Easter

Completely Other

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“‘I don’t think the way you think.
The way you work isn’t the way I work.’
God’s Decree.’For as the sky soars high above earth,
so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth,
Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,
So will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty-handed.
They’ll do the work I sent them to do,
they’ll complete the assignment I gave them” (Isaiah 55:8-11, The Message).

I don’t know about you, but I’m thankful for a God I can’t figure out. I’m grateful that His ways are higher than mine, because anything I could completely comprehend wouldn’t be worth worshipping. As far as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher are God’s thoughts than mine.

I also think that a lot of deconstruction of faith happens when we judge God by our standards rather than the other way around. We make ourselves the standard by which God must abide. God would never [fill in the blank] because I would never [fill in the blank]. But that puts us above God and essentially makes us gods.

The older I get, the more I’m sure the less I know. I’m less inclined to think I have all the answers than I was when I was younger. I am also more aware of my deep need for a God who isn’t just Me 2.0, upgraded to be faster and stronger and smarter. I need someone who is completely other, someone who could condescend to my level and do for me what I could never do for myself. And that, my friends, is the gospel.

Thank You, God, that You are bigger than entire galaxies and universes, yet You are mindful of me. You who are beyond space and time became like me so that I could one day become like You. You entered into human history to redeem it and to redeem me and everybody else who calls on You in faith. Amen.

Ash Wednesday 2026

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“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the Cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us” (John Stott).

Lent has officially started. I’m a newcomer to this season of fasting and repentance that leads up to Easter Sunday, but I’m already a fan. I’ve gone through several years where I give up social media for Lent and found myself not missing it as much as I thought I would.

But Lent isn’t primarily about giving up or abstaining. It’s really about preparing your heart and mind for Easter Week, from Maundy Thursday to Good Friday and leading up to glorious Easter Sunday. It helps remind me that Easter really is more than baskets of candy and bunnies (although I’m not against those myself).

Easter is about God in the flesh taking the form of a servant and becoming obedient to the point of death, as the Apostle Paul puts it in Philippians 2. Instead of me and you dying deservedly for our own sins, Jesus took up the cross and bore our sins on His own body. Instead we get His righteousness and when God sees us, He doesn’t see our flaws but Christ’s perfection.

The best part of course is Resurrection Sunday when Jesus rose from the grave and forever defeated satan, hell, death, and the grave. There is now nothing to fear for anyone who has been made a new creation by Christ. We know that no matter what happens, the worst part will never be the last part because of the resurrection. As Tim Keller put it, the resurrection means that everything is going to be okay.

Cancer won’t have the last word. Dementia won’t have the last word. Terrorism won’t have the last word. Not even death will have the last word. One day, Jesus will descend and every grave will open up and we will all rise to be with Him in the air. That will be the best day ever for anyone who has trusted in Jesus for salvation.

My prayer for anyone who is observing Lent this year is that we will be more inclined and attuned to the voice of God than ever before. I’m praying that we will experience more deeply than ever before the glorious reality of the empty tomb and the risen Christ.

It may seem like a perpetual night of hopelessness these days with so much doom and gloom over every headline and social media feed, but Easter Sunday’s comin’!

On the Third Day of Christmas

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This culture has gotten really good at moving on. Not even two whole days since Christmas Day, and already some stores have erased every evidence of Christmas festivity. Now I suppose everywhere will be decorated for the upcoming Valentine’s Day.

I don’t want to rush through the seasons anymore. I want to sit and savor and remember. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life speeding on to the next big holiday, the next big life event. I want to live in today while it is still today.

I’ve been re-reading my Advent devotional from the writings of G. K. Chesterton, and I think he had it right. There’s something to this 12 days of Christmas business. They didn’t speed through Christmas in 24 hours. They took their time and made it last for almost two whole weeks. They didn’t tear through their gifts in one setting. They spaced them out over 12 days.

We are a culture perpetually in a hurry and teaching the next generation to be just as insanely busy or even busier. Ultimately, the only place you ever get to in a hurry is an early grave and a deathbed full of regret over the life that you missed. And I for one surely don’t want to miss my life.

To be fair, to celebrate the incarnation takes more than 24 hours or even 2 weeks. It should take the rest of the our lives to contemplate and celebrate and live thankful lives as a result of God’s gift to us in the person of Jesus.

Christmas and Easter should perpetually be the themes of our lives and everything we say and do should be from the goal of letting people know that God loves them and wants them to know Him. People need to know that Christmas is more than Santa Claus and that Easter is more than the Easter Bunny. They need to know that Jesus loves them and can give them new and eternal life in exchange for their old and broken lives. They need to know that no one is ever too lost for Jesus to find and save.

The Cross, the Manger, and the Tomb

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“How proper it is that Christians should look toward the future…for the manger is situated on Golgotha and the Cross has already been raised in Bethlehem” (attributed to Dag Hammarskjold).

I heard a sermon once where the pastor drew a parallel between the stone manger that Mary and Joseph laid Jesus in as a baby and the stone tomb that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus’ body in after He was crucified. Note: the manger was more likely made of stone because the animals would have destroyed a wooden feeding trough.

When we see a sweet little Jesus baby in the manger of our nativity, we can forget that the purpose of Him being born into this world was to die for our sins. Simeon even prophesied to Mary that a sword would pierce her heart, pointing to the moment she would witness her own Son on the cross.

Really, Christmas and Easter aren’t two different events. They are the beginning and ending of one event. God planned before the foundation of the world that Jesus would die for us in our place. Before sin even existed, a remedy was already in place. Jesus slain from the foundation of the world is how the Bible puts it.

It’s just as important to remind people (including ourselves) of our need for the gospel just as much on Christmas as on Easter. While it might seem more appropriate to preach an evangelistic sermon after we celebrate the empty tomb, it works just as well when we bow before the manger with the child born to be a sacrifice.

I hope this Christmas we don’t just celebrate part of the story of the incarnation. While it’s more pleasant to focus only on Jesus as a tiny infant during this Advent season, we must remember that that infant became the man who perfectly obeyed God’s law at every point and fulfilled God’s righteous requirements in our place. He then took the punishment for our sin that we deserved and died in our place. That’s the whole Christmas story just as much as it is the whole Easter story.

Thank You, Jesus, that you were born to die so that we who have died in our sin might be born again and have eternal and abundant life forever. Amen.

11 Years Later

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I figured out a little while ago that it was 11 years ago today that The Church at Avenue South had their first ever Easter service at 2510 Franklin Road, months before the official September launch of the campus. I distinctly remember we had rows of white plastic folding chairs set in front of a screen. There were maybe 100 of us with a handful of kids.

This Sunday, we had an overflow set up in the basement with just as many chairs. Upstairs in the sanctuary, we had three services to accommodate over 900 worshippers with plenty of kids in attendance. Not to mention we celebrated our first ever Easter Sunday in our new facility that probably seemed like a pipe-dream 11 years ago.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the tyranny of the urgent and forget that sometimes we are living in the answered prayers of the past. So many of those things we pleaded with God to have are now the same things we routinely take for granted in our quest to get more from God.

That’s why gratitude is vital to the life of a believer and to a community of faith. It stops entitlement dead in its tracks and keeps us reminded of God’s continual faithfulness because we like those Israelites of old are forgetful and prone to wander.

I love that we have so many new members who never set foot in the 2510 Franklin Road location. Probably a small handful are left who remember that first Easter service in 2014. But God was there. And He still shows up every Sunday at 901 Acklen Avenue.

I can’t wait to see what the next 11 years holds in store. Or even the next 11 months. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be exceedingly abundantly beyond anything we could ever ask or dream or imagine or hope for. That’s just God’s way.

The Last Week

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Today is Palm Sunday and marks the beginning of the last week of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the week leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I’ve been here before, but I feel like so many times I’ve rushed to get through it to what’s next.

This time, I want to slow down a bit and sit under the cross. I want to be still long enough to hear God speak a word over me about what this week means for me and for all those who call on the Messiah out of a genuine faith. I want to be moved to tears and fully take in the price that Jesus paid for me.

I finished an incredible devotional by one of my favorite writers, Charles Martin. It’s called It Is Finished and spends 40 days walking the path that led from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, sparing no details and leaving no stone unturned. It was one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and I hope to read it again some day.

I want Easter to mean more than the Easter Bunny or Cadbury chocolate eggs (though I am very much a fan of both). I don’t want to look at the date on the calendar and miss the point of the day — Jesus who knew no sin became sin for me that I might become the righteousness of God in Christ.

I don’t want to be the same person in seven days as the person who is now writing these words. I want to be more like Jesus, more aware of the sacrifice He made, and more willing to count the cost and take up my own cross. I want to be more of a disciple and less of an admirer. I want to be more of a follower and less of a fan. I want to be a truly biblical Christian and not a watered-down, American Christian.

I’m thankful that God is far more patient with me than I am with Him and takes far more time with me than I ever have with Him. At this point, I say, “Lord, do whatever it takes to make me Yours, Your disciple, Your own. Have Your way in me. Amen.”

He Suffered for Us

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“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as “God on the Cross.” In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us” (John Stott).

Every other religion is about working our way to God and somehow managing to be good enough or obey enough rules or simply to be lucky enough to get to heaven or nirvana or whatever they believe exists after death. But Christianity is the story about how God in Jesus has come to us (and I hear Mike Glenn’s voice as I type these words). Jesus knew that man could never climb high enough to get to heaven, so He came from heaven to live among us and die for us.

It’s still a few weeks away from Lent Season and Easter, but I still think it’s good to remember that God doesn’t watch us suffering from a distance. He’s with us in our suffering. Best of all, He became one of us and suffered for us more than anyone before or since to provide redemption and salvation and freedom to all who would receive Him.

That’s a good thought for Easter, but it’s also good for any time of the year. It’s good especially for times like these when pain and suffering are the norm rather than the exception. Your King knows all about suffering and He is still here and He still reigns. One day, He will make all things right. This is our God, and Jesus is His name.

Still Rolls the Stone

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As you know, I am currently collecting old CCM vinyl. One of my favorite parts is discovering artists that I missed back in the day because they weren’t my style of music at the time. One of those is Bob Bennett, a singer-songwriter in the vein of James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg.

One of his songs that resonated deeply with me is the song Still Rolls the Stone, which speaks to Easter but also speaks to God’s ability to make any dead thing come alive and to turn those of us who were dead in our trespasses and sins into living sons and daughters of God.

Basically, the gist of the song is that because of an empty tomb on a Sunday morning, we can trust God to keep His promises and to finish what He started in each of us:

“Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave

I tore off my grave clothes
And cried a pool of tears
For the voice of the Living One
Who spoke the stars and spheres
Has called me from my darkness
And led me to this place
Where the dead leap
And the blind see His face

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave

Hearts aflame with mercy
Like the sun in midnight sky
While the doubter shrugs his shoulders
And the cynic wonders why
But as it is in Heaven
So now we proclaim
The Lord tells us here to do the same

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
(Rolls the stone away)
Still rolls the stone from the grave, oh…

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
(Rolls the stone away)
Still rolls the stone from the grave

In the still of a Sunday morning
A grave stands open wide
And a promise kept
While the world slept
Means that no one is inside

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave, oh…

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
(Rolls the stone away)
Still rolls the stone from the grave

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave” (Bob Bennett)

Being the Easter People

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Easter is over, according to all the stores and calendars. There are no more cute little bunny displays at your local Hallmark or Cadbury eggs or wicker baskets at the grocery store. Seemingly just about everybody has moved on to the next big holiday, which I believe is Mother’s Day in May.

But for those who celebrate Easter as Resurrection Day, the celebration goes on. We know that Jesus is still risen and alive. Plus, if you follow the Book of Common Prayer you know there is still Ascension Day and Pentecost to come.

I’m not against all the Easter bunnies and baskets and Easter egg hunts and all the candy. I’m especially not against the candy. But when you reduce Easter to these symbols and turn it into just one day, it cheapens the meaning.

Just as the birth of Jesus ushered in a new way of counting the years (as we moved from B.C. to A.D.), so Easter is equally a marker in history where everything changed. Many Old and New Testament prophecies came to pass on that day.

I hope that we won’t go back to business as usual next Sunday. I hope we will retain the message of Resurrection Day through all the weeks and months to come. The worst moment, the worst day, the worst part of your life is never the final defining moment in your life because Jesus is alive and the tomb is empty. Your hope is never in vain because Jesus conquered sin, death, hell, and everything else that will ever come against you to defeat you.

Easter isn’t just a day but a mindset. As Pope John Paul II said, “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

Easter Monday

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I did something new this year that will most likely be a tradition from now on. I went to see Andrew Peterson on his Resurrection Letters tour on Easter Monday. I’ve been to three of his Behold the Lamb of God concerts, but not one for Easter.

Of course it was amazing. Every part of it pointed to Jesus as the one who overcame death and the grave, the Lamb slain for the sins of the world. It helped me to once again put everything else into perspective in the light of the empty tomb.

I was captivated by the line of a song that mentioned the resurrection of daffodils in spring. That happens every year after all the trees go bare and the ground is barren during winter. Spring really is the perfect picture of the resurrection with all the flowers and buds coming back from a kind of death to full bloom.

I like spring, but I’m not a fan of all the pollen. But even that means that new life is coming, because all that pollen will germinate the seeds that will burst forth in growth and life. I think I can handle a bit of sinus overload if it means seeing the riot of colors that will follow soon after.

But all that points to the one day when those who have died in Christ will rise. All of the creation that was ruined in the fall will be restored and renewed. What seems so stressful and what keeps me up late at night won’t seem important in view of all the new life. In fact, I probably won’t remember what was causing me all of the anxiety.

Just as surely as spring follows winter, so will Jesus return in the same way He departed from the disciples.

“Is He worthy? Is He worthy?
Of all blessing and honor and glory
Is He worthy? Is He worthy?
Is He worthy of this?

He is!
Is He worthy? Is He worthy?
He is!
He is!” (Andrew Peterson/Ben Shive).