The Power that Defies Gravity | The Fullness | Luke Humbrecht

Discover the incredible power that can overcome any impossible situation in your life. This Easter message explores how the same resurrection power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is available to every believer today. Learn about the difference between physical gravity and spiritual gravity, and how God's grace acts as supernatural anti-gravity in our lives.

Whether you're facing health challenges, relationship struggles, financial hardship, or spiritual battles, this message reveals how resurrection power can lift what feels unbearable and bring life to what seems dead. Discover how to open yourself to receive God's grace in the broken places of your life.

Perfect for anyone seeking hope, encouragement, and practical faith for difficult circumstances. This Easter message reminds us that no matter what we're facing, the worst thing is not the last thing when we have access to the power that raised Jesus from the dead.


This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. The Church of the Lookout is the whole of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with all inspiring love. Visit us online at the lookout. Happy Easter! Happy resurrection to everybody. So good to see you. If we have not met yet, my name is Luke. I'm the lead pastor here. We're gonna open up the scriptures this morning and remind ourselves of the story that we that we rehearse every year. But before I do that, I just want to acknowledge that sometime in the last 2,000 years, somebody decided that the only way to be like a real Christian is on Easter Sunday. If I say he is risen, you have to say he is risen indeed. All right. It's like a secret that we share. So I just want to try it out to see how many real Christians are in the room. So he he is risen. Come on. You did it, guys. Bona fide, church-going Christians here today. Hey, um, it is a good day to be here. Um, and it's a good day to celebrate the never-ending life of God. And we've been beholding Jesus all weekend, his cross and what he endured for us, and uh and and what he bore in his body in our behalf, and the weight that he carried it on his bath. How many of you guys know without Good Friday, we don't get an Easter Sunday? And the opposite's also true. Without Easter Sunday, Good Friday ain't so good. But because of the resurrection, we can say his death brought redemption and brought power to us, and today we get to celebrate resurrection life. On Friday, we felt the weight of the cross, but on Sunday we see the power that lifts the weight and lifts us up today. And that is good news for all of us here today. I'm gonna start preaching. You better start saying amen. Easter turns an end, a hopeless end into an endless hope. And that is why we're here today to talk about Jesus being risen. So we're gonna open in the scriptures. Matthew 28 is where we're gonna start today. If you have your Bible, you can open there. If you don't have a Bible, we'll have it on the screen. Um, and then you're always welcome to just uh take one of our Bibles in the back. You're gonna see some blue Bibles at the tables here out in the lobby. If you don't have a Bible of your own, just go take one or take any other Bible that looks like it's alone in the room, all right? Somebody apparently doesn't need it. Um so Matthew 28 is where we're starting today. And this is the story as Matthew describes it on Resurrection Sunday, okay? It says this now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow, and for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the woman, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who is crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. They departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples, and behold, Jesus met them and said, Greetings. Which is what you do when you come back from the dead. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me. This is the word of the Lord. Say, thanks be to God. Come on. So this week was uh it was a fascinating week in the United States. This week NASA launched Artemis II, which is part of this uh return to the moon after 50 years. And it was this awesome project. It's the second rocket out of this this huge project, as you see on the screen. And some of you guys watched this, four astronauts uh left the earth for a journey about 10 days, and for the first time, uh, it's where humans have gone beyond the Earth's orbit since 1972, over 50 years ago. And they'll travel farther than ever any humans have been for the first time on this particular trip. Now, this rocket, it's the most powerful crewed rocket ever used. Okay, so fully fueled, it weighs about 5.75 million pounds. That's a lot of pounds. To lift that, it needs 8.8 million pounds of thrust, okay? Which is hard to even imagine, hard to picture. I don't know what it means, and so I asked ChatGPT. And here's what ChatGP ChatGPT told me. That's like lifting 2200 pickup trucks off the ground at once. Okay? Also, it's the equivalent of lifting 13,000 African elephants off the ground at once. And so I don't know what that means. So I I asked ChatGPT to show me, make this real for me. So happy Easter, everybody. The photo you never knew you needed today. So to generate that kind of power, this rocket Artemis II, it it burns around 700,000 gallons of fuel. Liquid hydrogen and oxygen, okay? 700,000 gallons of fuel. No, just imagine this room, this entire room, but like fuel up to about nine feet in this room, like maybe like right in here, okay? Liquid hydrogen and oxygen, okay? I don't know why I'm doing this with my hands, but just imagine swimming in fuel right now. Um, that's how much it takes to lift this rocket off the ground, right? No, why all the power? Uh why that much? Because it takes an overwhelming force just to break free from Earth's gravity, right? It's a massive, it's massively impressive what we've been able to accomplish. And the human feat, right? The engineering, um, the technological prowess to engineer such a uh a rocket with that could overcome the Earth's gravity with that much weight. It's one of the most powerful things that man has ever built to defy the laws of gravity. But what brings us here today for Easter Sunday, it's it's a different kind of power because we face a different kind of gravity. Let's be honest, if Earth's gravity was all that was holding us back, we'd probably be okay. If that's the only weight that we were dealing with, it would be okay. But there's a different kind of gravity that we all face, and it's much more consequential. It's a gravity that we wake up to every single day. It's part of the human condition. It's the gravity of sin and death and and and the grave, and it holds us in a way that no man has ever been able to escape, except for one. And in the history of the world, there have been men and women who have who have who have attempted to grow in power and to accumulate power and authority, influence, people who have started wars and ended wars, people who have invented technologies and currencies and medicines. And we've, as a human race, we've learned how to split the atom, we've learned how to map the human genome, we've even walked on the moon. We know how to start life, we know how to end life, we know how to extend life, but every single person has gone to the grave except for one. And his name is Jesus of Nazareth. He's the only one when all of hell was unleashed against him and death itself came knocking on his door. He is the one that said, Death cannot hold me down, because I have a father who will raise me from the dead. Come on. And so we're here to celebrate Jesus, but it's not just Jesus because when you think about the resurrection, it's easy on a day like this to come in. You might think, wow, that's that's incredible. That's so great for Jesus. That's so awesome for him. Good for Jesus. That's my dude, right? Way to go, Jesus. Let's go. You did it again, right? He got out of the grave again, 2,000 years later. And we can come here and we admire him and we think highly of him. We're inspired by him. Thank you for what you did out there. Thank you. I'm glad for you. I'm happy to be a part of Team Jesus. It's good to watch you do your thing. That's good news for him, but we ask the question but what does that have to do with me? And this is what's awesome as we come in on Easter Sunday, because the scripture says this. It says, the same power that raised Christ from the dead is now pointing at you. Come on, did you guys hear me? The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now pointed at you. This is what Paul has been praying, and we've been reading the scripture if you've been part of the lookout community over the last several weeks. This has come from Ephesians 1, and Paul is praying, the Apostle Paul, with all of the grit he can muster up, with the depth of his experience and what he's seen in Christ, what he's experienced in the love of God and in the power of God. He says, guys, I'm praying for you. I'm praying that the eyes of your heart would open up when be enlightened. And he goes through several things, but he says this I'm praying that you would know the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of his great might when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Come on, he says, I am praying for you that you not only admire the resurrection, but you have eyes to see the immeasurable greatness of his power towards you. How many of you guys know his power is pointed at you today? It's coming towards you, it's coming your direction. This isn't what's good news for Jesus is also good news for us. What happened to Jesus? We died with Jesus on the cross, and we get to resurrect with Jesus on that Sunday morning. What's good news for Jesus is good news for us. The same power, the immeasurable greatness of his power is pointed at us today. And so when we think about the power of God, if it's if resurrection power is actually more powerful than rocket ship power, then what does that mean for us here today at the Lookout? How do we experience the power of God? Well, it's the power of God in us as we open ourselves to Jesus, as we believe Him. It's it the power of God can erase us what feels dead in our life. It's the power to heal what seems broken, it's the power to lift what seems unbearable. Let me just ask you: have you ever been through an impossible situation? Your nervous chuckles make me think the answer is yes. Have you ever been through an impossible situation? Have you ever hit a wall where you thought there is no hope, there's no way forward here? I bet all of us at some point have, and if you haven't, you will, because this is part of our experience. And I have several stories that come to mind. I remember 13 years ago in May, our son Asher was born, and uh he was adopted. We adopted him locally at birth. Hey, where's Asher? Is he in the room? Oh, right. Oh, he's right there. He's right in the front. My son Asher. See a lot of Asher fans here today. That's good. And uh, we were in the hospital when he was born. Um, he was adopted locally, and uh and and and out just after he was born, a lot of family members, extended family members, came to come visit. It turns out that one of those family members unknowingly was fighting a cold, which wasn't good when you're holding a newborn. So a few days later, after we got out of the hospital, it was actually Mother's Day, and uh we uh we were spending time as a family, and we noticed that Asher his heart was starting to beat faster, his heart rate was escalating, and his lips were starting to turn a pale blue. And uh we weren't wanting to assume it was more than it was, so we kind of waited and watched, but it started to increase, it started to get worse, and that night we ended up taking him to the emergency room around midnight, and they had to do a full spinal tap to make sure it wasn't meningitis. And I just want you to imagine just like a little fresh, just newborn baby getting a spinal tap right there in the emergency room, um, just to make sure it wasn't more than what it was. They just didn't know, and it was very the anxiety was high. What is going on here? This shouldn't be happening. Um, they ended up transferring us down into Denver, which turned into several nights of us staying overnight with him in the hospital just to kind of monitor the condition. They gave him oxygen, but they uh, you know, but you know, they were they were trying to get his his blood oxygen level up to the level it needed to be. But it just seemed to be getting worse, and you could you could you could see him struggling to get the air that he needed. And eventually they told us that if he didn't improve, they were gonna have to intubate him because his body was exerting way too much energy and his worry worry that his his fresh newborn body was gonna give out trying to just gasp for oxygen. And so we were scared, we didn't know what to do. And uh and it it's a it really is a horrific sight if you've ever watched a newborn struggling to breathe and just pushing the chest cavity out as much as possible just to open up the lungs, and he was just with his entire body was into this, you know, just trying to get the oxygen into his tiny little body. And I felt helpless. I was watching him, it's like I I wanted everything to fix this and to make it go away. I was like, this should not be happening, this is not a good first week on earth. And uh and we were scared, but then in in the room as we were praying, as we were just watching him, I I remember a time when we we had music on and we were playing worship music, and we put on a song by some of our friends, Jonathan and Melissa Helser, and in the song the lyrics say this you're more real than the ground I'm standing on. You are more real than the breath in my lungs. Your thoughts define me, and you're inside me. You're my reality. I remember just going over to pray for my son, and I was speaking those words like, God, I need you to be more real than the ground I'm standing on. I need you to be more real than the breath in his lungs. Because it's not there right now. And it's praying for him. And it it was a moment where I had come to the end of myself, my wife, my wife and I had come to the end of ourselves, but our our son, he needed a miracle. And it was at the end of my ability, I was desperate. But as I prayed that, it felt as if the presence of God just came into that hospital room. And it felt like I just remember just feeling like Jesus himself walking into the room with his fresh breath and fresh air. And then within an hour, the nurse came back, and what had been a decline for the last 24 hours, she came back into the room and she took his blood oxygen level. She said, Wow, she said, something's happened in the last hour. He's got oxygen in his yeah, come on. He's got oxygen, like he's he he turned a corner in this last hour. And this is different than what we saw before. Let's just keep waiting for this to get better. And so slowly and slowly just started increasing and increasing, increasing until finally he was well and we could leave again. That's just one of many stories. I'm sure you have plenty of stories yourself. Romans 8, 11 says, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. Come on. The spirit of God, when we call out to God, so believing in Jesus is more than appreciating him. You guys know that? So following Jesus is more than wow, that's awesome what you did out there. I'm just gonna keep living my life. No, no, no. That's not the offer. The offer is when you give your life to him, he gives his very life to you. This very spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead is now dwelling in you, which means resurrection power isn't out there, it's right here. And when you get that, when we understand that we have access to the greatest power the world has ever seen, it changes everything. It changes the way we pray, it changes the way we live. It's the spirit of the resurrected Christ, which means what? Which means nothing is impossible when we're walking with God. Nothing. Now, to be clear, the resurrection power of Jesus isn't a promise that our bodies won't eventually die, or that we will never get sick, or that some prayers won't be answered. That's not that's not what the resurrection power promises. But it is a promise that the end of our bodies is not the end of us, and we will continue to live with them. Death is not a wall, it's only a doorway for those who are in Jesus Christ. It's a doorway to a new world, which means what? Which means that the worst thing is not the last thing. Come on, some of you need to hear that today. You've been convinced that the worst thing is the end of you, the worst thing is the last thing. No, in Jesus Christ, the worst thing in your life is not the last thing because there is life on the other side. Maybe you know what it's like to come to the end of yourself, to face the gravity of things you cannot change. On Friday night, people came and took rocks representing the burdens that we're carrying, and we set them on the cross. A way of transferring the burdens that we carry back to Him who carries our burdens. And some of you guys know what that feels like, and maybe you're even in the room and you're in a place where it just feels like faith has been evaporating from your life, maybe buried under the rubble of disappointment. There's questions that you have, you don't know what to do with. Maybe you're in a marriage that, man, sometimes some days it just feels like it's slipping away. Despite your best effort, it's like, oh my gosh, I can't control this. I can't make something happen. Maybe, maybe you've you've had a promising relationship that has taken a turn for the worse. Either a friendship, or maybe you're single and you've dated somebody and and it and and it just didn't go the way that you thought. And maybe it's left you just feeling like, what is going on in my life? Maybe you have a child that you don't know how to relate to anymore. And they feel like a completely different person. Patterns that we can't seem to break, thoughts that keep accusing us, sin that feels stronger than our willpower. There's a lot that we can overcome, and there's some things we cannot overcome. But God knows the gravity of what we would face. And and so Jesus knew, like, listen, you're gonna need the best, you need more than the best of technology and medicine and engineering. You're gonna need resurrection power. Sometimes God gives us the power for our circumstances to change, but other times he gives us the power to stand underneath the weight of those circumstances without being buried under them. And that's the promise for today. There's an author, writer, Simone Vey. She was a French theologian, mystic. She wrote a book in 1952 called Gravity and Grace. That is the operating system of the kingdom of God is grace. And she said that there are two laws at work in the life of the human soul: there's gravity and there's grace. Left to our own, we always bend downwards. There's something where we bend downwards. We left to our own, we even in our souls are susceptible to that kind of gravity, the worst-case scenario kind of thinking. We drift in heaviness, despair, we pull towards small thinking and self-centeredness, but grace is different. Grace is anti-gravity. Grace pulls us upward out of worst-case scenario thinking and pulls us into hope and faith and love. But we can't just will ourselves into grace. Grace is a gift from God and it only comes where it is received. Here's what Simone Vay says. She said, All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it. So we open up to the grace of God. And when we do, we have the ability to shed the weight of things that cling close to us so we can rise with Him into a new kind of life. Grace is available where there is room to receive it, where there's something that opens up from the inside out, where there's a crack in our lives, grace can get in. That's how grace gets in. When there's a gap, a broken piece, grace can get in right there. And what does grace do? Grace lifts us. It is the power of God. And grace is available to us today. The scriptures say it's by grace that we are saved. It's not because we figured anything out, it's because God came and found us and lifted us out of the pit. Psalm 40 says that you found me in the rock, in the miry clay, in the pit, and you've lifted me out and you set my feet on solid rock. That's what grace does in our lives. But we have to be willing to receive it. We just ask you: is your life powered by gravity or by grace? Like tomorrow morning, when you're by yourself and you're not in a church of people singing loud songs and everybody dressed so nicely and you're not eating deviled eggs anymore. Thank you, God, for deviled eggs. Extra deviled today. What was I talking about? Um it was a serious moment. Um gravity and grace. When tomorrow morning, I just ask you, when you leave church today, are you alone with yourself? Are your thoughts full of hope and love and joy? Or do your thoughts pull you down and down and down into the pit? When you're by yourself, are you lifted? What do you think? There's not right one right answer. I'm just saying, can you acknowledge where that is in your life right now? Or maybe when people experience you, do they experience someone who lifts them into goodness and beauty and peace? Is that your effect on other people when they're with you? Do you have a way of bringing encouragement and lifting and hope and possibility? Or do you pull people down into fear, into what if, into suspicion? Our lives are going to be powered by gravity and or grace, and we have to choose if our lives are going to be marked by the resurrection power of Jesus or a different kind of power. Doesn't mean we have we don't have bad days and real emotions, grief and loss do find us. But no matter how much weight gets put on you when you're living in the resurrection life of Jesus, there is a lift, there is grace which become rocket boosters underneath your feet. How many want to live like that? This is why Paul kids say over and over in scripture, he says, Listen, I'm pressed, but I'm not crushed. I'm persecuted, but I'm not abandoned. Hey, I'm struck down, I'm not destroyed yet. There's something in Paul, he wasn't just a glutton for punishment, but he just couldn't stop. There was something inside of him that just kept coming back for more. He said, You can throw rocks at me, you can put me in a shipwreck, I can have snakes after me. He said, You can do whatever you want, but there's something inside of me that doesn't stop, and that's what the resurrection of life does. It comes inside of us, and the measurable greatness of his power starts to beam out. It lifts us wherever we are. And guess what? Anybody who calls on the name of the Lord, grace can fill you with resurrection power. Which means this no matter where you are, you are not stuck. You're not stuck in a pattern, you're not stuck in the addiction, you're not stuck in despair because grace is stronger than gravity. There is a way out. Not everything is overnight, but over time, as grace works itself out in your life, faith will rise and you'll begin to see the God of the impossible show up in your life day after day after day, showing you what he is capable of. Come on. God meets us where we are, wherever you find yourself today, God will meet you. There is no shame for whatever you're carrying with you today. But there is an invitation to call on the name of the Lord. He's the only name that can save. So Artemis 2, where we started, they took a picture this week of the earth. And it's another beautiful photo. I mean, it's just one of those things. Anytime you see a full scope photo of the earth, it just reminds you how small you are. It's a beautiful photo. If you look close enough, you can see us. So you just wave your hand. You can see us in the photo. And it's like we're all right there. It's just like we're all there. And so it puts in perspective in the Gospel of John, scripture says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That's us. He loves us. And if you're willing that you can open up yourself to the grace of God, to know it on a deeper level, to face impossible situations, to have hope in hopeless situations, not to just appreciate Jesus, but to participate in the life that He came to give you for all of eternity. Amen. So here's what I want to invite us to do today. Could we stand together? And I want to lead us through a prayer today. And it's a prayer of receiving Jesus. I want to invite all of us to do this. Now you don't have to pray this prayer if you don't want to, but if you want to experience the resurrection power of Jesus, even if you're curious about it, I dare you to pray this prayer. I dare you. Triple dog, dare you. And I want to ask you to repeat after me. And again, no one's forcing anybody to do anything here today. But even if you're a follower of Jesus, there's no harm in declaring your need for Him again and receiving His grace again for today. So if you're willing this morning to pray this, whether it's for the first time or whether it's for the 50th time, I just invite you to join me. Let's say this together. Repeat after me. Father God, I open my life to you. Jesus, I believe you rose from the dead. I believe your power is real. And that it's for me. I confess that I've been living under the weight of sin. I've tried to carry it on my own and I can't anymore. Would you forgive me? Would you lift me? Would you make me new? Jesus, I receive your grace. I receive your forgiveness. I receive new life. I break what has held me down. Raise what feels dead in me. I give my life to you. Not just as Savior, but as Lord. Now I belong to you and you are with me. Fill me with your spirit and lead me into life. I believe I am loved. I believe I am made new. I believe resurrection has begun in me. In Jesus' name. Amen. Come on. Everybody thank Jesus together. Let's sing together. Stay standing. We're going to sing to Jesus. He's alive. He's alive. Come on. Guys, so enjoyed spending the morning with you. Listen, here's a couple things. We're about to end our time officially, and I know that a lot of you guys have family things going on this afternoon. But listen, we're going to have some of our ministry team, our prayer team available to you today. They're going to, you're going to see them around the sides of the walls here today. You're going to see a purple tag around them. If you're here today and you need prayer for anything, maybe you prayed a prayer today to receive Jesus for the first time. Go talk to one of these people and pray with them. Maybe you're here today and there's something going on in your life that you just need someone to pray for the hope, the resurrection power of Jesus in a specific way. Go and pray. Don't leave before you get prayer. These are people who you can trust, who you can talk to, and it's going to be awesome. And listen, on your way out, you're going to see two things a place where you can take photos with your family, a sign in the back, and then the say yes booth where you can sign up for all kinds of opportunities in this next season at the lookout. And listen, as we go, we're not going empty-handed, we're going with the resurrection power of Jesus. So may the spirit that rise create Christ from the dead dwell with you ritually as you go into your day. We love you guys. Happy Easter, happy resurrection.