by Eddie Lyons
Everyone knows Christmas is the most expensive holiday celebrated in our country. Easter expenditures fall well below back to school, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day.
One writer lamented the fact that efforts to commercialize Easter similarly to Christmas have not succeeded as well as retailers had hoped. One writer on this topic said the reason is because the story behind Easter is a subversive religious message, “Christ is risen.” Here are the words of James Martin writing for The Wall Street Journal in March 2016:
“If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead everything changes. In that case, you cannot set aside any of his teachings. Because a person who rises from the grave, who demonstrates his power over death and who has definitively proven his divine authority needs to be listened to. What that person says demands a response. In short, the Resurrection makes a claim on you.”
Our greatest joy in ministry is seeing the power of this “disruptive message” at work in the lives of people in our ministries. Recently, I heard the testimony of a woman who came to Christ ten years ago. She said since accepting Jesus as her Savior, nothing in her life is the same. She is a completely different person.
We keep the testimony of a resurrected Christ alive in our ministries. Weekly, in our churches and on the mission fields of the world, we get to be first-hand witnesses to the power of the resurrection. The Baptist Bible Fellowship International exists to plant churches, send missionaries, and educate leaders … all because of the resurrection of Jesus. Paul describes the great disruption of this message when he writes in Ephesians, “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”