Resurrection in Real Life is not the kind of teaching series that lends itself to three easy application steps to better relationships or how to overcome a bad day.  You know, practical stuff.  But then, if you have been around Wellspring for any length of time, you know that we seldom do that kind of teaching.  It's not that we are "above that" kind of approach to Sunday fare.  It's just that our conviction is that real change, real life-giving transformations are always built upon foundational truths.  We seldom go after three easy steps to anything.  We are pursuing long-view perspectives that will re-shape and re-frame how we approach life and go after what it means to be followers of Jesus, the Risen Lord.

So--what about resurrection in real life?  What are we going for?

As mentioned above, it is long-term perspective change that leads to transformation.

And that perspective is quite radical, actually.  Radical in that it is different from what the church has traditionally thought and radical in that it goes to the core or foundation of our faith.  Jesus taught us to pray that God's heaven would come to earth.  It is central to the prayer he taught his disciples to pray.  I think he intends to answer this prayer.

So the direction is not going from earth to heaven, but heaven coming to earth and intersecting earth, supplanting and overturning what already reigns here.

Revelation 21:1 speaks of the great climax of redemption being a "new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and first earth had passed away."  Verse two speaks of "the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God" and the next verse declares that "now the dwelling place of God is with men and he will live with them."

I don't profess to know what this all means.  Honestly, I don't.  Except I do think that there is something here analogous to Jesus' new resurrection body after he came out of the tomb.  It was a real body--he was not just a spirit.  But the new body had capacities that would make any comic book super hero jealous.  It was a body, but way more than any body we have ever seen or known.  So the new earth is a resurrected earth. It will have some continuity with this earth, but without sin, without pain, without conflict, without evil, without lack, without death.

So, what about application to real life now?  Well, that is not so easy to work out either.  Except to say that Jesus and the New Testament seem to think it is pretty important that we get this.  God wants to release his Kingdom into our world.  He wants to overturn the reign of sin and deception and injustice and division and disease and death.  Ultimately this will be accomplished in the "new earth."  But up until the end, we are called to access this end or goal by faith and faith-inspired actions to see the Kingdom come increasingly into the now of this very real and important earth that needs the salvation of the Risen Lord and his Kingdom.

There was celebrating in heaven this past Sunday.  Grace, "Momsie," Hanson went home to be with the Lord.  Her heart gave out at age 87.  I can't imagine her heart ever wearing out.  Every beat released love to those fortunate enough to be in her orbit of concern.

It would be impossible for me to honor Grace and Bud Hanson enough for the debt I owe them; and the debt that Wellspring owes them.  Most who now worship at Wellspring each week have never heard of them or seen them.  Yet their influence is felt every time we gather to worship or pray.

Some back story is in order.  Bud and Grace grew up in Hartford and were raised in the fervor and passion of the Pentecostal stream of the church.  They came to Kensington Baptist Church about a year before Debbie and I moved our family here from Minnesota.  There had been some upheaval in their home church and they came to KBC to worship with their daughter, Jan and her husband Ron; and with son Paul and his wife, Jill.  At KBC they found a healthy and sound church family.  They were welcomed and loved.  They adopted their new church home and family.  They were faithful in attendance and in many service opportunities.

Yet they missed the fire of the Holy Spirit they had known in the churches of Pentecost.

About the time they came to KBC, their son-in-law, Ron, served on the search committee that called me to serve as senior pastor.  Bud and Grace began to pray for the new pastor who would be coming.

I learned years later that Grace also began to pray for the fire of the Holy Spirit to fall upon her new church family.  She loved her new church, but she longed for more of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the corporate gatherings and church life.  She didn't complain.  She didn't accuse.  She didn't try to make waves.  She and Bud would pray.  And Momsie would come to the sanctuary and pray for the outpouring she so yearned to see at Kensington Baptist.

When our family moved into the parsonage and took up life as pastor and family, Momsie adopted us into that great heart of hers.  I knew that all of my children were on her prayer list.  I knew that I was regularly being brought before the throne of grace in her prayers to the Father.  I knew this to be true because of the passion that came into her voice and the tears that welled up in her eyes whenever she spoke to me about our children and the work of the ministry at KBC.

Pentecost has come to KBC/Wellspring.  Momsie's prayers--and those of many other faithful folk over the years--have been answered.  In recent years health issues led Bud and Grace to move to Covenant Village in Cromwell.  It has been a long time since they have worshiped with us.  But they have never left my heart.

A couple months ago I was at a conference with Rick Joyner.  He shared that the Lord had given him a promise that if he and the ministry he leads would honor the fathers and mothers of the faith who had touched their stream and lives, that God would release revival upon their ministry.  He set out to do just that.  When I heard that story, I grabbed onto that promise for myself and for our church.  I immediately made plans to visit Bud and Grace at Covenant Village.  I was fortunate enough to get there and visit Grace before her home-going.  Dementia had robbed her of much of her awareness.  It was sad, as that condition always is sad.  But I was able to be present with her and honor her faithfulness and her prayers that were now touching so many who had never even heard of her.

Good bye Momsie!  I am forever indebted to you for your great love and your great faith that touched me and my family and our church so deeply.  We will seek to live in a way that honors your memory and life.

I must confess.  I have never read any of the "Left Behind" series of novels or seen any of the films based upon the books.  Reason?  I grew up watching that movie.

Regularly in church we heard teaching, complete with end-time charts and really compelling stories about "the last days."  We knew which modern day nations were Gog and Magog (look in Ezekiel 38 and 39).  We heard that the limestone for the third temple in Jerusalem was already being quarried in Indiana and being shipped to the Holy Land.  We were warned against sinful forms of entertainment.  Because what if we were out dancing when Jesus came back?  Etc, etc, etc.

This Sunday (May 6) I will be introducing a two-part sermon that Mike will build upon the following week.  It is audaciously entitled, "The Real End, Parts I and II."

Neither one of us have the definitive understanding of the real end-time scenario.  The title is part hype and part tongue-in-cheek spoofing of ourselves.  But we are both very serious about the content of what we will be sharing these two upcoming Sundays.  At the core of what we will be sharing has to do with what the Lord says in the Bible about the future of this real world (earth, that is) in the end-times and beyond.  Here is a hint of where we are going (following the Bible's revelation to us)--we don't believe we are escaping this world, or that God is getting ready to just blow the whole thing up and ship us all out to heaven.

So what if Jesus returns between Part I and Part II?  Well then I guess I missed it.

Pastor Rick