Resurrection Power Series

Well, I’m gonna be honest with you...I’m not doing that good. I am really sore. Here’s the deal. Sherry decided that we needed to get in shape. I told her, "I’m in shape...round is a shape." But she didn’t feel like that was the right shape so she has started us on an exercise...we’re exercising an hour a night. And for all you exercise freaks, I think you’re insane...okay? There’s nothing fun about it. There’s nothing enjoyable. It’s just a lot of pain.

So I just thought I’d open up by whining. Doesn’t that make you feel better? In fact, why don’t you just turn to your neighbor and just whine...just for a minute, just a little bit. That’s good...enough whining, enough whining.

You know, we are kicking off a brand new series called It All Begins With One. And we’re going to take a look together as a church, over about the next six weeks, at the first few chapters of Acts.

If you’re not in a Life Group, right now is the time to get into a Life Group because everyone in Seacoast over the next few weeks is going to study the same things on the weekends, and then we’re going together in our Life Groups during the week. So this weekend would be a great opportunity for you to find where you can get connected with a Life Group because this is going to be a lot of fun. We do this once or twice a year, and it is a great way to connect as a church. Everyone who goes to Seacoast for the next six weeks needs to be in a Life Group.

Before we dive into the series, would you guys do me a favor? Would you just pray with me real quick?

Father, I thank You. What an awesome opportunity to be both with this congregation here and with the congregations that are at other campuses or joining us on a podcast or on the Internet. We’re really so thankful for all those who have gathered wherever they are. Lord, I pray that right now, You will speak through me, Lord, that You’ll use my words tonight to convey Your truth. Lord, I just thank You for it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

In 1939, a guy named Leo Szilard...a Hungarian...they described him as kind of eccentric, kind of a charming little guy, and he had fled Hungary, he was a physicist, and when the Nazis began to take over Europe, he fled to America. In fact, he started working as a researcher at Columbia University.

In his research, he realized that a process that some of his colleagues were developing, called nuclear fission, he realized that if they took that process and they applied it to uranium, that theoretically, it could set off a potentially unbelievably explosive chain reaction. And as he began to think about this, he began to think about the implications.

So he went down the hall, and he talked with his friend, Eugene Wigner. Eugene was also a Hungarian physicist, and as they talked, they began to realize this was a lot bigger than the two of them. It was bigger than Columbia University. So they knew they had to share this with someone else. They decided the best person to share it with was another Jewish refuge from Europe named Albert Einstein. They had heard that Einstein was in New York where they were. In fact, they had heard he was vacationing in a cabin on a lake in upstate New York.

So without any further preparation, the two of them jumped in a car, and they drove up to this little town. They didn’t know where Einstein was. One of them had met him before; the other one had never met him. So they just began looking for Albert Einstein.

They saw a little boy walking on the road. They stopped, they rolled down their window, and they said, "Do you know where Albert Einstein is staying?" He said, "Sure, I’ll show you." So he showed them to the little cabin.

They walked up to the cabin unannounced, knocked on the door. When Einstein came to the door, they introduced themselves, and they said, "There’s something we have to share with you." And uninvited, they walked into the cabin.

They spent about 15 minutes explaining to Einstein this theory, this chain reaction theory that was based on work that Einstein had done about 30 years previous. After 15 minutes, Einstein realized that this could have huge implications. In fact, he realized that this could have implications that could change the course of mankind. So he and Szilard sat down and they wrote out a letter to President Roosevelt. They said, "Here’s the deal...there are some scientists working on something that you need to know about."