The Day Between | Easter | Pastor Adam Bishop

You've recently retired, man, you're looking forward to this new season of your life, it's not what you thought it would be. We have expectations for things, we then get disappointed and here's what we oftentimes do, we turn on God, we begin to blame him. And here's what I want you to know, I wanna free you up for a second. That's a perfectly normal thing to do. I hope you can see today that God's actually big enough to handle that when we do. Start to blame him for maybe some things that we just didn't read correctly along the way. So when we find ourselves in that space, here's what we have to remember, what does the truth of the resurrection show us? So if you're taking notes jot this down. Resurrection Sunday reminds us God's still working even when we can't see it. [00:38:05] (48 seconds)  #TrustGodInSeasons

And you're like, God, what are you doing? Just show me the way. Just show me what to do. And if he showed you what to do, you wouldn't have to walk by faith. God is saying, will you trust me? Do you trust that I'm continuing to work in your life even when you can't see it? Do you know that when you're stuck in the emotion of Saturday, Sunday is still coming? And will you keep moving forward to that? That's what God calls you to do in these seasons when your faith gets tested. There's a second thing I think we walk through when we're in these day betweens. It can then feel like, well, guess I let God down. So we condemn ourselves. This is the opposite of the first point. [00:40:37] (44 seconds)  #WalkByFaithAlways

you're gonna begin to experience that even more because obviously the resurrection is something we can celebrate every day throughout the year. We don't have to wait to Easter to celebrate the resurrection, but I love getting to Easter because it it really focuses our heart's attention on what everything is about. I mean, Paul said it accurately in the New Testament that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, everything we believe is foolishness. Everything about our faith hinges on the resurrection, and yet there's no resurrection without Good Friday. That if Jesus doesn't go to the cross, and let's just make sure we're all on the same page, no one sent Jesus to the cross, no one put Jesus on that cross, he chose willingly to go to the cross. [00:28:53] (39 seconds)  #CrossThenResurrection

Well let me just encourage you for a moment. There will be a day in your life where you stand before God and and the conversation may not be verbatim what I'm about to about to say, but it will go something like this where where God will ask you why he should let you into heaven for all of eternity and in that moment you're gonna have to make a choice based on the choice of what you did here on earth. You'll get to then describe what you did and in that moment you're either going to give an account of your performance or you're going to give an account of Jesus's perfection. It's your performance versus Jesus's perfection. And we believe that Christianity teaches that the only way you will spend eternity with God forever in heaven is that you have to have come to a place in your life where you received by faith the free gift of salvation which was Jesus's perfect performance in your place. [00:43:31] (59 seconds)  #FaithNotPerformance

experiences where nothing as is as we thought it would be, it feels like God's abandoned us and we're not sure where to turn next. And ultimately, when you walk through these types of experiences in life, there's something significant that happens. It's actually our big idea if you're taking notes today that you can jot down. The day between is where your faith gets tested. It's where your faith gets tested. And we've said this before here at New Hope, a faith that hasn't been tested is a faith that can't be trusted. And church, I wish that there were different ways that God could grow our faith. [00:31:54] (36 seconds)  #DayBetweenTests

And I'm telling you, that deep longing that you've sensed in your heart for the entirety of your lifetime, that is a risen savior calling out to you. Saying he went to the cross for you, saying he defeated death for you, saying that eternal life is in front of you right now. Because see, if you choose to receive Jesus Christ, here's some good news for you. This is the closest to hell you'll ever get. If you receive Jesus as your savior, you no longer have to fear death. You're promised eternity with God. And I do look forward to that. But God's not done with me yet, and he's not done with you either. So what that means is that for the rest of the time he gives you here on this earth, you get to have hope. You get to have purpose. You get to stare down impossible, not in your own strength, but in his strength. [00:59:15] (53 seconds)  #ChooseEternalHope

Many of you have come to a place in your life where you've recognized that. There's nothing I could do to get to God, Jesus came and accomplished it for me. You've placed your faith in a risen savior. You asked Jesus to be your personal Lord and savior. But some of you have have never made that decision and my concern is that some of you who have never made that decision, you're actually really really good people. Like you do a lot of really good things. In fact, I hope I can say this, I've met some non Christians who are nicer than some of the Christians I know. It's just true. There are a lot of really good people in this world that do really good things and you may be one of those really good people and the idea that Jesus would have to do something for you when truthfully you could look at a lot of good things that you've done can be a little challenging. [00:42:37] (54 seconds)  #GoodPeopleNeedGrace

So if you don't feel like God's let you down, maybe you think you did something to deserve this and that's why you're in the place you're in, that's why God hasn't come through, that's why God hasn't answered the prayer, he's punishing you, he's out to get you. That's actually a belief system that looks a lot more like karma than Christianity. And we actually took a message about six weeks ago and we unpacked the differences between the two because karma's kinda worked its way into Christianity. And we used a little diagram, kinda did some drawing, it was all kinda fun. So if you weren't here for that message and you've ever wrestled with that, is God out to get me? Am I experiencing karma? Am I being punished? I would encourage you to go back and watch that message. I think it would be an encouragement to you because here's what the resurrection reminds us when we start to condemn ourselves. [00:41:20] (45 seconds)  #NotKarmaButGrace