Real Resurrection: Part III
New Life is Continual
Where can we escape God’s grace?
In God’s infinite goodness, we receive the grace of Christ’s connection, unity and witness beyond just the days we get it right. God’s continual guidance is not just for the times that our desire matches God’s will, intentions and design. No, the God that formed us out of the dust, breathed God’s own powerful breath into us to give us life and set us apart from all creation for relationship, connection and participation in God’s will does not forsake us when things get rough.
It doesn’t abandon us when times are tough. God doesn’t pull away when our hearts are hardened by another too long day and a list of things we still aren’t doing right.
Instead, God’s love, grace and presence shows up, willing to jump in with us in everything we face: the pain, the fear, the worry when we can’t sleep because something just isn’t right, the fatigue we carry, the drowning we tread, the dread.
Grace is there when we betray what we know is right, silence the opposition and when we are even the ones to yell crucify to the only King that knows that our name, cares for our burdens and will never ever change. Grace remains when what we think we know is dead, lifeless, unable to be resuscitated with a firm called time of death, washed, anointed and laid in a borrowed grave, even then God doesn’t disappear.
Despite all the ways we are unworthy of God’s grace…
Jesus rises from the grave.
The stone is rolled away and the lord of all the earth lives to tell the truth that we cannot cling to the old ways. We must be willing to let go of how we think things should be so that they can be God’s will, God’s way, God’s reign lived out through the ineffective yet greatest potential: you and me.
This is what resurrection brings: possibility. Potential and purpose to lowly fishermen, rejected tax collectors, outcast women and those who dare to dream in new life still breathing, still leading, still living today. This is resurrection. This is what Jesus brings, even to you and me.
Have you been resurrected too?
I remember my first Easter at the church plant, just a few weeks before, as we were preparing for the big celebration of God’s wonderful work of bringing something out of nothing again and again. Thinking about the power of Christ’s resurrection, his literal rising out of the old dead body and belief of how the Messiah would be into a new reality of shared hope, I walked into my office and proclaimed to anyone who would listen: I’ve been resurrected!
I realized I wasn’t the girl simply abused. I wasn’t the college drop out unsure of her future. I was no longer spending too many nights at karaoke, searching for connection and meaning. I was made new. I was healed, I was redeemed, I was a new creation, through Christ and invited into what Jesus continued to do. I was resurrected too!
That was several years ago now, and yet I realize resurrection doesn’t stop. It wasn’t over the first Easter morning, and it won’t end on April 5th this year. No, resurrection is continual. Resurrection is a repeated renewal of who we are and who God is calling us to be. Resurrection requires death, yes, but always includes a brand new life of renewed power, faith and collective community that makes all things new over and over again.
What new resurrection does Christ have for you?
Just as Jesus tells Nicodemus, in order to participate in what God is up to, you must be born again, how is God inviting you to be resurrected? What chains, previous piece of your life, vision, hopes and dreams might you release, refusing to cling to an old idea, but willing to drop and live new?
The world is different than it was 2000 years ago. It’s different than it was 20 or even 5 years ago. In our post-Christendom reality, the way we gather, operate and reach new believers with the life changing resurrection gospel of Jesus Christ has to also become new, or return to something far more archaic than what we did in 2002.
After almost a decade of fruitful, exciting, hard and beautiful local church ministry, this adult convert who was called to the church, felt a call beyond. My heart broke with compassion for the world unwilling to show up to our sanctuaries, unwilling to sit in our soft cushy seats, unable to connect to our powerful songs of God’s great love and uninterested in the perfectly prepared sermons we all preach each week. My insides were stirred with compassion for those who had good reasons to not show up, due to previous church hurt, religious rules that felt like walls or just bad press we Christians seem to get. And I wondered what it would be like to reach more women like me, those with wile and wonderful dreams, ambition falling off the shelves but lonely, needing authentic connection, encouragement and real relationships that would help them bring bold vision to reality.
With a fire in my belly God refused to remove, but instead confirmed God’s will, I left local church pastoral ministry in July of last year with a dream to build a women’s faith and leadership community. A space for women, emerging and established, to find encouragement, connection and accountability for their God’s sized dreams and powerful plans to bring them to reality. She Believes Community will launch this fall offering monthly gatherings for story sharing, co-learning circles for deeper conversations and practical tooling as well as every member receiving a 1:1 mentor as a fellow dreamer and believer for the journey. This faith community is centered on the love of Jesus that meets us in our wonder, joins in as soon as the steps begin and promises continued resurrection and new life again and again.
Where will your resurrection lead?
What wild and wonderful opportunity has Jesus inspired in you? What real resurrection does Christ have for you?
More so, where are you already seeing new life sprouting?
Where do you sense, see, taste and feel Christ’s resurrection making things new?