Movement Live Notes

Friends, too often, we have allowed man to dictate and to predicate how we move and how we have our being. But the Bible says in Him we live! Not in man, not in tradition, but in Him. Not in religion, but in Him we live. In Him, we are to have a living hope. There is so much for us to understand and embrace. There is so much for us to grasp here. Without Jesus, Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sin." That is past tense to the believer. In other words, you were dead, and you were directed, and you were dominated by your sin. But because of the shed blood of the Passover lamb, that statement in Ephesians 2:1 becomes history. You were. That means past tense. Christ made peace. And because Christ made peace, He is our peace. And now we have peace, and we can proclaim peace. That's the act of obedience.

We have been given peace because He is our peace, and now, we proclaim His peace. Again, we were dead, and we were directed and dominated by our sin. We walked according to culture. Culture and the world will get you in trouble. We are in the world, but we are not of the world, "according to the Prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience." We have to watch the spirits of others. Every spirit is not the Holy Spirit. Some spirits are being moved around. There are even pastors and proclaimers of the truth distorting The Gospel for another gospel - to push and advance the Prince of power’s agenda and the world.

This is the reason we need to know what the word of God has instructed. We know His heart when we study the Torah, the instructions. We tend to say in the church that His word is the same today, yesterday, and forevermore. So why do we say it changed? It doesn't change family. It doesn't change friends. We have to understand that we were dead without Jesus.  We were dead men walking. A dead man cannot raise himself to life. A dead man cannot change his ways. Ask yourself this practical question: Have YOU been able to change your ways?

We cannot change our ways. We were born in sin and shaped in iniquity. There are narrative scripts that we still deal with. There are personalities that we still have to deal with. There are desires that we still have that need to be purged through prayer. There are ideologies that we haven't embraced that are antithetical to biblical truth. We cannot change our ways, family and friends. We've tried, and nothing has come to fruition as a result of it. We cannot change our ways because dead men cannot raise themselves to life. We want to suggest this Resurrection Sunday that many of us have not experienced Resurrection in our own lives.

It's been Easter Sunday. It's been another way for us to celebrate a tradition or ourselves. It's been another way for us to put on fancy clothes, adorn ourselves, glorify ourselves, glorify our children, and glorify how we feel about what we've done for our children. And it does not point back to the sacrifice of Jesus. Too many of us believe that adding in a little Jesus to the tradition equates to us teaching our children the true meaning of Passover. that we've actually taught our children what it means for Jesus to die in our stead – to die in that place where we belong. Those nails and that cross were ours. It did not belong to Jesus. The death that He endured was the death that we deserve. And the life that we live is a life that is possible because He conquered death in our stead. Family, without Jesus, we are dead. In Christ, we are made new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. Now all these things from God.”

These new things that come are gifts. We often search and ask God for more, but the greatest gift that He could ever have given was His son to die in our place. Not only did He die, but we have the privilege to rejoice in His Resurrection!  I remember my father used to say, “If you kill Him and you don't get Him up, The Gospel is lost.” We worship Jesus because He died, and He got up! He got up with all power, with Heaven and Earth in His hands. He got up with the power to conquer and defeat every burden that comes your way. Friends, we invite you to believe in His Resurrection power and allow it to cause resurrection in your life!