Sermon Video, Calvary Community Church, Williams Bay, WI

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 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!

This is it... the most important weekend in the history of our planet. The events involving Jesus Christ this weekend nearly 2,000 years ago form the hinge point of eternal destiny for every human being! Yet Jesus’ own disciples called it “nonsense” when they first heard! What about you? “Nonsense” or the foundation of your “New Life?”

From quiet Walworth County to the huge "megacities" of Asia and Africa, seven billion people approach Easter week 2013. For most of humanity, it's just another week of frantic existence. For God, it's the most important week on the human calendar. How significant is this week to each of us? What difference could it make to live "Easter Hope" every day?

We all have one... we all carry one... we are all identified by one... after birth we were all given one... A NAME. So what is it about the name we carry? What happens when we see the new normal as carrying a new name? After all, our theme verse declares that once we encounter Jesus we are a new creation... so what name am I given to carry? The answer to this question will shape the way we live the new normal!

As Easter 2013 approaches, from every corner of our world comes the question: is there such a thing as reliable, unchanging truth? In American society, as our foundation of rock solid truth crumbles under the weight of "politically correct" opinion and "tolerance," where do we point the next generation for the truth stability needed to build their future?