Sermon Audio, Calvary Community Church, Williams Bay, WI

Life is busy, for all of us, all the time. When and where do you find time to reflect? What happens to you then and there? Is God there? Do you feel loved by Him there? How are you different when you leave that place?

Sailors out on open water, builders constructing a building, surgeons performing an operation, teachers guiding the learning of students, business people following their business plan - people living life - we all need a foundation that is unshakable and something that will give us reliable direction in the challenging times of life.

Finally the "100 days of summer 2013" are before us! Each of us will leave "footprints in the sand" which will describe our "journey" of this summer. None of us can predict all this summer will hold... choose now to make it count! Journey carefully, choose to maximize each day, determine to experience all God desires for you this summer, learn to live CELEBRATION!

God’s “New Normal” design for the daily life of anyone living 2 Corinthians 5:17 is RADICAL! Each new day is filled with opportunities and potential. When and where many people live like this… it changes a community! Is this God’s desire for summer 2013 where you live? What if you were “all in?” What if you say “NO?”

For each person who has become a new creation, life changes and so does the dream we have of what is to come. Heaven is a real place and is the place where God dwells. But what else do we know about heaven and what are those who are in heaven doing right now? What will eternity look like and how can it change how we live here?

7,082,365,000 inhabitants of planet earth and counting. With 6,909 languages and 9,800 people groups, we are a remarkably diverse world! Yet pride, selfishness, prejudice, bigotry, and much more, divide us. Is there anything that can unite us, a dramatically diverse human race made in God’s image? YES! Realigned with the risen Jesus Christ, we are united into God’s new normal of “dynamic diversity,” an eclectic “ekklesia”!

When a group of Christians understands God’s miraculous work IN them and begin to see their potential as Ambassadors of Christ, God can empower them and unite them into a community of Christ followers with whom He can push back the darkness and accomplish remarkable things in any place, any generation! It happened 2000 years ago in Jerusalem and has happened many times in many places since then. Is God ready to do it again... in our day... here?

In 2000 years of global dysfunction - in war, natural disasters, genocide, ethic cleansing, disease epidemics, chronic poverty, and much more - the single, most powerful force for good and hope has been the “realigned, courageous, commissioned community of Jesus Christ followers! Nothing is more valuable in our world today than the risen Jesus realigning, re-commissioning, and re-energizing His people to infect our world as His ambassadors!

In the busyness and complex pain of life, we find ourselves too often in those dark, lonely, confusing, broken, almost desperate places. Resurrected Jesus Christ is ready and victoriously able to realign and restore any floundering life! Is this your resurrection day?

For most people, doubting Thomas is defined by the thing that defeated him. We tend to do that. We tend to define people by the things that have defeated them. We define ourselves that way as well. An encounter with the power of the resurrected Christ changes your definition and allows the possibility of a whole new identity!