All over the world, the church celebrates Holy Saturday with a zealous focus on the Third Day resurrection. Christ’s victory over the principalities and powers began on Good Friday and worked through Saturday to Resurrection Sunday. Our Lord is going to rescue us from the dead.

Jesus died on Friday and Death died on Sunday. No one took Jesus’ life. Rather, Jesus willingly gave up his life to the dismay of the disciples who understood Christ as the sovereign King. The darkness overwhelmed them, but only for a moment before it lifted at the work of Christ’s pronouncement, “It is finished.”

Many Christians focus too much on sin and not enough on redemption, leaving a constant veil between God and us that was not put there by the Father. Nic Billman and family joined us for the weekend services and brought testimonies of the freedom of Christ they're seeing abounding among many in Brazil and left us thinking about our own freedom in Christ here in the States.

Living in the New Covenant means we have a connection with Jesus, and the world is desperate to see us walking in connection. When we are in our worst pain we testify the most boldly because our faithful God is our inheritance. Sometimes the darkness makes us want to turn away out of fear. However, Jesus is leading us through the darkness.

“I want to tell you about the glory of God because what you’re experiencing right now is not about what you did: it’s about what he wants to release in you. What’s happening in your life right now is prophesying to you: He is near you in your darkness, but when you come out of it you see the glory, you look like the glory, you are the glory of God.” - Bob Hazlett

“I’d rather be an amateur at trying something new than an expert at doing the old thing. That’s why I’m willing to mess around with guesses of knowledge and words of knowledge. Because I know that the pathway to growth is not perfection. It’s actually through failure.” - Bob Hazlett

“You’re called to be atmosphere shifters, not just to survive betrayal, accusation, failure, fraud, whatever it is that you’ve had to overcome. And so whenever you can match up your sound with the sound of heaven, you don’t just shift your atmosphere, but you go into other people’s atmosphere and you shift it.” - Bob Hazlett

“Your old season stinks because it’s defined by what other people said, but you have to get up, lift up your head, get in the face of God, and say, ‘God, you said.’ And I’m not going to be defined by what they said. I’m going to be defined by what You said.” - Bob Hazlett

The heartbeat of heaven, the very rhythm of the kingdom, is compassion. It's this call that drives us as followers of Christ, who himself worked in compassion as he led. How can we follow Christ in leading through compassion? By seeing others the way God sees them: as human beings worthy of the love of Christ.

A woman broke an Alabaster flask worth a year’s wages and poured it onto Jesus’ head, effectively giving up a year of her life to honor Jesus. This woman was wasting herself on him and announcing prophetically that Jesus was going to waste himself on all of human kind. When we take communion together, we are proclaiming Jesus and what he did for us when he poured out his blood for the forgiveness of sins. As a result, we are in the new covenant; we are a part of the house of forgiveness.