Easter & Thereafter

The push toward Easter had been long and tiring, but I was hopeful that God would do great things. And this Easter weekend at the Gallery Church was a fantastic one indeed! I am continually blown away by the hard work and creativity of our people. This past weekend was so extraordinary because of all the hard work that they invested. Leading up to Easter, they devoted hours to planning, they stuffed thousands of envelopes with incredibly well-designed invites to our events, and they prepared an amazing art exhibition for Saturday night.

On Good Friday, we came together as a congregation to prayer walk in our neighborhood and spend an extended amount of time meditating upon the cross. The time in worship that night was very sweet. Saturday night was a great night of outreach that actually occurred in our space. An amazing team from our congregation planned a great art show themed on the idea of waiting. It was a fantastic night in which we were able to meet new faces and think deeply upon the forgotten day of Easter weekend, the day in which the disciples waited with no clue what to expect. Finally Easter Sunday at the Gallery Church was great. We had many new faces, and a great time of worship and fellowship. We celebrated our Savior’s resurrection together with great joy and delight. And another great joy on Sunday was that the city finally warmed up as the sun came out for what seemed like the first time all year.

After a great weekend of meditation and celebration on the great salvation that our Savior provided, what do we do now? In 1 Corinthians 15:58, Paul addresses that next step after having declared the victory that we have in Christ saying, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We are to keep pressing on in the work that God had given us to do, but with this victory ever before us, we can now press with the sure hope that our “labor is not in vain.” After such a great weekend of fellowship and celebration, one can easily get back into the grind of life and begin to tire and waver. However, the salvation that has been given to us provides a purpose and a strength for the work that we do, for life is not over after just a few short years on this earth. What we do here matters. There is a resurrection to come. Our labor will not be in vain. So let us begin to do what we will be doing for all eternity: bringing glory to God in all that we do.

Preach the Gospel... to Yourself

The community of believers, who I have grown up in and am now living among (along with the authors I read), emphasize the importance of preaching the gospel. My passion for reaching the lost and fulfilling the Great Commission by taking the gospel to the nations has been ingrained within me from childhood. I’m incredibly grateful for the men and women that God placed in my life that have instilled in me a great passion for preaching the Gospel and seeing the glory of God spread throughout the world. However, we all too often, whether consciously or not, view the Gospel simply as something that we must share with those who don’t know it. Our focus becomes preach the Gospel to those in need while we (believers) move onto greater things in the Christian life. The problem is we are always in need of the Gospel. We don’t move on from the Gospel. It is the means by which we must live. The Gospel is our only hope before and after our initial justification. We aren’t saved to then live holy lives by having certain disciplines in our lives. Rather we are saved to live holy lives by the power of the Gospel. Even after we are justified (we have that initial moment of salvation), we still live by grace alone through faith alone in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Yes, we are made new, but we are still in the flesh. Our only hope of following Christ is to continually live by the Gospel of grace through faith.

So we can’t allow ourselves to solely preach the Gospel to others. Yes, this most certainly must be top priority, but we must also preach the Gospel to ourselves daily. If we are to live in a manner worthy of Christ and His Gospel, we must keep the truths of that gospel before us constantly. This past week at a conference I attended, C J Mahaney brought the importance of this truth fully back into view. He preached out of Jude and explained that in order for us to “keep [ourselves] in the love of God” (v. 21), we must preach the gospel to ourselves daily. To keep our affections passionate toward Christ, we must constantly remember the Gospel, always preaching what Christ did for us upon the cross, always meditating upon the glorious grace poured out upon us, and always reveling in the love of God revealed in the Gospel. This will not only keep our hearts warm toward our God, but it will also keep us reliant upon grace as we seek to follow after Christ. So preach the Gospel to the nations, but also to yourself.

Grace and Peace,

BMoore