Revisiting The End of Fear - with Pastor Jonathan Hein

Embark on a profound exploration of faith as Pastor Jonathan Hein joins us to illuminate the powerful theological implications of Christ’s resurrection. With Easter upon us, we examine the transformational message of hope that defies our deepest fears—fear of sin, fear of death, and the uncertainties of life. Our conversation with Pastor Hein navigates through the cornerstone of Christian belief, revealing how the resurrection serves as the ultimate ‘receipt’ of sin’s payment, guaranteeing our justification and casting out fear from our spiritual lives.

The resurrection of Jesus isn't just a historical touchstone; it's the very heartbeat of Christian assurance and comfort, especially amidst life's storms. Through our exchange, we uncover the stark contrast between the transient comforts of the world and the eternal promises of the gospel. The steadfast victory over sin and death affords believers a unique lens through which to view suffering and uncertainty, offering a beacon of hope and the promise of victory, whether in this life or in the eternal presence of Jesus.

As we wrap up our impassioned discussion with Pastor Hein, we widen our gaze to consider life's challenges in the context of eternity. The resurrection reframes our understanding of pain and suffering, casting them as precursors to the ultimate joy awaiting us. Our dialogue traverses tough terrains of faith, from personal trials within our congregations to global crises, and we share stories of transformation that demonstrate the life-altering power of Christ's victory over the grave. This episode is an invitation to experience the transformative power of the resurrection, encouraging you to carry its message of hope into everyday life.

This episode originally aired in April 2022.

Transcript

Jonathan Hein: 0:19

On today's episode issues, and I'd always just say let's set all that aside and let's just come back to the resurrection. That's where it comes down to. You have to wrestle for yourself with did this guy rise from the dead or didn't he? If he didn't, I mean, it's the CS Lewis. He's either a lunatic liar or a lord. If he didn't rise from the dead, he should have nothing to do with Jesus. With me, my church, don't bother with prayer. There's no reason for any of it. But if he did, it's life-changing.

Paul Snamiska: 0:48

Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.

Christa Potratz: 1:15

Welcome back. I'm Christa Potratz and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson, and we also have a special guest with us today, Pastor Jonathan Hein. Welcome.

Jonathan Hein: 1:26

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Christa Potratz: 1:27

Yeah, we're excited. Well, today we are going to have our Easter-inspired episode. So if you're hearing this episode just recently after we've published it, it will have just been Easter and we are going to talk about some things related with that. But really, the Easter message is, I would say, probably the most central thing in Christianity, and so there will just be a lot of things that we can that we'll discuss. That will be relevant, no matter when you're hearing this. What we're going to start with today is Pastor Tyne. If you can just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jonathan Hein: 2:07

I began my ministry in Charleston, South Carolina. I had a mission restart and served there for 20 years. We started two congregations down there and we're looking to start our third when I had the call to become coordinator of WELS Congregational Services. So that's the group within WELS. There are six different commissions Commission on Evangelism, commission on Worship those types of commissions that help equip and encourage congregations for zealous gospel ministry. My main responsibility there is it's called congregational counseling, as I go in with churches, go into churches and help them assess their ministry, put together a long-range plan, do some leadership training. So yeah, I've been doing that for four and a half years and love it a lot.

Christa Potratz: 2:45

Yeah, and you actually were connected with Christian Life Resources too, right?

Jonathan Hein: 2:48

I was, yes, my senior year at the seminary got to intern at Christian Life Resources and it was just a blessing to be associated with that ministry and just kind of see what they're all doing. It's something I've always been passionate about. Life issues has been since I was really a high schooler, something that has meant a lot to me, so I really enjoyed that time there.

Christa Potratz: 3:14

Well, we're excited to have you here with us today. Today, we really want to talk about this idea of the end of fear and what that means. And so how does Christ's resurrection do away with fear in a theological sense?

Jonathan Hein: 3:25

So probably the most famous Shakespeare quote from Act 3 of Hamlet is Hamlet says to be or not to be. Everyone knows that quote and they don't know really what he's talking about. He's contemplating suicide and he goes on to say calls death this journey from which no traveler returns. Calls death this journey from which no traveler returns. That it puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we currently have than fly to other ills we know not of. Oh how the conscience makes cowards of us all.

Jonathan Hein: 3:56

So it's not just physical death that scares Hamlet, it's the uncertainty of what's going to happen to him after Just his conscience is telling him, uncertainty of what's going to happen to him after Just his conscience is telling him. Could this be really bad? Could I have to face some sort of judgment, which the answer, of course, is yes, and so the resurrection is what removes that fear. We have a Savior who was sinless, therefore shouldn't have died, since death is a consequence of sin. But 1 Peter 2, where Peter wrote Jesus himself bore our sins in his body. So the guilt of the world is transferred to Jesus. He died because of our sin, and if he stayed dead then we'd have to assume that our sin was too big a problem for him to handle.

Jonathan Hein: 4:36

But the resurrection is kind of like a receipt that our sin has indeed been entirely paid for. Paul says in Romans he was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification. That 25 cent word, which means to be declared not guilty. So in the theological sense of how is our guilt removed? The resurrection is proof that Christ's payment by death on the cross was more than enough to atone for the sins of the world.

Christa Potratz: 5:01

I like the idea of the receipt too. When you get a receipt, it's that physical copy of something, and that Christ's resurrection is like that for us.

Jonathan Hein: 5:14

Yeah, it's like when you're walking out of Sam's Club they have the checker there and they're like the policemen to make sure that you're not stealing anything. And you hold up your receipt and you're like vex me, not Sam's Club, lady, the price has been paid in full. And it's the same thing when the devil comes to us and says why would you in the world, would you think God would love someone like you, all the things you've done? And I can hold up the resurrection and say vex me, not devil, the price has been paid in full and resurrection is the receipt that proves it.

Christa Potratz: 5:49

So on this podcast too, we really like to talk about life issues and challenges too. So how can we use the resurrection as a point to talk with somebody who is going through something that's challenging?

Bob Fleischmann: 6:00

Well, and actually what oftentimes happens is the resurrection presents the world with this peculiar, awkward circumstance. The world doesn't know how to handle the resurrection. They sometimes will make it symbolic of something. They go out of their way to reject a bodily resurrection. But the bodily resurrection really tells you that the end is not the end. The bodily resurrection has a way of changing your entire perspective, not only in life but when you're facing the end of life.

Bob Fleischmann: 6:29

The world doesn't like that. The world is trying to demystify everything in Scripture and we see it at the beginning of life when they're messing around with causing birth in a petri dish, and we see it at the end of life when we're trying to take God's authorship away of life and death and people can take control of their life. So all of a sudden, when you get to a predicament where you're saying you cannot save yourself, you have no standing, and then you get the resurrection of Jesus Christ to find out that's been done for you. It flies in the face of the world's natural inclination to be evil and to hate God and to rebel against God. And the resurrection is kind of that recalibration point in the church here to get us back on the right track, that this always has been about God. This has always been about God's love for his people, and it's always been about Jesus Christ and what he did.

Jeff Samelson: 7:22

Yeah, the resurrection is one of those things that I think a lot of Christians just kind of well, I don't want to say they just give lip service to it, but they don't think about it that much. And of course that's one of the advantages of having the church year, that there at least is one time a year when the resurrection is the focus and such. But we compare the types of encouragement that people will give from a non-Christian perspective. I mean, you're going through something difficult, oh, this too shall pass, or you just got to try to look on the bright side, or whatever it might be. They may not actually be encouraging at all, just suck it up or something like that. Be, they may not actually be encouraging at all, just suck it up, or something like that.

Jeff Samelson: 8:07

But we can speak to the Christian who has the certain hope of resurrection and we say, hey, no matter how bad this is, you know what's on the other side, this cancer that has taken you, maybe what's going to happen is that God is going to bring healing. And on the other side of this you're going to look back and you say, what was I so worried about? Thank you, lord. Or maybe this cancer is going to bring healing and on the other side of this, you're going to look back and say what was I so worried about, thank you, lord. Or maybe this cancer is going to be the thing that, after six months, eight months of suffering, is going to take you and hey, you know what? Then You're going to end up in heaven with Jesus, so it's win all around. That's something we can offer as Christians to other Christians that the world cannot offer in terms of hope and as something that will take away their fear of the unknown.

Jonathan Hein: 8:52

Pete, yeah, I think when Christians are fearful of the types of things you described, they lose the perspective that they're eternal. They look at them. They think, well, I'm going to live for 80 years. And then like, so let's just go through our present times. I mean, we're in some struggling times right now. So let's say it's going to be a really bad two or three years, for whatever reason. And you say, well, two or three years and compared to 80 years, that's a big chunk of my life. That's going to be really challenging and it's ridiculous.

Jonathan Hein: 9:25

I like to use a timeline illustration. So think of a timeline that's 10,000 years long and now shade in the front part of the timeline that's worth 80 years. So the normal human, it's just going to be a tiny sliver of the 10,000 years. Change those numbers now to the 10,000 years, change it to 24 hours. Do you know what the 80 years now represents? That shaded area? It's 11 minutes.

Jonathan Hein: 9:44

So imagine that you got up, woke up and the first 11 minutes of your day were awful. You stubbed your toe, you burnt your eggs, you know whatever it was. Just everything went wrong for 11 minutes. But then for the next 23 hours and 49 minutes, everything was perfect. Have you had a good day? You've had a fantastic day. So if everything in your 80 years goes wrong, you're sleeping in a box in an alleyway. For 80 years, you think, oh, that's bad. Well, not if you live for 10,000 years and that the next whatever that is, 9,920 years is perfect. You'd say that's been a fantastic 10,000 years.

Jonathan Hein: 10:23

And then there's the hymn Amazing Grace. When we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing our God's praise than when we first begun. When we have that eternal life perspective, it lets us realize that the problems that we experience here in this life I think Paul says it's not even worth comparing our present sufferings to the future glory that awaits us because of Christ's resurrection. So that eternal life perspective, if we can help Christians just to remember that, look, you're going to live forever and it's just a tiny sliver of your life. You got to be conscientious with that.

Jonathan Hein: 10:54

Someone first gets a cancer diagnosis. That's not what I would tell them. There's a time just to be silent and to cry with your fellow Christians, to mourn with those who mourn, but ultimately we have to encourage people, even beyond bad times, in good times. I don't have to live my most comfortable life now to have all the things that I might like, want to have. Now I get to have that in eternity. I can sacrifice my time, my talents, my treasures in abundant generosity now, because I don't need to be perfectly comfortable for the short little time that I have on this earth.

Bob Fleischmann: 11:29

Pete. Well, and the resurrection does force us to think eternally. You know, the problem is because the world has so tried to dilute down everything about it that we actually find ourselves drinking the Kool-Aid of the world. We begin to think that this is all there is going to be. A lot of times, people tend to blow out of proportion the things that they encounter in life. When you get the diagnosis you're pregnant and you're not married, especially if you're within the church, in society it's not a big deal, but within the church it still is a big deal. Okay, but it's. It's a moment. It's a moment in eternity and you find forgiveness at the cross, you find the stamp of approval with the open tomb.

Bob Fleischmann: 12:16

One of the trying things we're going through right now is this whole business going on in Ukraine, and last night I was reading up on some of the war crimes and some of the horrible things going on. And when people think like the world, they start reading those stories and they begin to ask how could God allow this? And yet a lot of this is the consequences of sinful people being sinful in their dealing with other sinful people, and God is the one who says but I fix it all with the cross and with the open tomb, and Christians have that perspective and when we live in the world and face the challenges of the world, we do so with that perspective. However, when we face people of the world who don't understand this, it doesn't hurt to practice a little patience with them because, like I said early on, there's a very anti-supernaturalness about the world. Now they don't like to talk about miracles. They want an explanation for everything and, of course, nothing is more death-defying than three days dead in the tomb and you're alive. I was listening. Why was the stone rolled away on the tomb? It wasn't to let Jesus out. He didn't need the stone rolled away. He walked through the walls to meet with the apostles in the upper room, but to let people in. To let people in to see that why you're looking for the living among the dead.

Bob Fleischmann: 13:41

It's a very unique story and when you're dealing with the world, you have to start slowly, you have to start carefully. You have to start slowly, you have to start carefully, you have to start patiently, and the story of Easter is probably a good place to start. It sets you apart from everybody else. You're very different. You're very different. I believe that even in death there's life. So when I look at the disasters of 9-11 and how human lives were vaporized and the terrible things that happened, it's not beyond God to put it all back together to fix it. And that's the story of Easter. It's an incredible story that's beyond our imagination and when you read all the scripture it's been leading up to it the inexplicable things all come to a head at Easter.

Christa Potratz: 14:29

Yeah, I think too, like with the resurrection. I was reminded when you were talking. What was that book that came out? The Case for Christ with Lee Strobel.

Bob Fleischmann: 14:37

Lee Strobel yeah.

Christa Potratz: 14:39

And then he. That was really, I think, the point for him when things kind of started clicking, when he started looking at all these accounts of the resurrection and the testimony of all the people and that just realizing, wow, like that actually did happen and what that meant too.

Bob Fleischmann: 15:05

Pete, you know we've actually had more witnesses to the resurrected Christ than we did to the existence of William Shakespeare. It's interesting when you read the dispute about how many people actually knew Shakespeare. There's only something like 10 or 12 references of people who actually recorded that they had conversations with him or something, and a couple of them are under dispute. You know we have over 500 witnesses to the resurrected Jesus and we have no trouble believing in William Shakespeare. But you know I don't want to make a human argument for—but my point is that the resurrection is a well-testified to—and it's an enduring message the Christian church has endured, with a focal point on the resurrection.

Jonathan Hein: 15:50

Pete. Hey, we kind of pivoted it to the topic of the resurrection with unbelievers, and so when I go to Charleston in 1997, we have 13 people in the church and you can actually do door-to-door canvassing there and I would do a couple of thousand houses a year and got a lot of conversations and people would maybe want to talk about creation versus evolution or when. They would, you know, do a little bit of research on our church, like if I was doing follow-up on a prospect, like our stance on on gender issues, and I'd always just say, let's, let's set all that aside and let's just come back to the resurrection. That's where it comes down to. You have to wrestle for yourself with did this guy rise from the dead or didn't he? If he didn't I mean it's the CS Lewis he's either a lunatic liar or a lord. If he didn't rise from the dead, you should have nothing to do with Jesus, with me, my church, don't bother with prayer, there's no reason for any of it, but if he did, it's life-changing for you. And so I would just leave him with the question.

Jonathan Hein: 16:48

Greg Kuhl, who's an apologist? He talks about putting a pebble in a person's shoe. In other words, I want to make you a little uncomfortable, since you wrestle with the implications of what I'm saying, I would just say explain to me how Christianity exploded in the first three centuries and they'll think well, it was sociological or economically beneficial? No, it wasn't. At the very least, you were ostracized by your family. At the very least you were ostracized by your family. At the worst they'd lay you down and drill a hole in your head and pour molten lead into your skull. There was no good reason to become a Christian.

Jonathan Hein: 17:16

And yet it explodes from a couple of hundred after Jesus rose to something like 24 million, I think at the end of the third century. I could be way off by that, I can't remember, but it's just astronomical growth. And the only logical explanation is people were convinced that this man who had been dead had come back to life, proving that all his claims that he's God in human flesh, that he has the ability to forgive sins, that he can give eternal life, that that has to be true and they were willing to lay down their lives in order to follow him. The only explanation for the explosion of the Christian church is that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

Bob Fleischmann: 17:54

I mean, what a profound change in Paul's life. He went from fighting it to becoming its greatest spokesman for it. Because he says, this is what happened he rose from the dead and now I the least of all the apostles have witnessed it. And it carried on from there. And you know I've talked on, I think, in other episodes. When I was confirmed I wanted to quit the church, I wanted nothing to do with it. The resurrection was always the story that kept bringing me back, because everything else I felt I could probably explain away, but the story of the resurrection and all of its consequences just had too much to say. It was why, on the one hand, I could cry my eyes out at the death of a loved one, On the other hand, still face the next day because there's going to be this reunion, there is life, and it was profound ramifications in my life.

Jonathan Hein: 18:51

I think that happens to a lot of our members, where they kind of wander not wander in the faith, but just wonder why do I believe what I believe? Is it just because my parents believed it? And they start looking at other religions and they come to the conclusion that Christianity and the message of the resurrection is entirely unique. Like you mentioned, paul in 1 Corinthians 15, where he's telling people look, if you have doubts about this, there's 500 eyewitnesses. You can go and find them. Compare that to Muhammad or Joseph Smith, who said here's this revelation that I got. Oh yeah, just trust me, I'm the only one who said just trust me, as Paul says.

Jonathan Hein: 19:26

No, you don't have to just trust me. Go, track down these. Another one of the uniquenesses of Christianity every other religion says here's the God that wants you to die for him. Just make sacrifice after sacrifice, and maybe he'll smile on you because you were willing to die for him. Christianity is the only religion who says here's the God who's willing to die for you and then rise for you. So yeah, just the uniqueness. The resurrection is. I think I mean well, you mentioned it, chris, that's the central tenet of Christianity. I think it's the best place to start with when witnessing with unbelievers is you have to wrestle with. This is historical fact. What we're sharing here is not like a philosophy or a worldview. Here's how we'd like you to think about things. We're just sharing with you history. This man died and he came back to life. You have to wrestle with what that means for you personally.

Christa Potratz: 20:15

Yeah, thinking about him dying too kind of brings me back to this idea with fear too. I know on previous podcast episodes we've talked about overcoming the fear of death and how. I don't know Bob you've mentioned it before too just how, when you can really not be afraid of death, what that does for you as a Christian. And so, looking at Jesus too, how he conquered death but he didn't do away with it, we still have to die. What good purpose do we still see in that we die?

Jeff Samelson: 20:56

Well, if we didn't die, we wouldn't get to heaven. God did start off with the plan A, which was where we would live forever in perfection here on earth, still able to walk with him in fellowship and everything like that. But that didn't last very long, because Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden chose sin instead of obedience, and therefore we live in a world of sin, as sinners, with fellow sinful people. I don't know about anybody else Well, actually, I do know about anybody else. This is something we can assume. We don't want to live in these conditions forever, and so death is the way that we get to what is better, to life with Jesus in heaven, where we wait until the final glorious day of the final resurrection, when we are reunited with our bodies and spend eternity in the new heavens and the new earth that God has prepared for us. So in that sense, it's good that death is still here.

Jonathan Hein: 21:53

Yeah, god continues to speak to the world and he has two messages it's law and gospel. And death is the way he preaches. The law the wages of sin is death. And so here's that murderer who was killed by lethal injection Makes sense, murderer dies. And here's that rapist who's in jail and he is going to sit there until the end of his life and he's going to die behind bars. I'm like, yep, that makes sense. And then you see, mother Teresa dies too. And your kindly grandfather, who you think is next to Jesus, he dies too.

Jonathan Hein: 22:27

Death is God's way of saying no one's lived up to my standards except my son. And that's a good preaching of the law that's necessary for the world to hear, so that the hard soil of their heart is tilled. Then, when it's tilled by the fear of death, that's when it's time for God's second message, which is gospel. But he doesn't preach that through nature or through natural law. He preaches that through the church, through you and me, sharing what Jesus Christ has done for people so that the fear that they have, including all the fears that they have, including that of death, they can see those are rectified in Christ.

Bob Fleischmann: 23:02

And that's why Paul said I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it's more necessary for you that I remain. In other words, even if you lack great oratory skills or whatever it is, there's a purpose in your life to continue to model your faith, proclaim your faith as long as you have life. And that's also why Christians are not running to death, running to die, because their time is a time to serve. And Paul recognized that. Paul said, hey, it'd be better off for me to die, but not yet. And he continued to serve.

Christa Potratz: 23:40

When we talk about fear too. I just kind of want to bring up just a little bit about this fear of the Lord too, because we do hear that about how we're. I think it was Luther right that says fear in the catechism fear and love God. And so how do we, how does that kind of fit into this image of fear?

Bob Fleischmann: 24:07

We're all too afraid to say.

Christa Potratz: 24:12

Are we supposed to fear God or do we fear?

Jonathan Hein: 24:15

God, you're crazy not to, but it's a certain type of fear. So over spring break we read Lion Witch and the Wardrobe, which I read as a little kid. That is just such a fascinating for those. I think probably a lot of our listeners have read it, if you haven't do that over the summer. It's a metaphor for the plan of salvation, where there's these forces of evil led by a white witch, and the force of good is this character named Aslan, who is just this big, massive lion. And so these kids from Earth are transferred to Narnia, which is where this metaphorical battle takes place and even wildlife speaks there. So there's this family of beavers that can talk and they're talking to these Earth kids. Susan and Lucy are the two daughters' names, and the beavers tell Susan, you're going to go and meet Aslan.

Christa Potratz: 25:05

He's a lion.

Jonathan Hein: 25:06

And so now Susan's freaking out. She's like is she safe? I feel nervous about meeting a lion. And Mrs Beaver responds she's like if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or just a fool. And Susan's sister, lucy, says so, then he isn't safe. And now Mr Beaver responds he said safe. Of course he isn't safe. He's a lion. He's not safe at all, but he's good.

Jonathan Hein: 25:39

That's Jesus. He's not safe at all. Anyone who would pose him any of his enemies. When he comes for the second time, he's not coming like he came the first time. It is not meek and humble in a manger. Revelation describes what he looks like when he comes the second time, riding on a white horse, eyes like fire. So he's not safe. And so I mean my sinful nature is terrified of offending him. And so I mean my sinful nature is terrified of offending him, offending this holy God who truly hates sin and yet he's good. He proved that by his death and resurrection, and so I have this incredible respect for him. But it's not. I mean what Mrs Beaver says. I don't come into his presence without my knees knocking a little bit, and part of that is just that what he wants to do for my life, I realize, is a little it's intimidating.

Jonathan Hein: 26:31

You think of what Jesus talks about authentic discipleship. He talks about denying ourselves taking up our cross. That sounds painful, it sounds hard. He tells his disciples on Holy Thursday evening if the world hates me, you guys are nuts. If you think it's going to embrace you, they're going to hate you too, and so Jesus isn't safe. He wants to do more than just save me. He wants to get his hands on my life and make me into something infinitely more beautiful than I would have ever thought possible. But that's going to require cross-bearing self-sacrifice, and so there's part of me that's intimidated by that too. So there is a healthy respect, a fear in that sense of Jesus, fear of offending him, a nervousness of what it means to give everything I have and everything I am over to his service. And just what Mr Bieber said you know he's not safe, but he's good, and the resurrection is what proves that.

Bob Fleischmann: 27:36

Well and we've talked about that before where we want to be there for God, we want to do his will, we want to be a soldier in his army, and so forth. But we always like to kind of hedge our bets a little bit. We're willing to sacrifice only if it doesn't hurt. We're willing to go the extra mile, as long as maybe I have a golf cart. You know, we're always, in other words, we kind of we're always hedget, and what we're experiencing is the battle between the old man and the new man. We're always hedged and what we're experiencing is the battle between the old man and the new man. Which kind of leads me to kind of a final thought. And that is why does everybody show up for Easter at church? Well, first of all, you know, yes, tradition, you know family, you know we're visiting family, they're going to make us come to church. But I mean, we even get regular members of the church who you hardly see the whole year. But they'll come.

Bob Fleischmann: 28:25

For you know, we always say Easter and Christmas. And why is it? Because Easter touches on that delicate nerve in our lives that says you know, I'm sure, I'm not sure, I'm sure, I'm not sure. And Easter is that final punctuation mark that and I'm going back to something John had said earlier, and that is, you know, when you're visiting with somebody and you're going door to door or you're just having conversations, you know over a lunch hour, and people want to go after you about evolution, they want to go after you about climate change, gender dysphoria, things like that when you start with the resurrection, when you talk about the resurrection, what it does is it shifts the argument from horizontally to vertically. In other words, you're talking about your relationship with God.

Bob Fleischmann: 29:13

And when you start to talk about your relationship with God, if the resurrection is true, it profoundly changes everything else in life, because it starts to explain all the other things and starts answering all of the other questions. And actually the beauty of the resurrection is it restores the might and majesty to Christ and you get that glimpse of power over death even. All of a sudden, I no longer am demanding that God explain everything to me. I don't have to have every answer, because he is God after all. And so the resurrection's a good starting point to start working backwards and addressing all of the issues that certainly we deal with here at CLR, but just all the issues in life, why is there suffering, why is there pain? Why is there death? All that kind of stuff finds a whole different light in the glow of the resurrection.

Jonathan Hein: 30:11

One quick final thought is an interesting phrase in the Great Resurrection chapter is death will be swallowed up in victory. So Paul is saying all the consequences of sin, all of them physical death, but all the pain, it's going to be swallowed up in victory. Which is, he could have just said, like it'll be forgotten because of the victory of the resurrection. But he says it's going to be swallowed up. It's a fascinating Greek word. Talks about eating something completely and quickly. So set a pizza in front of a bunch of 16-year-old boys and you'll see what it means to be swallowed up. When I eat something, it either, at the very least it energizes me, it fuels me. The way I eat, it can make me bigger. So when Paul says all of the consequences of sin, the hardships that we have on the earth, the things that you cried about in the last week in the victory of the resurrection, it's going to be swallowed up, all those things are going to make that victory that much sweeter.

Jonathan Hein: 31:07

I compare it to the first dog I had. I thought she was kind of annoying Down Charleston. I'd be trying to write a sermon and she's trying to nuzzle me. She wants me to take her for a walk. So I was thinking of her as this annoying dog and then she ran away and we just hunted for a frantic 48 hours and found her and I never thought of her as an annoying dog again. My love for her was increased, energized because I'd gone through the hardship of losing her. That's what Jesus promises is that all the hardship we go through now is just going to energize and make bigger the victory that we'll have in the resurrection, which the incredible thing about that is. Think of what that means for Satan Absolutely everything he's ever done in your life to try and make your life miserable. Jesus says yeah, I'm going to use that to make your eternity better. That's what I think is meant when Paul says death is swallowed up in victory.

Christa Potratz: 32:02

Thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much to all of our listeners today too, and if you like this episode, please subscribe, give us a review and we'll see you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye.

Paul Snamiska: 32:16

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLifeResourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.