The importance and imperativeness of emphasizing the resurrection of Jesus after Easter Sunday finds too little reference or thought in weekly gatherings of the church and in the daily life of individual Christians. If Jesus did in fact come back from the dead on a quiet Sunday morning some 2,000 years ago, then everything is changed - our beliefs, our ethics, our politics, our time, our relationships. If it is true, then the resurrection of Jesus is the most determinative fact of the universe, the center point of history. The Resurrection is ultimately truer and more lasting than death or destruction, violence or viruses.

The resurrection of Christ is not only an historical event, celebrated once every year, it is an experiential life and power that all believers are meant to live and operate in everyday!

True Christians know that by repenting and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, a person experiences the forgiveness of sin. However, many do not know the resurrection power of the risen Lord Jesus Christ that lives in them in the person of the Holy Spirit. 

To those who received the Holy Spirit in the chronicles of the book of Acts, Christ's resurrection life, exhibited in the person of the Holy Spirit, so empowered them until they experienced a new power, a new momentum, a new excitement, and a new and unbelievable joy and exhilaration to life.

The word “power” occurs fifty-seven times in the New Testament. It is used to describe the most powerful event that ever happened - an event that separated BC from AD - the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And that resurrection power is available now to change your life! In fact, the most important thing in life is knowing Christ and experiencing the power of His resurrection.

Acts 4:33, “And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all." 

The Apostle Paul’s passionate desire and perpetually pursuit was, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,” 

All the early church went forth as Spirit-filled, power‑filled soldiers of the cross, confronting pagan darkness and depravity, powerful demons, and painful diseases, not with just a word of proclamation, but with a demonstration of the power of God!

Resurrection life provides power over disbelief, over the devil and his demons, over disease, and over death!

It is God's Purpose in Our Ministering in Power Not to Show Off but to Show His Love and Share His Life with People.

In the ministry of Jesus, healing, miracles, and signs and wonders was not a gimmick to gather crowds, nor was it a benefit He separated from the preaching of His evangelistic message. It was an essential part of His message and ministry. Compassion for people, not to prove a point or concern for projects, was His motive for ministry.

God's power is not intended to just make Christians powerful, but rather to display His Almighty power wrapped in love through their common flesh! And, I might add, the best of Christians are but frail, weak, faltering, failing human vessels!

1. Resurrection power released through the residing of the Holy Spirit in the believer's heart empowers them to Worship Passionately 

Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” The 120 in the Upper Room fell out into the streets in joyfulness, not to fulfill a job. They weren’t preaching but praising God; they were witnessing by worshipping!

Evangelism is whole-hearted worshipers calling the whole world to the whole-hearted worship of God and the fusion of God's power and presence with the power of the gospel.

2. Resurrection life indwelling the believer empowers them to make Disciples Globally

Acts 1:8, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 

The Holy Spirit is eager for us to operate in His power, but only on His terms and only for His purposes.  Making disciples of all people groups is not an option for some, but an obligation of every available believer!

There are at least 6,434 unreached people groups that represent 2.62 billion person who have no gospel witness! For the most part, we don't feel the dreadful force of this state of affairs because we don't look beyond America.

3. Resurrection life empowers the believer to Live Holy

Romans 6:11, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Holiness is not achieved by religious works but received by faith in the Holy Indwelling One who has made us His temple. The resurrection assures us that Jesus can transform our lives every day. We live empowered by the resurrection life of Jesus to live changed lives. We not only are forgiven, but we are filled with the mighty power of God who raised Jesus from the dead. Paul called this “the power of the resurrection.” Jesus is no longer someone we know about, He is someone we know.

4. Resurrection life empowers the believer to Labor Expectantly

Romans 15:13, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."

Expectancy is the very heart of the biblical meaning of hope.Notice that God is called the "God of hope", because He is the author of all the true, well-grounded hope of His people. The most desponding can be raised by Him to a good hope through grace; the guiltiest are in a moment relieved and made to hope in His mercy. Every beleiver can labor expectantly and confidently for the Lord because they know their work in the Lord is not in vain. 

5. Resurrection life empowers the believer to Minister Powerfully

Romans 15:18-19, "For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed,  by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ;" 

Recently a missionary couple to Nepal, one of the hardest Buddhist areas in the world to evangelize, shared how they had led a poor Nepalese, Buddhist woman to the Lord. Shortly after, her main source of economic hope, a little calf, became deathly ill and lay listlessly in a field near her little shack for two days. Being a new Christian, she had heard how Jesus performed miracles in the Bible, so she gathered her Buddhists friends around and announced that she was going to ask Jesus to heal her calf – she did, and Jesus did! As a result, all her friends became Christians!

6. Resurrection life empowers the believer to know that they are Loved Immeasurably

Ephesians 3:16-19, "that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." 

7. Resurrection life empowers the believer to War Victoriously

Ephesians 6:10-11, "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." 

8. Resurrection life empowers the believer to Wait Patiently

Colossians 1:11, "strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy;"

The resurrection is evidence that love is greater than all the power that man and Satan together can ever muster. Jesus possessed power. He was not possessed by it. He set the pace for men by carrying the ultimate "power tool" - a towel. It symbolized the servant’s heart, bent not upon the love of power, but the power of love. The kind of power that builds bridges, affirms people, turns houses into homes and reveals Christ. In God’s eyes, this kind of power gets the job done.

Invite resurrection power to fill you right now: Jesus be Jesus in me; No longer me but Thee; Resurrection power fill me this hour; Jesus, be Jesus in me!