Dear Friends,

By the time you read this, another Easter will have come and gone. As I sit to write this column two weeks be-fore Easter, I feel certain that it’s going to be another glorious day here at Grace. The sanctuary will be beautifully decorated and the seats will be filled with enthusiastic worshipers as we gather to celebrate the glorious resurrection of our Lord.

But, after it’s all over, where do we go from here? I plan to tackle that question during the month of April with several sermons. First, on April 10, I’ll address the subject, “Easter Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” We spend so much time getting ready for Easter and we do our best here at Grace to make sure it’s a very meaningful and memorable day. Having said that, however, the same kind of spirit ought to permeate the church after Easter. There ought to be a spirit of excitement and joy. Jesus Christ has won! No more do we have to fear death as the great unknown. No more do we have to live our lives feeling all alone, frustrated, unsure, with no one to guide us. Jesus is alive! Let’s not waste Easter this year!

For my next two messages in April I plan to return to a sermon series I was unable to complete earlier in the year because I was in the hospital, “Sharing Your Faith.” In John 21 the Apostle tells the story of one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples. They were fishing but weren’t having much luck at all until Jesus told them, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

And the Lord’s message was simply this, “Start fishing for people. There are a lot of folks out there who don’t know that I am alive. There are a lot of folks out there who don’t know the joy of living for me and giving their lives to me. That’s your job.”

So I hope that you can see another sea today, a sea of people. People who are lonely and lost and hurting. People who will never know the joy that you and I know as Christians unless somebody takes the time to tell them and show them. The crowds of Easter will come and go, but there are still fish to be caught. So the Lord commissions us to go and fish some more, for men, for women, for young people, for hearts and lives who desperately need the Lord. The Lord calls us to share our faith! That will be our challenge after another Easter. “Go out into the world and tell the world about the risen Christ so that they, too, will know.”

In Christ,

Pastor George