Well, good morning. If uh if you're here for the very first time, I want to say welcome, welcome to his hands. I've been part of this church for over ten years, and it's been a life-changing experience for me. I've never been around a group of people as authentic, as genuine, as loving, as kind as this group of people. And we meet every Sunday at 9 30 and 1115. So if you want to join us, we'd love to have you. What we're passionate about here is Jesus. We believe that we need someone, not something. And so for us, church is not a production because Jesus isn't a product. He's a person to be known. And so we just get together every week. We're not perfect, we don't have life completely figured out. I don't, no one here does, but we have a perfect God, and we just come to lean into Him and to know Him and walk with Him, and we'd love to have you with us. But today is Easter, and that's a big deal. So, like, let's talk about that for a little bit. It's a big deal because over 2,000 years ago, a man named Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died on a cross, and then got up from the grave three days later. An event that was so unbelievable that people didn't believe it. Like, if you've ever struggled to believe that Jesus actually got up from the grave, don't worry, you're not alone. Even his closest friends and followers didn't believe it at first. The Bible tells us that shortly after he died, a group of women went to his tomb. It's a few days later. They were going there to pay their respects. The men who followed Jesus, they were terrified that they were next. They thought, hey, if they came after our leader, they're going to come after us next. So they're in hiding, but the women were brave enough to go and they went and they showed up at the tomb and they found an empty tomb. The stone that had sealed the tomb was rolled away. No one was inside of the tomb. It was an amazing moment. And then one of them actually saw Jesus and had a conversation with the risen Jesus. And Jesus said, Go back and tell my disciples what you've seen. Go back and tell them that I'm risen. And so this woman goes back and she becomes the first person to deliver the good news, to deliver the news that Jesus is alive. And in Luke 24, 11 it says, But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn't believe it. Another example in history of a woman saying something to a man and a man saying, I don't get what you're saying, I don't think that's possible, and it turns out that the woman was right. Some things never change. Right? That's how my life works, like 95% of the time. Eventually, though, the men did believe because they went and they saw the empty tomb. And then Jesus appeared to them and he spoke to them, and they saw him, and they touched him, and they felt his wounds, and their fear turned into courage. And they began to go and proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah, that Jesus is the one, that he's the one sent by God to redeem us, to save us. They would talk about it in the open places, they would talk about it to anyone who would listen, so much so that it created this massive stir. And the people in power, they they tried to put a stop to it. They had tried to put a stop to it by killing Jesus, and that backfired royally. And so now they're trying to figure out how to stop Jesus' followers from telling people that he's alive, that he's risen, that he's real. And so these men, they they get together, they try to think of all kinds of things they could do. They've already had the disciples beaten, they've already had them thrown into jail, nothing has worked, and they decide that the only way to really silence the disciples for good is to kill them. And so they're talking about this with the disciples in the room. They've had the disciples brought in, they're in custody essentially, and we get to see this conversation in Acts chapter 5. It's very interesting. It says, one member, a Pharisee named Gameleel, who was an expert in religious law and respected by all the people, he stood up and he ordered that the men be sent outside the council chamber for a while, the men being the disciples. Then he said to his colleagues, men of Israel, take care what you are planning to do to these men. Some time ago there was that fellow Phaetus. Anyone remember Thaetus? Anyone know who Thaetus is? Of course you don't, because this is the only thing we know about him. That he pretended to be someone great, and about four hundred others joined him, but he was killed, and all his followers went their various ways. The whole movement came to nothing. After him, at the time of the census, there was Judas of Galilee. He got people to follow him, but he was killed too, and all his followers were scattered. So my advice is leave these men alone, let them go. If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even find yourselves fighting against God, and the others accepted his advice. They called in the apostles, they had them flogged, and then they ordered them never again to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go. The apostles left the high council, rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus, and every day in the temple and from house to house they continued to teach and preach this message Jesus is the Messiah. And here we are. Some 2,000 years later, proving Gamalel's point. That if Jesus is just a man, some flash in the pan, charismatic leader, of which there have been many, there will be many more, then his movement would have died a long time ago. That if his resurrection was just a hoax, if it was just some stunt, that it would have fizzled out by now. Because very few people are willing to die for something they know is a lie, but every single one of Jesus' followers was willing to die to proclaim the message that he was risen. And here we are as a result. Celebrating who Jesus is, reflecting on what it means to know him. That's what we do every single Sunday, not just Easter Sunday. We get together to reflect on who he is and what it means to know and follow him and how he changes our lives, and all of it, all of it is because of one moment, the moment that he got up. Our God got up. And that blows me away. Like to think that Jesus got up from the grave, it blows me away, not just because it's amazing and miraculous and like unprecedented, but because I have a hard time getting up in the morning from bed. Like he got up from death. I struggle to get up from sleep. I'm sure I'm not alone. It's not my fault, nothing is, right? Shift blame. I have four children. It's their fault, right? It's their fault. See, my kids have an uncanny gift for getting up at times that they should not. And it's their ability to get up when they're supposed to be asleep that directly corresponds to my inability to get up when I'm supposed to wake up. Like the two are connected, and they all have their own their own thing. You know, I've got four, my oldest is eight, my youngest is two and a half days old. So I've got that. Yeah. By the way, if you're wondering, hey, would it be stressful to be a pastor and have a child on the week of Easter? It is. It's very stressful. And God's got this amazing sense of humor because we're like counting down and they don't let you just leave the hospital. It's not like you have the baby and they're like, okay, cool, have a good day. Like they keep you there. It's sort of a prison for two days. And uh, but the food's way better, I think. I've never been to prison. I don't know. But my point is, we got discharged from the hospital yesterday. And if if if Eli had come 12 hours later, we would be there right now. So God is He is interesting. If anything else, perfect timing, depending on your perspective. I've got these four kids, and they all have their own way of getting me up at night. And they always get me up. It's never Megan. I asked her one time, why do they always come to me? And she said, You're the weak one. You know? Like, you're the sucker, and they know that, and she's she's right. My oldest Liam, he's not as bad as he used to be. But a few years ago, especially, he would come in our room almost every night and he would he would sneak in our room like a ninja. He would open the door so slowly that we couldn't hear it. He would tiptoe over to my side of the bed and just creep closer to my face until I woke up. He wouldn't say anything. I don't know how I woke up. I don't know if it was his breathing on my face or if God put some mechanism in me that that like alarms me when I'm about to be assassinated. I don't know what it is. But I would wake up to see a face in my face, and that is terrifying. It is creepy, it startled me, and every night I'd be like, What is what are you doing? And he would just say, I can't sleep. And I would go take him to his room, and we go through the whole routine, and and finally he'd go back to bed. My two-year-old Judah, he's a little less subtle. He just screams my name at the top of his lungs from his room, doesn't even get out of his room, doesn't even have the common courtesy to come into my room to wake me up. He just screams from his room. And now, now that we have a newborn, if you've ever had a newborn, you know that like waking up a newborn baby is punishable by death. Because if you're a parent and you haven't slept and someone comes into your house and wakes up your baby, like if the FedEx guy rings the doorbell, I want to open it and go, what is wrong with you? Leave the package on the doorstep and go. Why would you ring the doorbell? You should know. You know? Maybe we should put a sign on the front door. Someone suggested that. And I was like, that's actually a really practical idea. I hadn't thought of that. Judah just screams at the top of his lungs, and I'm I get into like, don't wake up the other kids' mode. And so I go into his room, and all he wants me to do is pick him up and put him back in his bed. That's it. That's the whole thing. He just he got out of bed on his own to scream my name so that I could come back in his room and put him back in his bed, which he is fully capable of getting back into. And we do this every night at about 3 a.m. My daughter Lily, she's the special one. She's my only girl. She's the chosen one, and she knows it. And so once she falls asleep, she's good. The challenge is getting her to fall asleep. Usually it takes about two hours, and it's a whole list of things. Things happen in her room, or she hears things. She has a myriad of excuses for getting out of bed, and she's very creative. We've had to make rules to keep her in her room. We've told her, for example, you cannot get out of bed unless you are bleeding. And so once we made that rule, she started picking her scabs so she could come into our room and say that she was bleeding. She had a scab on her chin one time for two months. We were convinced it's gonna like turn into this heinous scar. And she'll say, What happened to me? Like you picked a scab every single day for two months. That's why you have that scar. Thankfully, it's not there. But she does that kind of thing. Every single night, and by the time we get her to bed, one of the other kids realizes that it's his shift. And then he wakes us up, and this is every night. I have not gotten a full night's sleep in about six years. Okay? And with Eli, the newest, we just reset the clock, and here we go again. I have a hard time getting up in the morning. The truth is, sometimes in life it's hard to get up. Not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually. Sometimes in life, it's just hard to get up. As I prayed about Easter and thought a lot about Easter, Easter comes every year like clockwork. It's amazing. I'm going, hey God, what do you want us to talk about? And obviously, we're going to talk about Jesus raising from the dead. We don't have to be too creative. We're not doing a message about circumcision or something like that, although it is in the Bible. We could go there, but we're not talking about that today. We're talking about Jesus raising from the dead, but at the same time, I'm like, God, give me a new angle. Give me some something that just sparks curiosity and wonder and awe in me all over again because it's a story that I know. And every year I'm listening and asking God, what do you want me to talk about? How do you want us to approach Easter? And this year it's just two words. He just gave me two words over and over again. Get up. Get up. That's what I heard. And yeah. That's usually the two words I'm hearing in bed when I'm trying to get myself out of bed. But but I understood immediately what God was trying to say. We have a hard time getting up in life. Because life hasn't a knack for knocking us down. Life is really good at hitting us and knocking us down. Life has all kinds of ways, all kinds of strategies to put us down. And the temptation is for us to believe that we can't get back up. The temptation is for us to believe that there are things in this world, there are circumstances, challenges, failures, you name it, there are things that we can experience or things that we can do that will keep us down and we'll never be able to recover from them, that we can be knocked down and knocked out. That's the temptation. But the truth is that if you believe in Jesus, if you believe in the man who raised to life after being dead, if you believe in the one who got up from the grave, there is nothing you can't get up from. Because Jesus got up. Because Jesus got up, you can get up. There is nothing that can keep you down if Jesus is your foundation. Because he got up. And that's that's not just some like nice saying, something to make us feel better. This is truth. This is scripture. Romans 8 11 says the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you. The Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you. So the power that raised Jesus from the dead is the Holy Spirit. And if you've given your life to Jesus, the Bible says that anyone who confesses that Jesus is Lord, the Holy Spirit, God's actual spirit, joins with our spirit to affirm that we're his children. And so the same spirit, powerful enough to raise Jesus from the dead, lives in you, which means if there's anything that you're struggling with, anything in life happening to you, trying to keep you down, trying to convince you that you can't get up, that is lying to you because the power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, so you can get up. Always, every day, you can get up. But it's hard to believe that sometimes. It's hard to believe that. It's hard to feel that. And unfortunately, as a society, we we rely far too much on our feelings. If we can't feel it, it must not, it must not be. But there's a truth that is so much deeper and so much more real than what we may feel. And the truth is that the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead raises us to life every single day. I have a unique situation in my role here that allows me to see people and be with people as they go through very difficult aspects of life. It's not uncommon for me to be with someone, to be on the phone with someone, to be physically present with someone as they are going through a crisis. And I'm young enough that almost every time it's uncharted waters for me. I've never been in this situation. I've never been with someone that's in this situation, and I don't have the answers, and I don't have the words, and I don't have enough wisdom. When I'm in an awkward, tough situation, the only thing I've ever done as a person is like tell jokes, which is not appropriate in a lot of those situations at all. So I'm way out of my element. And every time I'm amazed at how God shows up. And I see a resilience in people, and I see a strength in people that does not make sense. I see people go through challenges that are unimaginable. Things I would say to myself, I hope I never have to go through that. I hope I never have to experience that. And I see them not only endure, but I see them do it with hope and with grace and with dignity and with peace and actual joy. And I go, how is that possible? Most of us know what it feels like to be knocked down. Some of us have had things happen in our lives that are the worst we could have ever imagined. And for many of us, we've never had an experience like that, but we can think of one. We can picture one. We can picture a situation and say to ourselves, man, if that happened to me, I don't know if I could get up from that. That one would do me in. But I'm telling you, I see people go through those very situations. And because of their faith in Jesus, because they've put their trust in the God who got up, they get up and they move forward and they conquer and they persevere. One of those people is a woman named Cheryl Yoder. Many of you may know Cheryl. She's been part of our church for a long time, kind of a foundational part of our church. I love her. Four years ago, Cheryl's best friend Susan was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And many of us knew Susan. Susan helped start his hands. There would be no his hands without Susan. Cheryl and Susan were exceptionally close, and so Cheryl basically put her life on hold when Susan was diagnosed with cancer so that she could be there for Susan. And she was there for chemo and she was there for doctors' visits, and she was by Susan's side pretty much every waking hour of every day. She was there, and that cancer did not go well. It did not go the way we hoped, it did not go the way we prayed. That happens. But Cheryl was there till the very end. And it's hard to watch your best friend go through something like that, especially if it's someone that you've admired, that you've looked up to, that you've been led by. But in the middle of all that, while that's going on, while she's with Susan every single day and dealing with that and trying to be strong for Susan, she gets news that her oldest child, her son Josh, has been diagnosed with brain cancer. And a very serious form of brain cancer. So it's like, here's Cheryl trying to deal with cancer and her best friend and work through that. And while that's all going on, if that's not hard enough, oh, your son has cancer too. If that's not a one-two punch that would knock you out, I don't know what is. But Cheryl got up. And Cheryl to this day has joy and a strength that doesn't make sense if it comes from her. I had a chance to sit down with Cheryl and talk with her. We do this thing called God stories pretty often. If you go here, you know that. You see them. We just sit down with people and we ask them questions and we hear their perspective and we learn from them. I had a chance to sit down with Cheryl a couple months ago and we talked about this same situation. And I asked her the most cliched question that like a church person can ask, to the point where when it came out of my mouth, I was like, why did I say that? That's such a cliche. I said, Cheryl, talk about how you gave that to God. You know? Like, give that to God. And I was like, oh, couldn't I not have thought of like a better, more normal way to say that? And I couldn't. Sometimes that's just the way it is. And I said, Cheryl, how did you, like, how did you give that to God? How did you trust God with that? And I want to show you what Cheryl said because her perspective here is powerful. And so we're going to take a second and watch Cheryl's response to that incredibly cliched question that I asked. And then we'll come back together and wrap up.

Being in it was harder to give it to him, right? And and I remember going, and this is funny, that's a great question because before that, I was probably, again, I was a lot more involved here. I was involved in teaching. I was my my personal study and prayer life, being part of the prayer team here, was I would say I was on a good path, you know, because again, everybody has ups and downs in life. But I was, I was, I was feeling pretty close to God at that time and pretty plugged in. When all this started happening, my prayer life weakened, my um, my personal study wasn't there. Um, I get I pulled back from here, so I wasn't wasn't as involved. So even though, so you talk about, you know, how did I give it? It's like actually, I was probably less close, you know, actively me doing something to be close to God during that. But that is the time that he carried me. And he did little things that I still saw him moving. And there's there was one thing that was actually it's it's it's um I looked at it as a little gift to from God to me directly. So when Josh got sick, um, I don't know if you know, but he these small sea celebrity in the Atlanta area and kind of the southeast, there's it's kind of well known around here. And uh so there was a magazine that wanted to do an article on him and his life and everything that you know he was going through. And so we needed some shots for this article, for this magazine. And this was the time when um his hair was just starting to grow back, so he had a little bit of like a five o'clock shadow, but where his scar is, I mean, it's and like the whole like there was like half of his head where there's no hair at all. So it was a pretty, you know, if you were to look at him, it's pretty awesome. So this was a setup shot. So it did set up, and I took this headshot of him for this article. And uh what happened? So it's in this magazine article. Then there's this thing in Atlanta where people try to get them to like just like you like you hashtag um, I think it's I LoveATL or something like that, and then you try and hashtag them, then they eventually, if you want to be discovered, and they publish your photos. So I never tried to do that. This was just the photo I took that was to go with this article. Well, they saw that photo and they asked if they could then take and publish it. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's kind of cool. You know, that was like wow, I never asked to be a published, but to me that was like God was kind of showing, he was giving me a little something, something. And then see, on top of that, what they do with these, the this this company that does this, uh, they have a mobile gallery. So they had actually printed my photo and had a little credit thing with my name and all, and had it hanging in this mobile gallery. And a friend of ours, Jimmy Kolkana, just happened to be at where this mobile gallery was one day, and there's my photo hanging in this gallery. I had no idea that they did it. Jimmy didn't know it was there, so he purchased it for me and brought it home, and now it's framed and hanging in my house. So to me, that was a little bit of God showing me I'm still here, I'm gonna give you a little something that is like, wow, I it's like that's a picture of mine. Got published, and a friend of mine actually saw it hanging and bought it and gave it to me. That would have never happened if I tried to make it happen.

Right. It's a little gift.

Yeah, it was a little gift. So so again, it's not so much in that I personally did not say, God, I'm giving this to you. It was like I was just, you know, he he took it. If I were to like to kind of whittle it down, you know, if you if you haven't dealt with a health issue, you know, a s a devastating health issue, if you haven't gone through financial devastation, if you you would, you know, if you haven't had, you know, really bad, you know, marital problems or your kids, you know, are you know problems with your kids, you will someday, right? The reality of it is all of us are gonna have are gonna hit it. If you haven't hit it yet, probably at some point you are gonna go through it in your life. So that's when that foundation that was already there. Again, I think that that's what carried me. So and that also to me gets back to the performance. So the performance bit. It doesn't matter how much volunteer you do at the church, how much how many days you read the Bible, because that didn't prevent any of this from happening, did it? True. No. You know, the rain falls on the good and bad, and it just it's part of this mortal life that we live. But that foundation and that strength that was there, that Holy Spirit living in me, again, that's what carried me through it. It had nothing to do with what I did or what Susan did or what Josh did. No, this it just is.

You're an amazing person. I really would recommend you watch the rest of her story. You can do that on our mobile app, on our website, because it's a great story. But you know, a lot of people would watch that and wonder how on earth can you go through that? Can you watch your best friend struggle through cancer, then right in the middle of that, turn around and watch your son go through the same and feel blessed. In the midst of that, to actually feel blessed. And to feel blessed by something as inconsequential as a photograph. And Cheryl, out of her own mouth, said that it wasn't her, that it was the foundation that she had, a foundation of a faith in Jesus and the Holy Spirit in her, giving her a power to find perspective, to find joy that she never would have had otherwise. Because if Cheryl would have gone through that and would have just said, you know what, I kind of give up, I'm done, I can't get up out of bed in the morning, I can't move forward, no one would have blamed her. But the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in Cheryl. And the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead can live in you. If you know Jesus, you have a strength, you have a resilience, you have a power in you that can't be put into words. It's the same power that Paul spoke of when he wrote 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 8 says, We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed but not driven to despair. We are hunted down but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. In other words, we get knocked down, but we get back up because Jesus got up. So today is about getting up. The biggest tragedy that I I often encounter isn't so much when I talk to people who don't know Jesus, that breaks my heart because I'm like, I just want you to know what I know. It's when I talk with people who do know Jesus, but they live like they don't. And I mean that in the sense that they don't understand the gift that they have and they don't lean into it, and they don't rely on it. They're still trying to live life on their own strength, they're still they're still trying to get through and power through by their their own creativity, their own intelligence, their own resources. They're not leaning into and relying on the power that they've been given. It's like having a lottery ticket and you've won, but you put it in your pocket and you never go cash it in. That doesn't make any sense. If we believe in Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit, and we've got to believe that. If you've given your life to Jesus, today needs to be a day that you're reminded of that, that the same power that raised him from the dead, it is in you. It is just as powerful. We get together at Easter not to celebrate what Jesus did 2,000 years ago, but to celebrate what he does every single day. Because he raises things to life every single day. And so if if there is some part of your life today that feels lifeless, if there's some aspect of your life and you feel like it's dead, it's a relationship, it's some area of your life that's just dead to you, it's lifeless. There's no hope. You need to look at that and tell it to get up. In the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, it's time to look at that part of your life and say, get up. And believe that it can, and believe that you can because Jesus got up. That's what separates him from all the rest. He got up. But we've got to believe that. We've got to trust that. We've got to lean into that as his people. If you're here today and you've never given your life to Jesus, you've never crossed that line of faith where you've said, I believe. I put my faith in you. Jesus, I believe you are who you say you are. And I want you in my life. If that's never happened for you, number one, I'm so glad that you're here. And I would encourage you to listen to Cheryl's wisdom. If you're here and you don't know Jesus in the sense that you haven't made that decision, you have to put your trust in him. I hope that your life is really good right now. I hope that your blessings are massive and your problems are minor. But problems have a way of happening, and major problems come. Like Cheryl said, like scripture says, it rains on the good and the evil alike. There's nothing we can do in this life to prevent tragedy. There's nothing we can do in this life to prevent hardship from happening. And so ask yourself when that happens, if that happens, if the hard times come, when that day is here, whose strength are you going to rely on to get through? Is it your own? Are you gonna rely on what you've got, or do you need something greater? Do you need a power greater than yourself to get through life? And I would just recommend Jesus to you. Because he works, because he's real, because he's alive. Because when you know him, you have a power inside of you that nothing can stop. That no matter how hard life tries to knock you down, it cannot knock you out because you serve the God who got up and he's gonna get you up, he's gonna lift you up. Today is a day to get up. And if you are here today and you want to make that decision, if you're like, you know what? I'm ready. I want to I want to follow him, I want to know him. I'm I'm deciding today to follow Jesus. I would love just to talk to you. Once we're done, I'm gonna hang out right here in front of the stage when it's over. This is my flight attendant gesture right here. You know, not so much over here, more over here. But if you just want to hang around after the last song, I would love to talk to you, I'd love to pray with you, I'd love just to hear a little bit of your story so that you can share this moment. I would encourage you not to make that decision alone. Like make it, but then let someone celebrate it with you. If not me, then someone else. I'd just love to talk with you. So stick around afterwards and we can talk. But to all of us, to every single person that's here, whether you've been following Jesus for 30 years or 30 seconds, it's time to get up. It's time to live with the same passion and power that Jesus lived by. And so let's let's do that right now. Will you get up? Like physically speaking, not metaphorically, like will you stand up for just a second? We're gonna sing one more song. We're gonna celebrate the God who we serve. Like today is a day where we just want Him to be glorified. It's a day where we just want Him to know that, hey, Jesus, we're blown away by what you've done. We're amazed by it by who you are. And so as we sing right now, we have a chance to celebrate. So I would encourage you to not hold back, to let yourself be as excited as you should be, realizing that the God who got up from the grave loves you and he wants to know you, and he wants to live with you, and he wants to carry you through anything that comes at you in this life. That is powerful, and that should make us that should make us get pretty pumped, right? So let's pray together and then let's celebrate. Our Jesus, let's get up today. Jesus, thank you for getting up. Thank you, Jesus, that you did not stay down. Thank you, Lord, for having the resilience, the relentless love that you have for us, that made it so that even a death on a cross was not enough to keep you from us. That wasn't painful enough for you to tap out and say, I can't do it anymore. You loved us so much that you endured all of that, and you rose from death, and you are alive today, and you are as powerful today as you were 2,000 years ago, and you're doing just as much in this world today as you did 2,000 years ago. Your spirit is moving, your spirit is stirring, your spirit is alive, and it's alive in us. And so, Lord, we just want to bless you. We just want to sing to you, we want to tell you how amazing you are, we want to celebrate you, and Lord, not just with our lips, not just with the words that we sing, we want to celebrate you with the way that we live our life. So, Jesus, we ask that you would give us a greater portion of your spirit than we've been given, that we would walk out of these doors today, ready to live out the life that you've given us, that we would get up, that we would get our hopes up, that we would get our expectations up, that we would be people who wake up in the morning believing that you're gonna do something, that you're gonna show up, that you're gonna move, that you're gonna use us, that you're gonna change things. We love you, Jesus, and we ask all this in your name. Amen. Happy Easter.