Easter at Access – Here Comes Sunday

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.e.

God is still in the miracle working business.

A lot can change.

In fact, everything can change in three days.

Can I hear a good amen, church?

Bam.

Amen.

Welcome to Easter at Access, everybody.

I want to preach to you before I preach to you.

Here's what I want you to hear.

Roy's story is the kind of story we hear all the time here.

It's that no matter how far away you feel from God, Easter is heaven screaming at you, that God is chasing you and pursuing you, and you're never too far gone from his love.

He can change you from the inside out.

In the book of Romans, Paul says it like this: Paul says, the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.

And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by the same Spirit living within you.

Essentially, what Paul is saying is this it's that the resurrection of Jesus, it's not just an event to celebrate, it's a power to be experienced.

Roy experienced it, and all weekend we've been having people experience the life-transforming power of Jesus, and I believe it's going to keep happening because the resurrection wasn't just an event that happened one time, it was an event that has led to event after event after event of people being resurrected in their souls from the dead one more time.

Can I get a good amen church fam?

Yeah.

We are one church that meets in three physical locations, and we have hundreds of people that join us every week at Church Online.

Come on, no matter where you are, put your hands together and welcome our church family today.

So glad you were with us.

Hey, we don't have a lot of traditions at Access, but we have one that I want to ask you to do every single Easter, and here's what it is.

Earlier, you should have seen our Easter connection card.

If you don't have one, there's one in the seat back right in front of you or under the seats on the front row.

Do me a favor and grab that card because Easter's the Sunday when you all show up and you look good, everybody.

You dressed up nice.

But everybody shows up.

So on this weekend, we ask everybody to fill one out.

And if you're not gonna do it, just hold one and humor me for a moment, okay?

But I want you to fill it out, and I also like to use this opportunity to get a little intel, to get some information on you.

So towards the bottom, there's a quick two-question survey that I want your help on.

The first question is this I'd like to hear a message series about what?

Like what are the things that are on your heart or questions you have about God?

Because we want to talk about the stuff that actually matters to you.

In fact, this fall we're gonna do a series of messages called Let's Talk About It.

What is it?

Whatever you want it to be about.

Let's talk about that, okay?

Second thing I want to ask you to do is this.

As God continues to grow our church and grow our influence in this area, we want to plant more access church, life-giving church locations all over our county and all over this area.

And maybe you drive a certain amount of distance to come to our church.

Where would you like to see the next access location in?

Help us to know that.

It's an important thing for us.

So as you're filling that out, let me let me speak one for just one moment to our first-time guest.

We are so honored you're with us today.

And I know that coming to church can be overwhelming, and there's a lot of questions you might have, but I want to make something really clear to you.

You you are a VIP guest here, and our whole church exists to help people take the next step in their relationship with Jesus.

And we have a hope.

This is our goal for every single person who ever comes through the doors that access church.

Here's our hope for you.

We want you to know God.

Like, not just know about him, but to actually know him relationally.

We want you to find freedom from your hangups, your hurts, and your issues.

And everybody's got some issues.

And if you don't think you've got issues, that's your issue, everybody, but everybody's got some.

Want you to find some freedom.

We want you to discover your unique God-given purpose.

Mark Twain famously said there's two great days in every person's life: the day they're born and then the day they discover why.

So many people float through life not knowing why God created them.

Well, not here.

Let us help you discover why God made you so that you can live out your ultimate fulfillment, which is to make a difference in the lives of other people.

That's our goal for you.

So let me challenge you.

If you are new to church or new to this place, I double dog dare you.

Just give God one year.

And I believe if you'll do it here with us, your life one year from now will look so radically different than it does now.

And I'm so convinced of it that if it doesn't, I will help you find another church and I might even just go with you.

How does that sound, everybody?

Like I believe it.

You're here today.

Let's start the one year today.

Join us next Sunday.

We're starting a series of messages on relationships called It's Complicated.

Because how many of you know relationships, they be complicated at times, right?

We're gonna talk about marriage and dating and friendships and all the in-between stuff, all of our relationships, and I believe God's gonna help us to get that part of our lives right.

Okay?

Let's get to work today.

Happy Easter.

So glad you are with us today.

I love being a dad.

Like one of the great joys in my life is I love being a dad.

It's always been a joy and it's never felt like a job to me.

I've never understood when guys would say things like, Well, I'm just stuck at home babysitting the kids.

You can't babysit your own kids.

Like you can just dad them.

Dad them up, you know what I'm saying?

And I love it, I love being a dad.

It's just so much fun to me.

And I have this belief that every moment can be extraordinary if you put a little effort into it.

Like every moment doesn't have to be mundane and boring.

You can make every moment special.

So I try to never waste moments.

And so, for example, if we're riding in the car together, that can be a wasted moment or it can be an exciting moment.

So I love to ask questions and tell jokes and have fun.

And my kids are so great.

As they've gotten older, they they like to ask questions back to me.

And um, my kids, every once in a while, will ask something brilliant and scholarly.

But most of the time they ask the dumbest stuff I've ever heard ever.

Anybody else with me on this?

All right, let's do a little all skate.

Let me read you a couple of my favorite ones my kids have asked.

Now you need to know, my kids have no context for money whatsoever, okay?

First question they ask: How many hot Krispy Kreme donuts would you eat in 24 hours if each one would pay you a thousand dollars?

Okay, think about that for just a moment.

Bonus, just for you to know, each one has three grams of protein in it.

Just take that into account, okay?

Okay, just all skate.

How many of you would eat 25 in 24 hours?

At least 25.

Anybody 50?

Any 50s?

Anyone else a hundred?

I think I could do a hundred.

I think I could.

I think I could.

Okay, it's fun.

All right.

All right.

Next question.

Next question.

All right.

A couple years ago, my boys and I were in Seattle with each other, and we just had this cool experience together, and we were driving past the pasture full of cows, and my son Gavin, out of nowhere, now remember, he has no context for money at all.

Out of nowhere, he asked me this question.

He said, Would you, would you walk up to one of those cows and take a bite out of the live cow for one billion dollars?

I said, I like my steak medium rare, not that rare, but a billion dollars.

I'm gonna try.

Like, I don't know how it's gonna go, but I'm trying, okay?

Alright, that's fine.

Okay.

Last one, this one's not quite as silly.

This one, though, is a this is a thinker, okay?

Imagine you were given the choice to choose between two superpowers, both involving time travel, okay?

And in the first option, you could go forward 24 hours in time.

In the second option, you could go backward 24 hours in time.

Wouldn't that be crazy?

Which one would you choose?

Well, if you would go forward in time, you would be infinitely rich.

You would win every single lottery, you could bet on every sports game, you would always know what stocks to invest in.

Forward would be fun, right?

But if you went backwards, you could probably save yourself a lot of heartache, couldn't you?

You you you could you could avoid some difficult situations.

You could tell yourself, hey, don't go there, hey, don't go with that person, hey, don't drink that, hey, don't do that.

You could save yourself a lot of heartache.

Every husband in the room knows there's a lot of conversations we wish we could go back and undo, right?

Anyone with me?

And here's the thing.

Even if you could go backward in time and warn yourself that some difficult moments were coming.

That, hey, listen, prepare your heart, tomorrow you're going to lose that loved one.

Hey, prepare your heart, tomorrow she's going to break up with you.

Hey, prepare your heart, it's gonna get challenging tomorrow.

No matter how much warning you have, pain is still painful.

Like no matter how much heads up you have, pain just has this way of just weighing so heavy on us.

And if you can understand that, hold on to that tension for just a moment.

Because I think that's how Jesus' followers had to feel on that first Easter resurrection Sunday morning.

You see, that Jesus had told them, literally on Thursday, Jesus was with his disciples at a meal that we call the Last Supper.

And at this meal, he told them, I'm going to die and then I'll be buried, and on the third day I will rise again from the dead.

He told them this would happen, but certainly they didn't believe him.

Why?

Because if they believed him, they would have been sitting out in those chairs that soccer moms sit in on the sidelines.

They would have been waiting at the tomb, counting down everybody.

Ten, nine, eight, but nobody showed up.

Why?

Because when people die, they tend to stay dead.

Mark, one of the four accounts of Jesus' life, from Mark's perspective, he says it like this, Mark chapter 16.

Mark 16 · chapter mention

It said when Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.

And so she went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping.

And you would think that everybody would be like, Yes, we didn't think it was possible, but yes, it happened.

But look how they responded.

When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they what?

They didn't believe.

Because who would believe that?

And then afterwards it says that Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country.

We know from another gospel that it's it's the story of two guys, one named Cleopus and his friend, and they're walking along the way, and Jesus shows up to them, and they don't even realize who he is.

And when they finally figured out, they return and report to the rest.

But those who heard, they didn't, they didn't believe either.

Why?

Because they had hung their hope on Jesus.

They had believed that he was the Son of God who was there to save them, not just from their sins, but to save them from the oppression that they were under from the Roman government.

They had seen all the miracles, they had heard all the wonderful teachings, and certainly when they saw his head fall in death, this had to be the sentiment that flashed through their minds and crossed their hearts.

It's too good to be true.

Certainly it's too good to be true.

How could any of this be true?

And here we are, Easter Sunday, a couple thousand years later.

And I think a lot of us carry that same sentiment with us.

It's too good to be true to believe that Jesus could actually change my life.

It's too good to be true to believe that he is who he says he is.

It's too good to be true, right?

And if that's you, what I want to do today is I want to take you to the Easter story, which is found over a weekend.

It's a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

One of the good questions I think every Christian should ask is why did this whole process need to take three days?

Why three days?

I mean, Jesus said, come to this earth to give his life, to pay the price for the sins of the world.

He did that.

And you would think that maybe if if he was pronounced dead by a doctor, waited 15 minutes, and then came back to life, would that be good?

Like, why did it need to take three days?

Well, I'd like to show you from an interesting place in Scripture.

The book of 1 Peter, written by the Apostle Peter, says this.

It says, this is the kind of life you've been invited into, the kind of life Christ lived.

I want you to notice this.

He suffered everything that came his way.

Jesus walked through all the difficulties, all the turbulence, all the trials of this life, and here's why.

So you would know that it could be done, and also how to do it step by step.

If we are to become more and more like Jesus, Jesus stepped into this world to experience everything we're going to experience, and so that he could understand us even better and love you even more perfectly than he already does.

This is the story of the Easter weekend.

To get us started, Friday had to be one of the darkest days in human history.

Can you imagine having all of your hope pinned to Jesus?

Can you imagine having him idealized in your mind as this hero, the son of God, and you saw him do miracles and you saw people who were deaf hear again?

You saw people who could never see, see the prism of color.

You saw him talk to people who were dead, and oxygen filled their lungs again.

He was the miracle-working son of God.

All of your hopes were pinned on him.

And then you watched as he was arrested, falsely accused, sentenced to death, beaten within an inch of his life, carried a cross on his bloody, raw back, and then was nailed to the very cross he just carried through the streets as people kicked him, spat upon him, and ripped hair out of his face.

They watched as their hero was nailed to a cross.

Friday, friends, Friday's the day of pain.

And it wasn't just painful for Jesus, it was painful for everybody.

Remember the story I told a moment ago?

Jesus is walking with these two guys, Cleopas and his friend?

And it's funny because they they don't know it's Jesus, and Jesus says to them, He's like, guys, you seem sad.

Why are you sad?

They're like, have you not seen the news?

Have you been hiding under a rock?

Did you not check Twitter this morning?

Like, Jesus died.

Jesus is right there walking with them, but they don't know it's him.

And then they go into the speech, they say, but we had hoped.

All of our hope, all of our faith, all of our trust was squarely on Jesus' shoulders.

We had hoped that he was who he says he was.

We had hoped that he was the Son of God.

We had hoped that he was going to save us.

We had hoped that he would rescue us from the oppression our family lives under, under the oppressive thumb of the Roman Empire.

We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.

And what is more, it's the third day since all of this took place.

And Jesus had said it was going to be on the third day that he rose again.

All of our hopes were dashed.

I don't know of a lot of pains worse than that feeling of losing hope.

Like when a person has hope, they can navigate any sort of trial, but when a person loses hope, everything in their world gets nearsighted, and all they can see is them and what's around them.

Jesus experienced all the pain that you and I feel.

Like here's a few of the types of pain.

Jesus experienced physical pain.

Jesus could have chosen to come and give his life at any moment in the course of human history.

If Jesus had come and given his life in the year 2026, he probably would have died of lethal injection.

It would have been quick and painless.

But Jesus chose to come into humanity at the time that humanity had chosen the longest, most excruciating form to carry out a capital punishment.

Crucifixion.

See, the Romans were masters at killing people.

They figured out how to take the death process and to stretch it out as long and painful as possible.

Crucifixion, a lot of people think that a person would die from bleeding out.

That's not how a person would die from crucifixion.

Crucifixion would kill a person because they were hanging by their hands and by their feet that were nailed to a cross.

And over time they would be in such a unique position that they weren't able to take a breath.

And so to take a breath, they would have to pull themselves up, which would shoot unimaginable amounts of pain through their body to take their breath, and then they would fall back down again.

Over time, a person would die of asphyxiation, the inability to catch a breath.

If anyone understands physical pain, it's Jesus.

Jesus also understands emotional pain.

Jesus was born to a single mother in a time when this was unimaginable.

Jesus was born to a single mom who I can't imagine all the names he was called in middle school.

Jesus walked through the streets of the city with a cross on his back, as people who just days before who had said, We love you, we worship you, we adore you were now spitting on him and ripping hair out of his face.

Talk about emotional pain, he gets it.

Here's one more.

Jesus understands relational pain.

Jesus had on that same week on Thursday a meal that we call the Last Supper.

Jesus just called it dinner, but they were having dinner together.

And Jesus knew that at the table there were people like Judas, his disciple, who would betray him.

There was Peter who would deny even knowing him.

And then there were the other ten who the moment things hit the fan, they were gonna take off running and hide.

And with these people there, Jesus had to feel pain.

He has to know what we've walked through.

Now here's the thing I want you to get, okay?

Jesus gets your pain, but he has the ability to flip it and redeem it for something that he uses for his good.

Like no pain under the authority of Jesus is wasted.

Paul says it like this in the book of Romans, chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

He says, and we know, like we have this full confidence in the fact that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

God causes everything, all your good stuff and all your difficult stuff, all of your highlight real moments, and all the moments of pain can be used for his glory.

So here's another way to say it this Easter Sunday.

There is no pain that his purpose cannot redeem.

God redeems your pain.

So here's my challenge to you.

Jesus died on a Friday, so you wouldn't get stuck in your Fridays.

Jesus walked through pain so you wouldn't get stuck in the pain of your life.

Pain tends to make you nearsighted and unable to see and dream and believe and trust.

So he died on a Friday, so you wouldn't get stuck there.

But then Friday ends, and then comes Saturday.

Friday, they took Jesus' body off of the cross and they they were rushed to do something, so they laid his body in the tomb of a man named Joseph of Arimathea.

They laid it inside of a borrowed tomb.

And Jesus was there.

And can you imagine how disorienting this moment felt to all of his disciples and all of his followers?

Can you imagine how challenging this moment was?

You ever watched a movie and an explosion happens, and if a person was close enough that they stumble to their feet, their eyes get all kind of glazed and disoriented, and there's that high-pitched squealing sound.

Yeah, you ever had a moment when someone broke up with you or you lost a job, or life feels like it fell out from underneath you, and all of a sudden you just feel that disoriented feeling?

That's how his disciples had to feel on Saturday.

Their hero and all their hopes were buried inside Vivaro tomb.

Saturday is the day of confusion.

Saturday is the day when God seemed silent.

Saturday was the day that had to feel so disorienting.

And sometimes when this happens to us, we buy into this lie.

The question we ask is, why even try?

Like what difference does it make if I'm out of control and the whole world is spinning out of control around me?

Why even try?

Let me say this to you.

When we're confused, we we want answers.

Come on, God, where are you?

God, speak to me, show up.

Why are you so quiet right now?

We begin to doubt God, and what we're doubting is his goodness or his ability in the moment.

We tend to give up and we say, Well, I can't control anything anyway, so what difference does it make?

And maybe the worst in all of this is we do it alone.

We isolate and we push ourselves back from everyone around us who might be able to help us.

Back to the story.

Jesus is walking with these two guys, Cleopas and his friend.

They don't know that it's Jesus.

And they finally get back to town, and it's really interesting.

One of the guys says to Jesus, Hey, we made it to town.

Do you have dinner plans?

And Jesus said, No, says, Come to my house.

And they go back to the house and they're sitting down for a meal.

And in Luke 24, it picks up here.

It says, When he, Jesus, was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them.

Now think about this for just a moment.

When was the last time this had happened?

Literally, it was Thursday, just a few days before, where Jesus, at the Last Supper, took the bread and he said, This is my body broken for you.

When you gather in my name, do this, break this, and remember my body broken for you.

Then he took the wine and he drunk it and he said, Remember my blood spilled for you when you drink this wine.

Jesus does all these things, and now he does it again, and all of a sudden it's like these blinders on their eyes fall off.

And it says, Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and then I like Jesus.

He's just messing with them.

Then he's like, Deuces, I'm out.

He disappeared from their sight.

And then they asked each other.

They say, So were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?

And then they they got up and returned at once to Jerusalem.

There they found the eleven and those with them assembled together and saying, It is true.

The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.

In this moment, all of the confusion lifts like a fog that seems to lift quickly.

Let me give you a quick challenge, by the way.

Did you notice what seemed to break their confusion in that moment?

It was getting themselves in the presence of Jesus.

That is what worship is, by the way.

It's when we get in the presence of God and we use our breath that is borrowed from him in the first place to sing worship or praise or adoration to him.

What does it do?

It does a lot of things.

Number one is it makes God big and in comparison it makes our problems small.

What worship does is it creates this war on the circumstances happening around us, and worship just brings us into the presence of God.

These people are in the presence of Jesus, and all of a sudden the confusion lifts, which means this when it comes to our confusion.

There is no confusion that his presence cannot calm.

So get yourself in his presence and see what happens.

So Friday comes and Friday's a day of pain.

Saturday comes and Saturday is a day of utter confusion.

But for every Friday, And Saturday, there's always coming Sunday.

And Sunday comes rolling in, steaming in.

Sunday, friends, is the day of resurrection.

It's the day when we remember that death no longer has the final word.

And I want you to understand this.

The reason today that we have gathered, and we're not just gathered all by ourselves.

We are gathering around the globe with over two billion followers of Jesus to celebrate the fact that death no longer has the final word.

Jesus has the authority over life and death.

And if he can have authority over that, he has authority to forgive your sins and to change your life.

And I want you to see this.

Look at this church.

Because he's alive, some stuff's gonna change.

Because he's alive, look at these.

Because he's alive, I have an unshakable hope.

My hope is anchored to something that can't be broken.

Number two, because he's alive, I'm fully forgiven.

Once and for all, my sins are fully paid for, fully forgiven.

Grace has paid the bill, and because he's alive, I am free.

Free from what?

Free from fear, free from judgment, free from condemnation, free from guilt, free from shame.

I'm once and for all free.

Yeah, this week there was a story in the news that I love so much.

It's fun living in Florida, it is, but we get trashed in the news.

It's always Florida man did this, Florida woman did this.

It was nice seeing a dumb story about some other state.

And this week the dumb state was Michigan, everybody.

I don't know if you saw the news.

There was a woman who got arrested, and so they put her hands in handcuffs behind her back, and they put her in the back of a police SUV, and then the police lowered the window so she'd have a little breathing air, I guess, and then they they walked off, and this woman with her hands behind her back shimmied herself out of the car, and she just took off running.

And maybe my favorite part of the story is not that she did that, my favorite part is that someone was just filming this on their phone and didn't say anything.

It was so funny to me.

Now, here's the question, okay?

Three days later, they found this woman.

She was like hiding in an abandoned house.

For those three days, was she free?

Kind of.

But not really.

She was kind of free, but she had to always be looking over her shoulder.

Anytime she heard a noise, she had to get scared, thinking, This is it, this is the moment, I'm going back to jail.

I think that's how a lot of Christians tend to live their lives.

Jesus' death, burial, and because of his resurrection, you can be set free once and for all.

All sins forgiven, completely free of fear, judgment, condemnation, shame, guilt, remorse, all of it, you can be free.

No longer looking over your shoulder.

Here's the reason: the resurrection of Jesus means that death no longer has the final word.

I love this quote by Frederick Biegner, this brilliant theologian.

He said the resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.

Jesus has power over the thing that scares people more than anything else, which is death, which feels final.

And if death no longer has the final word, it means that there is no death, that his power cannot resurrect.

So that, my friends, is the Easter story.

Jesus died and rose again.

He didn't just die on the cross and that be the end of the story.

He rose again, declaring demonstratively for the universe to know that he and he alone has power over life and death.

That means he has the power to save you, change you, and to restore your heart to what it was always intended to be.

Let me end with this.

In the book of Philippians, this guy named Paul writes this letter from Rome to a church in a city called Philippi.

To understand the power of this, you need to go back in his story.

When we first meet him, his name is Saul.

If Saul lived in the year 2026, we would call him a terrorist.

He terrorized these followers of Jesus.

He beat them, assaulted them, stoned them, abused them, threw them in prison.

He was terrible to these people.

And one day, Saul is on his way to this place called Damascus, and he has this demonstrative encounter with God.

Changes his whole life, symbolically, even changes his name from Saul to Paul.

He is a completely new person.

Paul goes on to write like half of the New Testament.

And this is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible.

And you'll see in the second half that Paul gives us the story of the Friday, the Saturday, and the Sunday of the resurrection.

Philippians 3, verse 10.

Philippians 3:10

He says, I want to know Christ.

This word know in Greek is a fun word.

It's the word gnosko.

Genosco means to trust with all of my heart.

Like to trust with all of my life.

Like to trust in Jesus more than you trusted the chair you sat in today.

Like all of the weight of all of my existence in his control.

I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.

And look at this.

He says, I want to suffer with him Friday, the day of pain.

Sharing in his death.

Saturday, the day of confusion.

So that one way or another I will experience the resurrection Sunday from the dead.

And here's the thing: He's still doing that today.

A lot of people ask, well, how do we know it's true?

I can take you to biblical sources.

I can tell you there's over 500 people that saw him alive.

I can tell you that the disciples were willing to die defending this.

And people will tell a lie, but people don't die for a lie.

And I can give you all this extra biblical writers and sources, and we have so much information documenting this.

The greatest reason we know the resurrection happened is by what's happened in my life and what's happened in the lives of so many people around you, that he specializes in the resurrection.

As followers of Jesus, hear me on this.

Our whole faith hinges on the resurrection.

If Jesus just died for our sins and that was the end of the story, it's nothing but a good story.

But because he rose again, it moves the resurrection from being an event that we celebrate as a holiday to something we can experience over and over and over in our lives and the lives of others around us.

That he died to pay the price for our sins, but he rose again and he brings us to life in him again.

So here's how I want to end today.

I started by asking you to grab that connection card.

Would you grab it one more time for me?

This is important.

This is how we're gonna end today.

This is an all-skate.

Everybody grab the card.

At the very bottom of the front, there's a little Easter survey at the bottom.

And I want you to do a spiritual survey just for the next few moments.

Just ask the question where do I stand with God right now?

If you would say, Jason, look, I know that I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm already a Christian.

Just so like a box A.

Just give me a check.

If you would say, Jason, look, I don't know.

I hear you talk about Easter and Jesus changes everything, and I feel dead, far from God, and my soul feels so disconnected.

Maybe you've never made a decision to follow Jesus, or maybe you did when you were little, but you just feel like you've walked away.

What if today you said I'm I'm beginning to follow Jesus today, Easter Sunday?

Select letter B.

If you're here and you're like, look, I got more questions, but I'm open to the idea and I'm considering it, select letter C.

And then if you're like, look, I'm gonna be real with you for just a moment, I don't intend on making that decision, just let us know.

Select letter D.

We're not gonna harass you, but we will pray for you because we want you to experience what we have, which is the life-changing power of Jesus.

And I want you to do this after you have checked which of the one of those four boxes.

I'm gonna ask you at all of our locations to stand with me right now, please.

Just come to your feet, stand to your feet, and we're gonna end in a powerful time of prayer together.

I'm gonna ask you as you stand to just take a moment, bow your head and close your eyes.

This moment is gonna be a moment that changes some people's history forever.

They're going to experience the resurrection for themselves.

With your head bowed and eyes closed, if you selected box B and you know you're not right with God, but today, this Easter Sunday, you want to make the decision to give your life to Jesus, to say, Jesus, be my Savior, be my Lord.

I choose to follow you.

If today you want to make that decision, would you just raise your hand right now?

No one's looking, no one's talking.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wow, thank you, thank you, wow.

Come on at all of our locations, just raise your hand if it's you.

It's a powerful moment.

Hey, if this is you and today you need to start that, uh, it's as simple as praying, but I don't just want you to say the words, I want you to mean this with your heart.

If if you're here and you say, Jason, I need to start following Jesus, repeat this after me, but we're not gonna let you pray alone.

No one at Access Church stands alone in their faith.

We stand together.

So we're all together as one church gonna pray this out loud together.

Come on, everybody, say, Jesus, I believe that you're the Son of God.

I believe that you gave your life for me, and I believe that you rose again for me.

Because of your sacrifice, my sins can be forgiven.

And because you rose again from the dead, I believe my life can be changed.

So, Jesus, today, I ask you to forgive me, change me, make my life new, and from this day forward, I'll follow you.

Jesus, I love you and I give you my life.

In your name I pray, Jesus.

Amen, amen.

Come on, church!