier to treat it as if it's godless, mundane,

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just what everybody else sees about it,

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as if we are supposed to perform within and live up to all of the worldly expectations around us

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that distract us from the gospel.

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Our goals of success, they oftentimes mimic what the world sees as success.

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And then we wonder why the world doesn't believe in a risen Messiah.

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When the world needed to hear that Jesus had risen from the dead,

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the way for that testimony to make its way into the world was not about the miracles,

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it was about the transformed lives of the Christians themselves.

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If the resurrection is real, then doesn't that require us to respond accordingly?

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If the resurrection is real, then what does that say about the way we're viewing our life right here and now?

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Because maybe that's why we doubt and struggle, because we're afraid of what it means.

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Maybe we doubt and struggle because we're afraid of what a risen Messiah means,

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because this is the time when that changes everything.

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Now, maybe to be honest, I don't know where everybody's coming from.

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Have you taken time to pause and to say, God, I'm broken.

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I have failed, but you have done everything to forgive my sins, and I am so grateful.

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I want to be your disciple and to follow you in gratitude.

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Have you?

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If you haven't, take the time now.

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Talk to Him now.

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If you've been baptized in Christ, take a moment to remember that God has called and marked you,

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and that Christ's salvation is yours.

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And frankly, if you haven't been baptized, what are you waiting for?

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The day is now.

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And knowing Christ, don't you want things to be different?

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We struggle with what it means, but don't we want it to mean things are going to be different?

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And we have so many opportunities now, not just to become whom God has called us to be,

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but to start seeing what God can and will do through us in this broken and fallen world.

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We are meant to be the change that we keep wanting to see in the world.

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Man, I wish the world would change.

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We're meant to be that change.

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It is now time for us to get off of our tails.

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It is now time to stop obsessing over the things that aren't important.

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It is now time to start discovering what it means to live our lives knowing the resurrection is real.

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And not only this up here, but that it changes everything, especially us.

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And this also needs to change our life here at Christ's Memorial.

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This is now a new season, not just in the church's yearly calendar, but also here.

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We have seen a lot of changes and shifts since I got here in 2019.

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Has it been that long?

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I really need to pray for y'all putting up with me that long.

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Yeah, yeah, there you go. Thank you, brother.

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But while our mission is the same, the way that we do that mission is growing and changing.

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We are growing in our relationship with God in discipleship.

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Our relationship with one another is growing as we care for one another.

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Our relationship with the world around us must change in our outreach and in our mission.

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We have many people already involved in these ministries, but we need to be more deliberate.

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We have not always done it the way that we should.

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We have not always coordinated and trained one another.

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We just sometimes would hope that people would figure it out.

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But instead of just hoping that people will figure out the mission of God, we as a church must be a team.

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We must support and encourage one another even at the times when, believe it or not, we don't always agree.

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We must ask how God's new life for us in Christ is lived out within us individually and within us as a community.

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By God's Spirit, we are seeing not just new faces in our community, but also a renewed sense of vision and purpose with compassion and understanding.

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That is what resurrection means.

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With this, it is time for us to build on these things and move forward as a community.

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And if you are wondering about anything going on, not just here at the church, but also if you just want a few minutes to talk and to pray,

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and to maybe see how God is moving in your life, how God's moving in our lives together, come find me.

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You can email me lcmspaster at gmail.com.

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Yes, I got lcmspaster at gmail.com over 20-something years ago.

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I was just that much on top of it.

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So feel free, write to me, get ahold of me, come by.

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I love coffee. I'd love to have some with you.

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But more than that, I said that's just who we are, because that's who God has resurrected us to be with his Son.

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But I don't know what you see in yourself right now.

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I don't know what you wish to see in yourself right now.

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Or wondering how and when to be involved in the proclaiming of the Gospel and united in Christ for His purposes,

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but I am telling you today, the time is now.

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Let's go. Let's do it.

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Hallelujah. He has risen.

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And because of Jesus Christ, you are now risen in Him. Hallelujah.