Experience The Spirit In The Resurrection Series

Series: Experience the Spirit

Theme: The Body of Christ needs to learn to experience the Spirit in their everyday lives so that they grow spiritually. We can learn to experience true spirituality as we see the Spirit at work in our daily lives and activities.

As we learn to recognize the Spirit and embrace His Spirit spiritual growth will take place in our lives.

Over the last few weeks we have been learning how to experience the Spirit in various dimensions of our life. The intent or focus of this series is to encourage all of us to be intentional about our spiritual growth.

According to researchers America possess the world’s largest infrastructure for implementing spiritual growth and assisting people in their spiritual development. This nation has about 450,000 churches according to Answers.com. There are 1,000’s of para-church organizations in the USA as well. We have an estimated 3,000 Christian Schools in this country with this number dwindling every year. We have seemingly unlimited Christian products, resources, and even experts in this country. We have 100’s of Christian radio stations and TV stations in the USA. We have more Bibles than you can imagine in this country with close to a 100 translations and versions of the Bible available today. We have more than we need to grow spiritually in this country, yet “Spiritual Maturity” is highlighted as the number one problem among Christians today by the Barna Research group in a 2009 study.

Many Christians cannot define or have a very hard time defining what Christian Spiritual Maturity is or even looks like. Yet, many will say that they want to grow into spiritually mature Christians.

We have learned the importance of the Bible in our spiritual growth.

We have discovered how we need recognize and experience the Spirit even at work.

We experienced the Spirit through prayer, praise and worship a few weeks ago as God’s Presence showed up in that service.

We stressed the necessity of listening to wisdom from above to experience the Spirit in our decision making process of life.

Experience the Spirit through conflict: We also talked about the importance of working through the process of conflict so that we grow spiritually through the difficult dimensions of life. We also made the choice to forgive someone who had hurt us which opens the door to experience the Spirit.

Experiencing the Spirit through Service: The Lord desires us to use our gifts in service to Him and when we do that we will experience His Spirit in the midst of our serving.

Last week Pastor Brian talked about how to experience the Spirit through pain and loss.

Today we are going to learn how to experience the Spirit in the Resurrection!

Sermon: Experience the Spirit in the Resurrection

Introduction:

Today is the greatest celebrated day of the Church of Jesus Christ. The validity and the message of Easter is what set’s Christianity apart from all the other religions in this world. It’s a day filled with joy, it’s a day filled with eternal expectations and celebration. Easter helps us to see what’s on the other side of the death. It spiritually communicates the message of hope, the reality of victory over death in this life. It shows what we can expect on the other side of this life. Easter is a gift given to us so that we can experience the Spirit in this life here and now and it’s a tool for us to use so that we can experience the resurrection of Jesus and His Spirit which is attached to it.

Today I want to talk about the three different time zones of Jesus.

But before I do I would like to talk a moment about time zones

There are 4 time zones in the united states and about 40 time zones world wide. These time zones have a specified time in them.

The rope time zone of your life in comparison to eternity.

Hands on Illustration: The long rope – red tape on one end of it.

Chan’s thoughts on how we live our life.

We do not live our life with the right view of time and our existence on this earth.

Our perception of life is dwarfed by the here and now of everyday life.

This week many in our country walked, worked, drove, talked, ate and never thought much aboutJesus last week on earth. Jesus last week on earth prior to his death was filled with mile marker time zones.

Here is a brief chronology of Holy Week:

Saturday

Arrived at Bethany

John 12:1

Sunday

Crowd came to see Jesus

John 12:9-11

Monday

Triumphal Entry

Matthew 21:1-9; Mark 11:1-10; Luke 19:28-44

Tuesday

Cursed Fig Tree

Matthew 21:18-19; Mark 11:12-14

Cleansed Temple

Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46

Wednesday

Fig Tree Withered