Christian, are you activated?

You've been given an incredible gift this Resurrection Sunday

Do you know what harvesting where no seed is planted is called? Digging in the dirt. Do you know what watering where no seed has germinated is called? Making a mud pit. Do you know what planting where the ground is not plowed is called? Feeding the birds. Christians are not called to feed birds, make mud pits, or dig in fallow ground.

Book Cover: Story of the Hutchisons, a singing family from New England in the abolitionist movement

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 12 that we have all been given different functions and gifts in the body of Christ, according to the grace given us. Among these (and Paul doesn’t present his list as exhaustive) are teaching, encouraging, giving, leading, and showing mercy. The New Testament lists apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers as positions in the body of Christ. That is for plowing, planting, watering, harvesting, gathering, and maturing.

There is no gift of attendance.

I am glad that many of us are going to church today, or you have gone to Easter service because it is important to hear the Word of God and to fellowship with other believers. But God wants to activate you.

God has not just a wonderful plan for you, He also has a task, a mission, work for you. In the age of the Resurrection, we are in the age of grace. Before the Resurrection, there was only the Law and the Prophets. In the age of grace, all believers are to be prophets, priests, and workers in the harvest. If you simply go to church and listen to the preacher week after week, year after year, you are missing your activation.

It is time to put your hand to the plow and get activated.

If you are confining your faith to giving of your money (tithing is Biblical!) and serving one Sunday a month while the rest of your life is consumed with the carnal pursuit of wealth, or politics, or entertainment, then you are missing out on the gifts God has prepared for those who get activated. If you are confining your prayers to only your immediate needs or the distress of the day, you are missing out on the unsearchable depths of God’s grace.

It is time to make the move to bold prayer, to doing that which you have always held impossible, but with God it is not.

In 1775, gathered in Lexington and Concord, and on the green, men died to stamp out the tyranny of King George III’s rule over Americans. We became a nation through their activation. Was that God’s will? It appears so. The United States has sent more missionaries than all other nations in its short 250 year history. We have had a role in plowing the ground, planting seeds, and gathering the harvest of the Gospel.

But it is time for individual Christians to move now, because the tide of the grace given in 1775 is receding. It is time to get activated.

Do you know what plowing, planting, watering, harvesting and gathering in God’s Kingdom is without His power and the encouragement of other saints? Toil. We are not called to toil in God’s service. We are called to work, happily, in glad service, enjoying the gifts of God and His spirit. We are called to bear one another’s burdens, pray for one another, hold one another accountable, and be to iron to sharpen iron.

We are called to grow up in the Gospel, and to rise to our gifts. We are called to be activated. We are not saved to look backward to time when the Church was more powerful in our eyes. We are made holy by Christ’s holiness to look forward, plows in our hands, to the new harvest. Because opposition is coming. Hard ground, rocky ground, weeds among the crops, wolves among the sheep, devourers eating the seeds, poison in the water. These are all here and more is coming.

Activated Christians also die, but we will not die in our sins, to be returned to the dust. Christ is Risen! As we will be!

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

⁵⁵ “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁵⁸ Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

That is 1 Corinthians 15:54-58.

Christian, if you want to see victory over tyranny; if you want to see those imprisoned by drug addiction, alcoholism, greed, lust, bitterness, cynicism, depression, and delusion set free; if you want to see the works of the enemy brought down before you; if you want to know the joy of your true calling:

GET ACTIVATED. WAKE UP. GO.

He is Risen.

It is time for all of us to rise.