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WE TRUST YOU ARE DOING well and enjoying the blessings of the Lord in your life!

AS WE DRAW CLOSER to the day that we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that without the Resurrection, we have nothing!

PAUL, IN HIS FIRST letter to the Church at Corinth, wrote the following:

1 Corinthians 15:17–19 (NKJV) —  And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!  Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

THERE WERE THOSE in the early church who were not only backing away from the claim of the Resurrection but also doing their best to get others to follow their lead. This denial of the Resurrection was a “non-negotiable” for the Apostle Paul.

IT WAS AMAZING and even a bit unbelievable for so many to believe that a mere man could rise from the dead, yet we know that Jesus Christ was more than a mere man. He was the Son of God who had lived a sinless, blameless life and had died on a cross, much like any criminal from that day would die.

PAUL WAS SAYING that if you remove the Resurrection from the Gospel story, then our faith is futile, and we are still in our sins. But thank God, we are not still in our sins because we recognize and receive the message of the cross and the empty tomb!

THE RESURRESTION CHANGES EVERYTHING!  We now have freedom from sin and all the condemnation that comes with it. As believers, we can take comfort in the fact that our Salvation is assured, and heaven is our future! We can have hope for tomorrow, and we can be witnesses to others around us that they, too, can have this freedom as well!

PAUL DIDN'T START the following verses with an apology, but he declared with a bold statement, as we can see here:

1 Corinthians 15:20–22 (NKJV) —  But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For since by man came death, by Man also came the Resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

Jesus changes everything… let Him!