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#TrustJesus

“If you don't know Jesus yet, but you're carrying a burden, He's inviting you to trust him. Not just with that burden, but with all of it. Your life. Because he'll never leave you and he'll never forsake you and he's worth following and he is for you and he gave himself so that you can be free. Not just of this hurt, but of all of your sin. If you've never trusted him, I'm gonna invite you to trust him right now.”

#TrustGodsPlan

“You need to trust the dream giver more than the dream. Some of us put our hope and our confidence in what we want. Man, if I get that, then I'm gonna be satisfied. If I receive my dream to come to life, then I will be fulfilled. We put our hope and our confidence in accomplishing it. We find our value and our identity in accomplishing this dream or not. But if we wanna truly have success in life, we need to trust the dream giver more than the dream, which means we trust God.”

#LiveTheGreatCommission

“The great commission assumes and requires motion, activity. Go. All Christians are sent ones by divine commission to manifest the grace and the truth of Jesus Christ in our everyday interactions. Some of us are sent by God and from the churches to manifest Christ, the grace and truth and the message of Christ halfway around the world in a cross cultural context. Others of us are sent by Jesus and commissioned by our church to go to our own families, into our own workplaces, into our own schools, in our own neighborhoods. To do what? To manifest the grace and truth and the message of Jesus Christ among the hurting and the broken and the hopeless. So go.”

#YesToGod

“Now, the word Lord's critical as well. God isn't just a good example. He's not simply just our cosmic best friend. He's not just, like, a deity that gives us things when we ask for him to give them to us. God is the Lord, which means that he's in charge. And following Jesus means, God, you're in charge. You are the master. I am your servant. And my answer to whatever it is you want me to do is yes.”

#NewIdentityInChrist

“God asked Jacob his name. God knows it, but God wants him to name himself. He says, what's your name, Jacob? Jacob is, it's Jacob. Deceiver. Heel clutcher. That's been his identity his whole life. And God says, I'm gonna change your name and your identity, and I'm gonna call you a new name, and that name is gonna be Israel, which sounds like wrestling with God. He said, I'm calling you that because you've wrestled with men and with God and you have what? You have prevailed, you have won.”

#RadicalGenerosity

“Some of you have done the research and you said, well, I've read the bible, pastor, tithing isn't in the new testament. It's not. You know why? Because the standard of giving in the new testament is the cross. You don't kneel at the foot of the cross and debate percentages. Jesus paid it all. I'll give 10%.”

#GodSeesTheUnlovable

“Just think about it for a second. The person that Jacob loved does not receive the blessing. It's the person that he despised. God sent Jesus through Leah, not through Rachel. The messianic line goes through Leah. And what that means for you and me is that God sees the unlovable and he pursues them and has a purpose for them. And that's really good news because all of us are Leah.”

#HungryForGod

“Is this, will you do whatever it takes to get God's blessing or will you sell your soul for soup? What's the posture of your heart? What are you hungry for? Are you hungry for God Or are you hungry just for whatever gives you satisfaction in the moment? See, the Bible tells us we're all hungry. Question is, what will we satisfy ourselves with? The Bible tells us that we should examine our heart before we take communion. believe a great way for us to examine this is we take something that we will eat. We go, what am I hungry for?”

#ChaseJesusFirst

“But humans aren't made to work like that. We can never be fully satisfied in somebody else. No matter how funny they are, no matter how much money they have, no matter how they make us feel, no matter how romantic they are, no matter how they just just feel like the perfect person. Perfect people can't fix us, only Jesus can't. And Jesus says, listen, if you come to me, I can give you something that'll truly satisfy the deepest lungs of the human heart. Which is why we need to chase Jesus first.”

#SurrenderLoveToJesus

“And so what I want you to do today is consider laying all your hopes and dreams for love and relationship at the feet of Jesus. And just say, Jesus, it's yours. That's honestly where you start when it comes to this moving towards having the relationship that really satisfies. First say, I want to please Jesus with this. I'm gonna ask for his covenant kindness and his goodness to give me his presence as I seek human companionship.”

#ObeyBeforeProvision

“We say, God, provide, then I'll obey. God says, obey, and then I'm gonna provide. And this is like one of the hardest parts of our journey because I think a lot of us have an idol, and it's an idol that most of us don't realize is an idol, but it's an idol of control. And we worship at the feet of this idol all the time. Like, God, I want you to go do all the things you said you're gonna do, but I need to control all the process and the timing behind it. And if I'm really in charge, then I'm willing to follow you. But god's like, I don't I don't really work that way.”

#ForgivenessOverGoodness

“All of us deserve judgment. I deserve judgment. You deserve judgment. There is nobody, the bible tells us, who's righteous because they're good enough. You know, sometimes people ask the question like, how good do you need to be to get to heaven? It's a trick question. Because a lot of us start going, hey, listen. How good do have to be? Well, I need to give some money. I need to go to church. I need to make sure I don't do bad things or look bad things or say bad things. If I do all that stuff, I'm gonna get to heaven. But the reality is is that good people don't go to heaven, forgiven people do. And there's a really big difference.”

#KnownByName

“And she's not just any woman. She's an Egyptian. She is not part of the line or tribe of David. She's not somebody who will be grafted into Jesus' line. She's somebody who has nothing to offer. She is a slave who's running from her mistress. She's pregnant, she's destitute, and she's alone. And the god of the universe knows her by name and calls her by name. That's Jesus.”

#DivineCovenantPromise

“``And what you notice is that God walks the path by himself, and when he does it, he's declaring something really important. I want you to hear this if you don't hear anything else. God walks the path by himself and puts Abram to the side because God says, I'm gonna keep both sides of this covenant. See, usually you'd walk with the party you're making the commitment with and you're like, hey, if we don't keep it, one of us will die just like these animals. God says, I'm gonna keep it for you, Abraham. And if you and your descendants don't keep this covenant, I will die in your place. This is one of the very first signposts what Christ would do.”

#GodsUnbreakablePromise

“Even though Abram tries to give away part of the promised land, God's like, no. No. I made the promise to you. And even though Abraham's willing to sacrifice land for peace, god's like, no. All this land is yours. And I'll give it to you and your offspring forever. You see, when god makes a covenant with somebody, he's never gonna take it back. And when we think about the goodness and the promises of God, we need to understand that his faithfulness is not dependent on our circumstances or our choices. He's always still gonna be faithful. And God promises to Abram after he gives the best to Lot that he's still gonna be with him and he's gonna be for him because that's what it looks like when we choose god.”

#FaithInAction

“``He believes God and takes a step of obedience. And that mentality that he has, where he follows the Lord, is what makes him a person of faith. See, faith isn't simply like agreeing with God. It's agreeing and acting on what God tells you to do. It's not simply having a good idea of what the world is like according to God. The Bible tells us in James chapter two that demons know that God exists, but they tremble. Right? They they have this idea of like, God is real. They have good theology. They just don't wanna follow God. Right? So you can have good ideas about God, good theology about God, but if you don't do what God wants you to do, you're not living by faith.”

#WalkByFaith

“``Now I think all of us are there too. Right? Like, we wanna know what the plan is so that we can approve of it. But God is not asking us to approve the plan. He's asking us to walk the path. He's not asking you to approve all of it. He wants you to walk it because we don't understand what god understands. And I think deep down within us, there's this thing where we don't really trust god and we want veto rights on god. Like, god, I'm willing to follow you except it needs to look the way that I want it to look. I need to live in the area that you want me to live in. I want you to to to provide financially the way that I want you to provide. I don't ever really wanna struggle. I just kinda wanna have it all work out really good for me. And here's the thing, god god doesn't work that way. God doesn't promise us that the path is gonna be perfect, but he promises this, that he's gonna be with us. And there's a big difference.”

#GospelUnites

“``We find in acts two is a reversal of Genesis 11 where instead of looking down and confusing languages, comes down and unites people. And every single person can hear what is being said in their own language, which is so interesting about the gospel. The gospel is a reversal of babble. Babel is us saying, we wanna find our own name, our own identity, our own self, we're gonna reach up to the heavens by building something, but in Christ, we find God coming down and living among the people so that we can have one name under heaven given unto men by which we can be saved.”

#ChooseChristNow

“``The bible points a straight line that the ark is Christ. If you want to escape the coming judgment, you have to give your life to Jesus. it's been thousands of years, two thousand years since Jesus came. But God's like, hey. For the Lord, a day is a thousand years. So it's only been two days yet to God. It's soon for him. But don't let that confuse you with the fact that it is coming.”

#JesusWins

“``Brothers and sisters, I want you to know this. I've read my bible forwards and backwards. I've read to the very end of the story. And cancer does not get the last word in the story of Jay Strother. Jesus Christ does. When all is said and done, I can sum up all the complexities of revelation in two words, Jesus wins. if you have accepted him as savior, then you have already won as well. To live is Christ, to die is gain. And so no matter where you're at today, you need to respond to the life giving gospel of Jesus.”

#LoveNotRituals

“Jesus frees you for freedom to be a blessing to the world. He releases you. He rescues you for the benefit of others. He's not forcing you to do this to earn your salvation. He frees you to do this, to demonstrate your faith. Paul affirms what Jesus said when he summed up all of the law in two commands. Jesus said, love God and love others. You see, loving others is that outward demonstration of loving God. However, if we love to bite and devour one another, especially those who are not following our recognized rituals to perfection, when we do that, we we are not benefiting others. We're trying to pull them in to being gripped by ritual. We're trying to pull them in to our own lives.”

#ChooseUnityNotDivision

“Every single one of us matters. It starts with each of us. If we wanna be a church that is full of unity, we have to pursue it individually and corporately. But we could also be someone who's full of disunity and bringing in disunity amongst one another. And then it spreads very quickly. Negativity spreads quickly. Disunity spreads. And so we can choose to either do be one who is full of unity or disunity. And so my question is like, where are you in this?”

#JudgmentAndMercy

“So there's two things we need to hold when it comes to the idea of the gospel. One, there's very bad news. There's judgment coming because people are doing evil things and have rejected God. And God will delay because of his mercy. Like he's waiting for people to repent. But one day is gonna come and that day will bring a place where God will no longer wait but will punish the wicked. And those who are righteous will find salvation if they trust what God said. That's the message of the book of the story of Noah.”

#FaithTakesWaiting

“And here's the thing I think that we need to hear today. Walking with God is not a quick fix or an easy solution. It's not the easy button. It's not like, hey, listen. I'm gonna just pray a prayer. Everything's gonna work out. God always makes his people wait for the right time. And God made no wait an extra seven days on that boat. I don't know why. Like, maybe there's maybe there's some kind of plate tectonics God was moving around or maybe God's, like, working on things that Noah had no idea that he was doing. Either way, Noah is sitting on the boat going, God, where are you? I need you to show up right now. And you might feel that same way.”

#JesusTheBetterAbel

“But Jesus, Jesus is the true and better Abel. He's what Abel was pointing to. He's the point of the story. Jesus is everything that Abel couldn't do. And then Hebrews chapter 12 verse 24 actually points to this. It goes back to the story of Cain and Abel and says this. It says, Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood which says better things than the blood of Abel. Jesus what Abel was ultimately pointing to and Jesus our hope.”

#FaceYourMortality

“but everybody in this room someday is gonna die and this is not a spoiler. Right? You're not like, oh, shocked about that. Right? And yet most of us most of us don't ever think about it. Death isn't normal. It's not the way that God created the world. Death should be the most insane idea. God created us to live in eternal bliss and community with him forever. Adam and Eve, because they sinned, brought death and all of us will die. And it's the most important thing that we have to reckon with is this idea that someday we will die.”

#KnowJesusNotThings

“``Because here's the secret that Paul's trying to get through to us. The temporary that you and I chase every day that the world says is gonna give us happiness, the little thing that pops up on your Amazon and says you gotta have this now and you're like, yes, sir. K? And you're like, I don't even know what I ordered. It just showed up in my house. Right? That's never gonna get you there. What's gonna get you there is when you and I go, yeah, we gotta live in the world. Yeah, we gotta eat. Yeah, we gotta have stuff. That's fine. That's not what's important. What's important is that I know Jesus.”

#SecondTreeReversal

“The lies that were said to one another get overturned. There are things that you've broken, you've stolen, you've lied about. There are accusations you made about God and his character. But in Jesus, there is a new way to be free from all of it. A new life, a new hope, a reversal, a going back to the way it always was meant to be, where we could be freely loved and we can know God and go back to Eden. That's what we celebrate in Jesus Christ, that the second tree is better than the first because Jesus said, come take and eat. My body is broken for you.”

#ChristAndChurchMarriage

“Listen, the greatest marriage is the marriage between Christ and his church. And if you're not pursuing Jesus, if you're just taking him for granted, you're missing it. You're missing the point. God wants you to be in an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ. Don't settle for anything else. And here's here's what I know. There's some who are here today. You're watching in a hangar or you're watching online or you're here for some reason, and it's really just because your mom wanted to go to church.”

#SabbathPurposeWorship

“So God created the Sabbath not just simply like, hey, have a break, have have have a time off, sleep in. That's not ultimately what the purpose was. The purpose was worship. So if you look in Exodus chapter 20, look at verse 10, it says this, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. So just look at that word to. It's not for the Lord, but it's to the Lord. Ultimately, the point of Sabbath is for you to connect with your creator, for you to have some time that you're not just working, but you're resting knowing God. It's a day for worship. It's a day to slow down and connect with God.”

#CreatedToCreate

“God has created creators. This part of what it means to be built in God's image is that we are to create. So when it comes to ruling the world, God has given us the opportunity to create, to create beauty, to create art, to create music, to invent, to discover things scientifically, to learn about the mysteries of God through discovering his creation. God is creating creators. And when you're creative, you look like Jesus. Isn't that wonderful? When you create a home, when you create bread, when you create a child, all those things are tied up in this beauty that God, the creator of the universe, created creators.”

#JesusIsGod

“"Jesus is God. He shows us what the creator is like, shows us his character, shows us how much he cares for us. Jesus came in the form of a human who's fully God and fully man. Not just half God, half man like Hercules, but he's fully God and fully man. Came, lived a perfect life, and gave his life so that you and I can have a connection to the creator. See, the problem is that all of us have a connection problem with God because we saw the creation, but we didn't wanna worship the creator.”

#ConnectWithJesus

“So here's the thing I want you to consider today. How closely connected are you to the Lord this morning? How connected are you? Is the idea of God just being a God that created everything just an intellectual thing? Yep. I'll send to that. I'll agree to that. It's better than just some of the alternatives. Well, the Bible said so and it's true for me. But rather, do you have a true connection with Jesus? Because, man, you can live in the intellectual thing the whole time. You can argue about all the things all the time. But do you have a connection with Jesus Christ? A personal relationship with God? Because the Bible tells us that same God that created everything put on human flesh became just like his creation in his form, not his essence, not his nature, but became a man and walked among us so that we could have a connection with God. That's what we're celebrating today when we gather together as a church, that connection with God. So I want you to consider, what does it look like for you to connect with Jesus today?”

#EyewitnessFaith

“He eats with them. So here's the thing. Jesus was somebody people saw, and they are so convinced that they saw him afterwards that the people who saw him were willing to die for what they saw, not something that they heard. Right? There's a difference. If you heard something, if you're like like brainwashed or thought of something or maybe just got this handed down to you, maybe you'd be like, okay. Yeah. I believe this because I heard this. But if you saw something and then you lied about it, you wouldn't die for that. Right?”

#GrowDontMaintain

“And one of the most dangerous things any church can do is become focused on maintaining something rather than growing the kingdom of God. This is true. See, churches are either growing or they're dying. There's not really like an either there's not a third option. There's no like, hey, we're maintaining. You're either like reaching people or you're slowly dying. And sometimes churches allow themselves to die off to this point that they can't ever recover. And so I've always been like, I never wanna be the pastor that allows our church to just gently drift off to heaven.”

#RecognizeYourNeed

“Before we go, I just wanna take a moment just to talk to you personally and just tell you that the most important thing you can do is to trust Jesus with your life. And I know that a lot of us have a lot going on. Sometimes we don't know where to turn. Sometimes we may feel overwhelmed. If you're feeling that way, it's because Jesus wants to get in the middle of those things with you. If you've never trusted Jesus with your life, it's very simple. All you have to do is tell him that you want him to take over, that you're trusting him with your story and your future.”

#InviteMoreToFamily

“The people that are walking through the doors of our church, the one who's coming today, maybe somebody came today for the very first time, That person might be your new best friend, person that you do life with. You're in their wedding with them. You're raising your kids together. We have to be thinking, how can we invite more people into our family? And if we are not thinking that way, we will not accomplish the mission of saturating Spartanburg, The Carolinas, and the world with the gospel. It has to be deep within us.”

#ConnectWithJesus

“But number three, I would just say this. You can read your bible all day long, but if you don't know Jesus, you're going nowhere. The point of the scriptures is Jesus. And so I wanna invite you to connect with him today. And so this is what I want us to do as we take a time of response. Would you just close your eyes where you are right now? Now I want you right now for everybody in this room just to take a moment and just tell Jesus you wanna connect with him today.”

#FaithStories

“One of my favorite things about this ministry is hearing your stories about what God is doing in your life through our ministry. And so every once in a while, we get messages from people who watch us or listen to us, and they just tell us about what God is doing in their story. One of those people is a woman named Shannon. She sent us a text message that I wanted to share with you. This is what Shannon said. She said, hey, pastor Mike. My name is Shannon. Thank you for your messages each week. I'm a Christian. I was saved at the age of seven, but right now, I'm so scared.”

“Now, if you can get to understand that we are now missionaries in our own culture. Okay? Several years ago, I had several of my my team pastors who were working with me. I said, I want you to I want you to skip church. I want you to drive around the community, and I want you to find out what people are doing when they don't come to church. It's part of your research. Monday morning, they come into me and they say, park. Whatever we build next has gotta have a dog park because everybody walks their dogs dogs on Sunday morning. Okay? Now, if you take a survey, you will probably find out I'm sure Spartanburg is a lot like national in its demographics. You will find out that 60% of the people will tell you that they are active members of the church. What do we know about religious surveys? People lie. Okay? They'll say, hey, I go to church every week. If we put a tracker on you, we find out they may go once.”

#RescuedAndRedeemed

“And I was able to lead him to Christ that next morning. And he and his entire family heard the gospel and believed. See, God takes moments that seem so scary and so so horrifying, moments that we're afraid for our life and turns them and uses them for his glory. And I don't know what you're going through right now. I don't know what kind of thing you're facing right now. It may be something where you feel completely overwhelmed or just without an answer. And here's the thing, God is the kind of God that rescues and delivers and takes these incredibly difficult moments and uses them to change people's lives forever.”

#TreadmillLaundry

“There are other things we do like this in our life too. Right? For example, some of us may have one of these in our houses. What is this? It's a treadmill. Right? What is that for? Running on. What do we use it for? Our clothes. That's what we use it for. It's not what it's for. Right? But we're like, it's it's open space. Those arms, man. We could put a bunch of clothing on those. Right? How many of us have clothes all over our treadmills?”

#TruthsAboutGodAndUs

“``Now this story is really powerful, and it's one that you may have heard before. You may never have heard it at all, but I think it was worth it for us to read through it because it carries with it some incredible truths about who we are and who God is.”

#PainToPurpose

“``You know, the areas of our life that are a mess, often we feel like we need to hide them and we need to keep them to ourselves and we need to just like soldier on. But those areas of pain are God's platform for his glory. God has given you this thing that you're dealing with, not for you to say I'm gonna be an overcomer, but for you to show that Jesus has overcome. That's what he's doing.”

#FaithInTheFire

“``And the fourth looks like the son of the living God. Get this, church. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were faithful, people saw the living God with their own eyes. God met them in the middle of the fire. And sometimes that's where you actually meet Jesus. Jesus meets them in the moment. He meets you in your moment of testing. There is something that is unlocked when you're like, I'm gonna be faithful. God shows up there because God's looking for people who'll stand for him when nobody else is willing to do that.”

“we can't really do that, can we? How can we really transform or saturate Spartanburg, the Carolinas of the world and still live within the world? And in Daniel chapter two, we see a way to do that, a way to move forward. You see, historically, the church has interacted with the world through a series of paradigms, like how we are gonna position ourselves against the world. I thought it'd be helpful for us to kinda introduce those today as we get started, but we're gonna do it with a boat edition of this. And you may go, what's a boat edition? We're gonna illustrate these four postures with different boats.”

#TestDriveFaith

“Which means that if we wanna be the kind of people who change culture, not simply endure it, we have to be willing to invite the unbelieving world to test how good God really is. We have to be willing to say, hey, come come join me in this journey. Come see the struggle with me. See what it looks like to follow Jesus. Come with me and see how good God is. And that's what it means to follow Jesus. It's not just us going on a walk. It's inviting people to walk with us to see how good God really is.”

#LetGoForNew

“There was a moment where every single person in that nation had to decide, am I going to stay with what I've known or am I going to embrace God's best and take a step of faith into the future? Here's the reality. You and I can't hang on to the old and experience the new. We can't do it.”

#bloodOfTheLamb

“``Three things that everybody needs to have victory over the enemy. This is what they are. Number one, the blood of the Lamb. Listen, you can't win. You can't try hard enough to beat Satan. He's so much bigger and scarier than you can imagine. You, you can't just go, all right, I'm just going to have that power, authority on myself, or just being a good person. You, you can't do that. None of us can. But Jesus can. See, the Bible tells us that Jesus, when he gave himself for us, offers us an escape from death, darkness, and the devil. And the way that he does that is by giving us his blood.”

#GodsPowerOverNumbers

“``Gideon raises up an army. God says, there's too many for me to save Israel with the thousands of men you have raised up to go fight this battle. And sends most of them away. Gideon's left with just a few thousand. God's like, that's still too many for me to free Israel. In the end, Gideon is left with 300 men. They sneak up on the armies of Midian in the middle of the night. Cry out loudly, holding a trumpet in one hand and a torch in the other. And the enemy is routed, not because Gideon is smart, but because God's power is great.”

#ChristmasMeansGodWins

“That person is Jesus Christ. Who was struck with the spear. Who is bruised for your transgressions. Who came at Christmas to give his life away so that he could crush the end, the head of the serpent. And here's what you find in the story of Christmas in Genesis 3. The true meaning of Christmas is this. God wins. That's it. Even though we sinned. Even though brokenness has entered into the world. Even though there's shame that's riding all over us. Even though we're afraid that we'll never be loved. Even though we feel like we're naked and we're afraid. God will win.”

#KnowGodNotReligion

“``It's one of the most dangerous things is to be near the things of God, but not really know him. To know a lot about God, to know the answers to the Bible questions, to have great theology, but not have a deep abiding relationship with God. It's one of the greatest dangers in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and in the South in general, is to be people who are surrounded by Christians. To celebrate Christmas, to attend on Easter, but not know the risen Son of God for yourself.”

#AppealToCaesar

“Paul says, listen, I haven't done anything wrong. And he appeals to Caesar because he's a Roman citizen. It's something he can do that Jesus wasn't able to do. Jesus wasn't a Roman citizen. Paul was. Paul says, I appeal to Caesar. And Festus says, all right, we're going to send you to Caesar because it was the right of every Roman citizen to have their case seen by the emperor himself. Now, you may not know who the Caesar was or even what Caesar is. You're like, why are we talking about salad dressing? Like, what is Caesar, right? Caesar was the title. It was not a name.”

#StartRightFinishRight

“You need to start well. You finish well by starting well. Every race that you ever run, you have to start it right in order to finish it right. You have to start with the right mentality, and you need to actually just start it.”

#JesusIsAlive

“The difference between Christianity and every other religion is that our Messiah, our leader, is still alive. And he still wants to move and he still wants to interact with you and he still wants to change your life. He's not somebody you just read about. He's somebody that you can talk to and has opinions on how you live your life.”

“Jesus says, truly I tell you that the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do. Full stop. You hear that? Jesus says, if you believe in me, that I'm not just a good teacher, that I'm the son of God. You will do what I do. And he says, then he will do even greater works than these. Because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do it. So that the Father will be glorified in the Son. And if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

“You know, one of the things that we find that's so striking about Jesus is Jesus could have lived his life any way he wanted. He could have been a master craftsman creating great art. He could have been a Roman emperor ruling the entire known world. He could have been someone who was a great soldier just with mighty feats of battle and bravery. He could have done anything. But you know what you find Jesus doing is he goes and invests his life with people.”

“``The Holy Spirit is alive and well and moves powerfully to accomplish God's plan and His purpose through His people. And my encouragement to us is to be people who embrace the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

“These are all critical parts of Christian doctrine. Now what many people don't think about is that Jesus actually spent quite a bit of time with people between His resurrection and His ascension, which means that for almost 40 days, Jesus taught the Bible, taught them how to interpret it in light of the events that happened. He met with people. He hugged them. He ate meals with them. He spent time with them, which is why we believe in the resurrection. It's not simply, hey, some people like went to an empty tomb. People actually saw Jesus and interacted with Him and wrote about it.”