​John 20:19-31

We continue to look at this idea of from triumph to tragedy to victory. Michael Card, who is a Christian singer, said this: “faith in the Old Testament is defined by a person’s willingness to wait for the promises of God to come, faith in the New Testament means following the promised one". There is a subtle difference there, there is a sense of anticipation and an idea of moment. So when we look at our life as living in the New Testament context it speaks of our experience of the ebbs and the flows. There are times of triumph, there are times of tragedy, but we who know Jesus as saviour ultimately are moving to a final place of victory.

As we continue to to look at this idea of triumph to tragedy to victory we see the life of a disciple, as many of you can attest to, is a life of process. Sometimes when we are focused on evangelism we can forget that it is a long-range thing, it’s a constant process. We experience the highs of triumph, we have the lows of tragedy but eventually those who know Jesus as lord and saviour will experience a victory far greater than any athlete will be seeking to get at Rio this summer. We need to work at it, just like those athletes do, we need to keep growing and bearing fruit. 

Easter is fast approaching and I am stoked for Holy Land Adventures and Oasis camp. We are looking John and we’re going to roll into Easter looking at this is in sequence until we get to the Easter passages on that weekend. As I mentioned before there is two purposes to doing this. We’re looking at this idea of triumph, to tragedy, to victory and we want to deepen our understanding of Jesus and what he did for us as we move toward this very important time in our calendar. The reality is it’s easy to get lost in the familiarity of the Easter story but we are going to look anew at this hymn and it’s context to seek to grow as transformed disciples.

​It’s an Olympic year so I’m pretty excited for how our Canadian track and field team is going to do this year. When you look at any high performance athlete, Olympian or even high-caliber high-school athlete, it is always a process to get there. It takes years of training and numerous competitions and sometimes you’ll win and often times you will loose but you learn and you grow in the process. Often times I tell the athletes I coach that you learn more from you defeats than you do from your victories. I seen I an ad one time this slogan “there is no finish line”.  It’s a perpetual thing – you grow in a process to that pinnacle moment of victory. We love to celebrate the victory but sometimes we forget the process to get there. In many ways that’s the same process that the follow of Jesus Christ goes through.