Taking Resurrection With You

The power of the resurrection isn't found merely in the fact of it. Its power isn't that it happened once upon a time in history. The power of the resurrection is found in people’s lives and in the life of society. The power of the resurrection happens now and will keep happening until heaven crashes down on earth.

There are many people in the world who seem to know everything about the Bible and following Jesus and there are some who know very little to nothing about it. Now, the people who know it all and seem to have the best grasp of what happened and what's recorded in the Bible can sometimes end up looking nothing like Jesus and living in a way that doesn't reflect at all that anything they know has ever done anything to them or in them. For these people the resurrection may have happened—and they may understand all the complexities of the event and its context—but it doesn't happen. They often spend more time talking about Jesus and the Bible than they do living it and bringing restoration to the world around them. Then there are those other people, the ones who seem to know very little. At the same time that the ones who know a lot can look nothing like Jesus, the ones who know very little can look a lot like him. You don't have to know much to know how to give yourself to others and to God which may be what the Bible, in all its complexity, might be simply asking us to do.

See, it's not what you know that matters unless what you know actually does something in you. If your knowledge of the resurrection doesn't bring resurrection to you and to the world you find yourself in then who cares what you "know," who cares if it happened? The resurrection is a supremely powerful thing. It brings new life to death, hope to hopelessness, peace to calamity, but not unless you take it with you. Following Jesus is all about taking resurrection with you wherever you go—giving yourself away and lifting others up. The resurrection was never meant to be encapsulated in one point in history. It was meant to swim throughout history in every place, in every time, in every life. God didn’t just save us 2000 years ago; he saves us now and will continue to save us until the world is made right.

When someone takes resurrection with them something powerful happens. We’re drawn to these people. We want to know why they are the way they are and how they do what they do. The people who bring resurrection are not necessarily the people who know all the right things but they we still want what they have. They and everyone around them can’t help but be changed by the power of the resurrection.