Easter 2019 - Holy Week

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Some of us need a heart transplant.

And some of us need shock treatment.

And some of us just need a wake-up call.

Hello! You can be alive and cry.

You can have this abundant, ever-increasing life happening in your life.

Have fun?

Honey.

I think that the key.

The key to that kind of life is to feed on Christ.

It's to feed up Christ.

It's to find our nurture, to find our strength from him.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

1 Corinthians 15, 20 says, But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead.

Now why is that important?

That's important because what Paul is writing here is that Jesus died as a man.

He physically, emotionally died, but then he was raised by the Spirit of God as a man.

That's important because look what he says next.

For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all of us are gonna die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

But each one in his own order.

Christ is the first fruits.

In other words, he's the first indicator, he's the first example to us of what Christ wants to do in your life, then in my life.

He's an indicator to us of this new dispensation, this new work of Christ, by which we do not remain dead, but we're made alive.

Afterward, those who are at Christ at his coming.

Now listen to this.

Then comes the end.

When all delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when he puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.

So what God's doing in Christ, he's doing in you, is he subduing rulers and authorities and powers in your life, not just by getting saved, not by just getting in, that's just the beginning.

But he's working in our lives through the ever-present saving, ever-increasing resurrection power within you to subdue authorities and powers, and he's gonna do that in individuals' lives, and he's gonna do that on a worldwide scale.

It's amazing what the resurrection means.

The greatest day in history was Friday, because we have to have a Friday to have a Sunday.

And that's true in all of our lives, church.

Until you die, you can't be raised from the grave.

And so he says, here's the first fruits.

The first fruits is the death of Christ, and the first fruits is the resurrection of Christ, and he's gonna do that in you because we're human.

And some of us here, right now, you feel dead.

You feel dead in your marriage, you feel dead in your job, you feel dead occupationally, you may feel dead psychologically, you may feel dead spiritually, you may feel dead emotionally.

I felt that way.

If you'll surrender today in a fresh new way, here this Easter, this resurrection day, he will do in us what he did in him as a first fruit of the way he works in every person's life who will surrender to him and give it all to him.

He'll take that death, he'll take that dying area and he'll raise it up.

Didn't you love when you came in, you saw those flowers over there in that flower bed that John and Arlene and others you guys did?

It was just so awesome.

Because there's a principle there, right there.

I mean, that's a that's a resurrection principle that a dead seed, a seed that had died, was planted, it rose up, and now it's multiplying itself, and that's the kingdom DNA.

Everybody say that's the kingdom DNA.

That's the kingdom DNA.

Resurrection day, where we celebrate once a year, is a kingdom DNA principle.

We worship him because he rose, but it's happening all the time.

Resurrection's happening all the time, and resurrection can happen in all of us.

That's why billions, billions around the world are worshiping together in Asia, in Russia, in South America, and in Europe.

It is the most celebrated Sunday of the year.

Listen, there's more people in worship services this Sunday than all the football games, all the baseball games, all the soccer matches, all the hockey games, and any other sport that I'm missing put together.

Christianity is alive and well across the world, men and women, despite what the New York Times says.

Listen to this.

There's more people attending church on any given Sunday, not just Easter Sunday, any given Sunday in the United States than all of the NFL games, all the MLB games, all the NHL games, and all the NBA games, put together.

That's pretty good.

That is a savior that's alive.

Now, the scriptures go on to say, in Romans, likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So what he's saying here, you have to think this.

You have to reckon yourself, you have to think I'm dead from my sin, I'm alive in Christ.

In other words, everything begins here.

Eagles can fly.

Birds can fly.

Lions can roar.

Elephants can just push their weight through anything and wherever they go.

But what sets human beings different than the animal kingdom is we have a brain.

And when we use our brain and we reckon ourselves, it's amazing what your imagination can do to change your life.

And here's what the scriptures are saying.

I want you to not focus on being dead and being a failure and being broken.

I want you to focus on being alive in Christ.

That's what Romans 6, 7, and 8 is all about.

Romans 6, 7, and 8 is about the civil war within our brain.

To fight and battle for resurrection.

So Paul says, you're alive in Christ.

In Ephesians, Paul says, even when we were dead in our sins, he made us alive together with Christ.

Peter jumps on this seam and he writes, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

I mean, we could go through dozens and dozens of New Testament passages that are talking about being alive.

We're supposed to be alive.

You are alive.

Say to the neighbor next to you, I'm alive.

And it's not because you're alive, it's because you're alive.

Now listen, here's what Jesus says.

Jesus said this, I have come to give you everything in abundance, more than you expect.

Life in its fullness until you overflow.

This life of overflowing, Christ does not want us just to have a life.

He wants us to have a life that's overflowing, that's spilling over, that's conquering circumstances, conquering issues in our life.

You realize that this life is not about the eternal life in the hereafter, it's about the eternal life that started right here.

That's the resurrection life.

That resurrection life is yours.

Do you want it?

Because it is available to you, it is there for you, and God loves you, and he wants that life flowing through you.

So if you have your Bible today, if you came with your Bible, look at Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 8 is just, I don't know, it's just the most powerful, one of the most powerful, pregnant, it's a pregnant chapter in the Bible.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And Romans 6, 7, and 8 builds up to Romans that if you don't have a Bible, we're gonna post the, we're gonna put it up on the screen, we're gonna put the verse on the screen, but we also have Bibles behind your seats.

How do you like my outfit today?

I wore this last Easter.

I haven't worn it since.

I dig this, man.

When I saw the curtains, I saw this, I thought, man, I gotta wear that.

For some of you, I look like Pat Boone.

For others, Justin Bieber.

So it's an age thing, you know.

But I love Romans 8.

So look at Romans 8, 9 through 11.

You ought to memorize this.

You ought to think about it, you ought to stare at it.

Everybody just stare at it for a second.

Just stare at Romans 8.

Stare at the screen or stare at your Bible or stare at your phone.

Man, that's good stuff.

But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

Let's just stop right there.

Folks, if you're a Jesus follower here, you've got to change your thinking.

From being in the flesh and living your life just like everybody else, to being in the spirit.

Now, if you're here today and you don't know Christ, then all you know is the flesh.

You're actually captive to the devil.

The devil has got you.

He's your master, he's your king, and you don't even know it.

Or maybe you do know it, and that's why you're here.

So we're glad you're here.

But verse 9, he's kind of setting us up with you gotta figure that one out.

You gotta figure that one out because he says this, but you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

Then he says, if indeed, if, the big if, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you.

So he's leaving room for the fact that the Romans who are reading this might not have the Spirit of God living in them.

I'm leaving that room this morning.

If the Spirit of God lives in you.

Now, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he's not his.

He's not his.

And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life.

Say it, the spirit is life.

Because of righteousness.

I'll explain that in a moment.

But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life even to your mortal bodies.

This is an amazing statement through the spirit who dwells in you.

So I want to give you three PowerPoints this Easter.

Here's the first one.

Based in verse 9.

You're not in the flesh.

You're not in the flesh, but you're in the spirit.

If indeed the spirit of God dwells in you.

Now, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he is not here.

There's PowerPoint one.

To have this overflowing life, you must have the Spirit of Christ living in you.

So you can't have the overflowing life without the Holy Spirit living in you.

Church is not going to give it to you.

Your spouse is not going to give it to you.

Your job is not going to give it to you.

The stock market's not going to give it to you.

Whoever's the president of the United States will not give it to you.

Only Christ can give us the overflowing, ever abundant, ever-increasing fountain and water of life spilling out through any circumstance and any situation that we find ourselves in.

Only Christ can do that.

Have you done that?

Have you received Christ?

Well, yeah, of course.

I'm an American.

I'm not a Buddhist.

I'm not a Hindu.

Believe me, you guys, when I was 18 at University of Georgia, that's what I would have said within that second week of school.

And then I was on an athletic team and I dislocated my knee badly, and I was coming out of the training room one day, and this gal was out there, she was taking a religious spiritual survey, and I just felt like I should take it, so I did.

I answered their 10 questions, somebody called me.

They called me on a telephone that was attached to a wall in my dorm.

And it was like this kind of a black banana-shaped thing with this little cord that went down.

And you had to stay, all you young people, listen to what I'm saying.

This is this is an historical lesson for you in the archives of your parents.

But you take that, I took that thing off, and I had to stay within about five feet of that thing.

And guess what?

People lined up for that one phone on our hallway.

So this guy calls me on the telephone and sets up an appointment.

And on a hill there at the University of Georgia, he shared from this little mustard-colored booklet called The Four Spiritual Laws.

And man, my dad was a Lutheran pastor.

Man, I was in church nine months before I was born.

They baptized me at six weeks in a white dress.

That's wrong.

That is so wrong.

I was not gender confused, but they did baptize me in a little white dress.

But I didn't know the Lord.

Man, I knew churchanity.

Man, I knew how to be an acolyte.

I knew how to carry the cross in with the choir called a crucifer.

I did it all.

You'd have asked me two weeks after my freshman year started up, you know, are you a Christian?

Oh, I'm not a Buddhist, I'm not a Hindu, and I'm not a Muslim, so I must be a Christian because I'm an American.

But when that guy read to me the four laws, these four principles, that God died on the cross for my sins, this one verse that really stuck out to me was for by grace you've been saved through faith, not of yourself, but as a gift of God, not as a result of works that no man should buzz.

I was like, Whoa, whoa, that is so cool.

And this guy had been trained really well, and he took out his pen and he had his little four laws and he says, What's grace?

What's grace?

And I go, That's that's something, that's a prayer you pray right before a meal.

He said, No, man, that's not grace.

Grace is unmerited favor, it's it's a gift of God, it's it's trusting in God, it's it's his work taking over your work.

You can never be good enough because he was good enough, but you can certainly be bad enough because he'll take your bad enough and he'll make you good enough because of what he did at Calvary.

It's like, really?

And then John 10.10, I read that.

And this is the part that really got me.

He says, the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I came that you might have life and might have it more abundantly.

You know, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

John 3.16, John 10.10, just hammering my heart and hammering my heart and hammering my heart.

I asked that guy later, I said, Man, what'd you think of me when we first met?

And he said, Man, I just knew you were a believer.

Man, did I fake him out?

And just like Chase in his story, some of you have been faking people out your whole life.

And you don't have any more life in you than man of the moon.

God wants to give you life.

He wants you to have abundant life, overflowing life in the most negative of circumstances, in the most difficulties of times that we all go through.

And so he's saying here in verse 9, I want you to know you gotta have the Spirit of God dwelling in you if you're gonna have the resurrected power happening through everything in your life.

Then in verse 10 he says, if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, the spirit of life because of righteousness.

PowerPoint two, listen up.

If Christ is living in you, you have his righteous blood coursing through your spiritual bloodstream.

Isn't that exciting?

The blood of Christ, the spiritual blood of Christ is flowing through your physical and your spiritual bloodstream.

Life is in the blood.

There's a rhythm to life, church.

There's a rhythm to our heartbeat.

That's why when things go awry, struggles in our life happen, or you get physically knocked down, and they and the EMT comes, first thing they check is your pulse.

They're checking to see the blood.

They're seeing if the blood's pumping.

And some of us are spiritually dead, and God wants to come and he wants to do some shock treatment.

And he wants to come and he wants to blast us with the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

So the righteous blood that's all clogged up, he wants to do a heart transplant.

He needs to do a heart transplant in some of our lives.

Because your old heart, it's the old heart.

Man, he wants to come in, he wants to do a spiritual incision, he wants to reach in there, take the old heart, toss it, put the new heart in, the heart of flesh, the heart that's pumping with the righteous blood of Jesus Christ.

Some of us need a heart transplant, and some of us need shock treatment, and some of us just need a wake-up call.

Hello.

You can be alive in Christ.

You can have this abundant, ever-increasing life happening in your life.

Isn't that fun?

I think it is.

I think that the key, the key to that kind of life is to feed on Christ.

It's to feed on Christ.

It's to find our nurture, to find our strength from Him.

Let me tell you something.

I'm going home today to Lamburgers.

Yeah.

Lamb burgers.

It's gonna be good.

And I'm gonna feed on lamb.

I think we got beef too, if people don't like lamb, but we've got beef and we got lamb.

Because what happens if you don't eat, you you become anemic, you become weak, you you lose your strength.

So we need to be feeding.

Well, we need we need spiritual strength through spiritual feeding.

And I think the best way I describe it at the road, in a very simplistic, simple, but I think a powerful way is what we call PB and J.

And that's not peanut butter and jelly, that's prayer, Bible, and journal.

Prayer, Bible, and journal.

Church, be in prayer.

Take things to God in prayer every day.

The Lord says, knock and the door shall be open.

Seek and you shall find.

Ask, and I will answer.

That's God's proclamation, his encouragement, and his promise to us.

If we'll ask for stuff, if we'll cry out to him, he's ready to answer us.

He's ready to speak to us, he's ready to minister to our hearts.

Prayer.

Bible, the word of God, the living and active word of God, the scriptures.

Coming alive.

This this book is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword.

I don't know how many times men and women, young people have come to me and Said, I want to know God's will.

I want to know God's will.

I want to know God's will.

And I go, Great, I'm glad you want to know God's will.

But you know where you find God's will?

And they said, No.

I said, right here.

Oh man, I thought you were going to say that.

No, I was going to say, read Mad Magazine.

No, the reality is that God's word gives us God's will.

And as we spend time in God's Word, we discover God's will.

Most of us don't need to know what God's will is.

We just need to do the next right thing by obeying God from His Word.

So being in His Word.

And then journal.

One of the most exciting things that we can learn is to open the Word and open our journal.

It can be a spiral-bound notebook and just say, God, speak to me.

Just start with one chapter a day.

Men, women, one chapter a day, you'll get hooked.

One chapter a day, you'll get hooked.

Okay, everybody, close your eyes.

Raise your hand.

I want you to be honest now because God's watching you.

Raise your hand if you haven't read the word in about a week.

Two weeks.

Three weeks.

Alright, a lot of you.

Okay, everybody, look up.

That's okay.

One chapter a day.

One chapter a day.

How many, anybody here like Oreo cookies?

I mean, I really dig Oreo cookies.

I don't eat them much anymore because everything's moving south in the hemisphere of Steve Holt's body.

But it's true.

Who can eat one Oreo?

That little girl says she can eat one Oreo.

You can only eat one?

Man, you have amazing self-control.

Man, you eat one, you go for two, don't you?

Before you know it, the whole pack's gone.

Word of God's powerful like that, and it's better than an Oreo cookie, let me tell you.

But as we start spending time in God's word, guess what you're gonna hear?

You're gonna hear Creator God's voice.

And he's gonna start to line up the kingdom of God in your finances.

He's gonna start lining you up with people in your life that are gonna get you the job that you've always wanted.

God's gonna line up things in your life, and as he does so, the abundant, ever-increasing life is gonna grow and grow and grow.

But church, if we don't spend time with him and get to know him, then we're missing out on that ever-increasing, abundant, ever-exploding life that's available to us.

All right, look at verse 11.

But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through the spirit who dwells in you.

PowerPoint number three.

If Christ is alive in you, listen up, if Christ is alive in you, then the resurrection power of his spirit will impact every area of our lives.

Even our mortal bodies.

That's amazing to me.

Even our mortal bodies, give you an example.

One of our ladies here goes over to Africa and does crusades, healing crusades.

Some of you know Dawn?

She goes down with my wife and they minister to our children.

I think it was three weeks ago.

Anybody got an ooi?

Anyone got any pain?

Anybody need prayer?

All these kids flock up.

They start praying for each other.

Next week, who got healed?

Anybody get healed?

Ten little hands go up.

Now I know in some churches kids lie.

They don't lie in this church.

I mean, I'm serious, they don't.

Don't right back there.

Thank you, Don, for what you did.

Awesome.

Love it.

Well, Monday, we've got a guy named Brian Frank.

I don't know how many of you know Brian Frank, but Brian's dying of cancer.

Had cancer for about five years.

They admit him into St.

Francis.

You're not going home, man.

You're not going home.

You're dying.

So the whole family was called in.

We're in this room right there in a circle in prayer, and something in us got really mad.

Anyone ever get mad in prayer?

Anybody ever get mad in prayer?

Man, you haven't prayed until you got mad in prayer sometimes.

Because you got to fight.

You got a battle in prayer sometimes for those answers.

It is a spiritual battle.

And we felt the Spirit of God come down on us and we cried out and we got aggressive and we got assertive and we cried out and we said, This is not Brian's time.

God, we pray for your healing power on him.

And guess what happened?

The Holy Spirit came upon that room, and as it came, he started to come back to life.

Spirit of God began to flow in his life.

He not only didn't die, they released him on Friday.

He walked out of that hospital.

The resurrection power of Christ even flows into our mortal bodies.

That's what the scriptures say.

It affects you, church, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

It affects your brain cells.

Stand up.

Okay, when I was doing the whole art advance in Georgia a couple weeks ago, I did it for the first time with them.

I think I've done it once with you guys, but put your hands in the this is your resurrection power pose.

This is not superwoman or superman.

This is resurrection power pose.

And I want you to say, I have unshakable confidence in Christ.

Say it out loud.

I have unshakable confidence in Christ.

I have unshakable confidence in Christ.

I have unshakable confidence in Christ.

I have unshakable confidence in Christ.

I have unshakable confidence in Christ.

I have unshakable confidence in Christ.

I have unshakable confidence in the risen Christ.

I have unshakable confidence in the risen Christ.

Here's what's happening.

Listen to me, guys.

When you start talking like that, when you start taking that declaration and you really believe it, and at first you won't really believe it.

Half of you in here don't even believe it.

That's okay.

You start saying it every day for two minutes.

You say it for two minutes every day.

And guess what you're doing?

You're lining up your cells with the kingdom of God.

You're lining up your mental cells with the kingdom of God.

You're lining up your physical cells with the kingdom of God.

You're lining up your emotional cells with the kingdom of God.

And you may not even know it, but many of you will.

You're breaking the power of depression.

You're breaking the power of unbelief.

You're breaking the power of suffering that is coming from demons.

And you're breaking the power of demons, and God is beginning to fill you with resurrection power.

It is yours for the taking.

It is yours.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to the road.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.