Easter: Fresh Insight and Inspiration From the Archives
The following posts provide tons of Easter insight and inspiration! They contain informative articles, devotionals, teaching and preaching videos, and over a dozen worship music videos that will usher you to the foot of the cross in worship.
- The Resurrected Life
- The Confrontational Language of the Cross
- 13 Videos to Fix Your Eyes on Jesus and Fill Your Heart with Worship
- From the Cross to the Resurrection: Insight and Inspiration
- Easter Inspiration, Part 2: Sermons, Videos, Music, & Articles
- The Fellowship of the Cross: The Deepest Secret of Pentecost
The Resurrected Life
This is an Easter message birthed in years of indescribable suffering. It contains hope and comfort for our daily lives—for trials both great and small.
As we prepare our hearts to celebrate Easter and the Resurrected Life we now enjoy in Christ, I would like to share a word that the Holy Spirit has been whispering to my own heart.
It’s a word that I believe will bless and strengthen your own heart — and it comes from John 12 ….
This may not be a passage we usually hear preached about at Easter — but it is so incredibly filled with God’s grace and comfort for our everyday lives….
Let’s look together at this amazing portion of God’s Word.
• “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23)
Jesus had an appointed time of suffering — and God also allows adversity into our lives at His appointed times.
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• “Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” (John 12:26)
Imagine — Jesus spoke these words only a matter of days, even hours, before His crucifixion! “Whoever serves me must follow me …”
Wow! We often claim we want to serve him — that we want to follow Him … and we do … just not to the cross.
Like the crowds and Jesus’ disciples, we want to experience His miracles and be fed by Him — but just how far are we willing to follow Him? To the cross? Remember — “Where I am, my servant also will be.”
• “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27-28)
o First — We shouldn’t be worried and restless about our seasons of suffering. It was for this very reason we came to this hour. And what is the reason? To have ourselves — our old nature — removed and replaced with the life of Christ … so that He might live through us and bring about a spiritual harvest in us, as well as in those around us!
o Second — “Father, glorify Your name!” When we yield to God in our trials, God makes Himself recognizable to others through our lives. Through our trials, God fulfills the promises He’s made to us. The world sees God doing what He said He’d do — and they’re astounded. Glory is brought to His name!
To be sure, taking up our cross and following Jesus isn’t always popular or easy. But God relates to us on resurrection ground, and this ground always includes the cross.
As we alluded to earlier, we want His resurrection power—but only if we can bypass the cross. It just will not happen that way …
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We may be willing to follow Jesus to conferences across the nation, to Bible studies—even down the aisles of our churches. But the place that matters most is the cross. The cross is the ground upon which God relates to us.
The Confrontational Language of the Cross
— Ron Dunn, When Heaven Is Silent
The following thirteen worship videos are among my favorites this Easter. They include videos by Hillsong … Chris Tomlin … Kari Jobe … Kristian Stanfill … Matt Redman …. and others.
May these songs fill our hearts with worship and fix our eyes on the author and finisher of our faith!
Article authors include:
- John Piper
- Randy Alcorn
- C.H. Spurgeon
- Desiring God
- Adrian Rogers, and
- Justin Taylor … from sites such as Christianity Today, Charisma Magazine, and more!
There are also a few Easter images you may post on social media — images that will share the Gospel in a nutshell.
The post contains videos of sermons by David Wilkerson and Francis Chan. It also includes music videos by:
- Third Day
- New Life Worship
- Hillsong
- Gateway
- Jesus Culture
- Chris Tomlin
- Christy Nockels
- Brooklyn Tabernacle … and more!
Plus, there are links to informative articles by Gary Wilkerson … Justin Taylor … Rick Warren … Adrian Rogers … Trevin Wax … and more! This post is packed with lots of Easter inspiration and information!
Are you praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church or on your own life? Andrew Murray described a vital aspect that is missing in Christians’ lives — something that is hindering God’s answer to this prayer.
Our Concept of Christ in Heaven is Limited
The greatest work of the Spirit in our lives is to help us live every day in unbroken intimacy with Jesus Christ. In Andrew Murray on Prayer, Andrew Murray writes that this was the joy of the disciples and their preparation for Pentecost — “they were entirely taken up with Him. He was literally their all.”
Murray explains that there is a deeper secret of Pentecost.
The Cross is Christ’s highest glory. The Holy Spirit neither has done nor can do anything greater or more glorious than He did when He empowered Jesus to go to that cross: “Christ…through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God” (Heb. 9:14). In the same way, the Holy Spirit can do nothing greater or more glorious for us than to take us up into the fellowship of that Cross, and to work in us the same spirit of the Cross that was seen in our Lord Jesus. In a word, the question arose whether this was not the real reason why our prayers for the powerful operation of the Holy Spirit could not be answered, because we had sought too little to receive the Spirit, in order that we might know and become like the glorified Christ in the fellowship of His Cross.
Is this not the deepest secret of Pentecost?
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How foolish it is to pray for the fullness of the Spirit if we have not first placed ourselves under the full power of the Cross!…What is it that hinders? The Father … is more willing than any earthly father to give bread to His child, and yet the cry arises, ‘Is the Spirit restricted?’ Many will acknowledge that the hindrance undoubtedly lies in the fact that the church is too much under the sway of the flesh and the world. They understand too little of the heart-piercing power of the Cross of Christ. So it comes to pass that the Spirit does not have the vessels into which He can pour His fullness.
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