We live in a world where I would say most people are not content with the status of the world today. There are wars and hatred and injustice and unfairness and probably every single one of us has thought, to some degree or another, that they would like the world to change. They would like it to be a better place.

All that love that is built into moms and dads, it comes straight from God. Pure parental love is such a beautiful picture of our relationship with our father, God, his love for us because we are his children. Over and over in scripture, we are called the children of God.

Sometimes people think that these miracles are nothing but another good episode for the X-Files or something like that. But in reality, it is much more than just a miracle and it's much more than just something that would make for a good sci-fi story. It actually means everything to you and me. It means everything to the gospel message. It means everything to your future and my future.

I'm thankful for the routines that I have implemented in my life. We do pauses on a regular basis. I take moments throughout the day to just stop and try to connect with God. I'm thankful for the routines of regularly scheduled church services and times together, Bible studies that we can do all the different things that we kind of schedule in a sense, I'm thankful for routines. These things actually enhance my relationship with God, but I could show up and my heart could be far from here. If that happens, then that tradition and that routine becomes something that actually undermines my relationship with God. Over time, intentional thoughtfulness can be lost because of routines.

I'm so glad and excited to share today, Easter, because I felt I've given a lot of Easter messages in the past and I love to tell the story of the resurrection and there is so much to say about it. I thought, well, why would you be the hog of it all? I'm going to ask Pastor Jeff start today and then Pastor Robert will share some of his thoughts. And then I'm going to wrap things up about some of the historicity of the resurrection.

I want to talk about the other part of Palm Sunday because when we focus only on the entrance of Jesus into the city, we can actually lose sight of what he actually came there to do. He didn't just decide to ride into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. It really was the cult of a donkey. And then after he got there, he thought, well, now that I'm here, I better do something. He had a purpose in coming to Jerusalem that day.

Religious people have a tendency to focus on the cup and they lose sight of the content. Sometimes, we even find ourselves arguing about who has the best cup, don't we? We forget to actually drink what's supposed to be inside the cup because we are arguing over who has the best cup.

Is the cart before the horse in your life? We don't have any record of Jesus using any form of the word religion, yet the word religion is used a lot in our culture today, around the world. And yet we have no record of Jesus ever using any form of the word religion. He uses a different word to denote an intimate, heartfelt connection with God. That word that Jesus used to denote a connection with God is the word faith. Faith is a relational word. Inherent in the word faith is this concept of trust. When you have faith in somebody, you have trust in somebody.

When you think of the life of Jesus and the person of Jesus, so much of what he did, he did in storytelling. Many of us have read many books through the years. A book, of course, is written in words, but the words are really, believe it or not, the important thing in the book.

Have you ever heard the expression, usually it's given as a toast, here's to what, mud in your eye? Here is to mud your eye. Some people think that that expression came out of World War I, where there were a lot of soldiers in trenches and they got very muddy and they were toasting each other because they would have a tendency to drink a lot in those times. There's a whole other camp that believes that expression. Here is to mud in your eye comes from a whole different place. It comes from the story we are going to read today in John chapter nine, where Jesus healed a blind man by putting mud on his eyes.

Thank you, Lord. God is transforming our hearts for what he is doing. And the oldness of our hearts had to be surgically removed by him for what he is because as we are going to God's transplant table, the old has to be rooted out. We need to all just ask the Lord, what do you want to take out of me to make me more ready for what you have for me in the future?

This scripture by the mouth of Jesus says that in heaven, every child has an angel. That's in the word of God. These are not fairy tales. This is the word of God. We can attribute value by what Jesus says, and he says, there is an angel that's assigned to every child. So we need to understand the value of a child.

Design always necessitates a designer. I really struggle with time plus chance, time plus chance plus matter equals what we have in our universe today. There is way too much design in our universe. There is way too much order in our universe today for it not to have come about by a designer, a creator. When God created us, his intentions were to make something that would reflect his image. That's why he said I’ve made man in my own image. But that image has many different aspects to it, one of which is his immortality. God is immortal.

Jacque: For we were born but yesterday and no nothing. Our days on earth are as fleeting as a shadow.

Brian: So even if we lived to be a hundred years in eternity, that a hundred years is just like yesterday and our days on earth are as fleeting as a shadow. I don't know if you've ever been outside and you've seen an airplane fly kind of through the sun and the shadow passes by on the ground, but it doesn't stay there very long.