ALIVE NOW! - Robert Schuller Sermons Crystal Cathedral

[Applause] Easter confronts us with the ultimate question is Jesus Christ still alive the answer to that question is resounding yes and there are many reasons why intellectually as well as emotionally the answer is affirmative not the least of which is we have a historical record those who witnessed it experienced and saw him made strong note of it and they recorded it in the Holy Bible and 2,000 years later we still have the record now obviously there are some people who don't believe the Bible but that's their problem it was here before they came it will outlive them for 2,000 years the record has stood up there is no truth philosophically psychologically ideologically or theologically that I believe more convincingly than the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and I shall try in a brief moment today to repeat a sharing of an experience that I had with him that cannot be explained any other way than that he is alive he has touched me I know that before I develop it I must ask you a second question almost as important as the first and the second question is are you really aive live today unless we confuse definitions I shall give you at the outset my definition of the word alive a l i v e Define it with the letters a stands for awareness person who's alive has a heightened sense of emotional perception l stands for love person who's alive has a sense of awareness highly perceptive also is dynamic with an internal positive emotion of affection and affirmation of himself his fellow human beings the universe in which he lives and the beauty which surrounds us a person who's alive has an awareness he has love and the eye the person who's really alive is involved I mean he is not a monastic personality he is an indigenous involved creature mixing himself in society building relationships getting invol that produces the V the aliveness Vitality energy which of course gives rise to the E and that's enthusiasm and without it you're only half there so what does it mean to be alive it means to be aware to be loving to be involved to be experiencing vitality and ultimately enthusiasm in that sense Jesus Christ is alive because he is aware of you you you and you and you he is aware of us and he loves us and he's willing to get involved in our lives the cross is the proof of the fact that God is willing to get involved in your problems and in your mess aware loving involved Jesus is very alive Vitality you bet we draw energy from him I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and the upshot is we have an enthusiasm for life and we're not half dead the first question is Jesus alive the second question are you alive you see my concern right now is I'm not worried about Jesus he's in good shape I don't have to worry about it he's in beautiful condition but I'm worried about you you who come here half dead not really alive that's my concern because ultimately life is emotional not physical you may not have a cancer in the brain you may have no malignancy in your body you may be physically fit you might be able to go out and run a few miles every morning I do you may have all of that but if you aren't filled with an awareness and a love and an involvement and a vitality and an enthusiasm you're not alive negative emotions can slay you and now follow me carefully if any of you are in that state of mind or heart this morning the first question will solve the second problem because the living Christ can come and touch you heal you of the negative emotions that would keep you from being aware and loving and involved and vital and enthusiastic now my testimony with that little backdrop was early in this Church's history and we started in a drive-in and then we got the dream of a 10 acres many acres and great architecture and great landscaping and trees and fountains and Waters and pools and birds and the ultimate beauty of the creation of God in the heavens and the earth and the flowers and the and the Sea of sky above us with its waves of blue Rippling into our environment blended with the finest form of structural art that would be architecture and its ultimate Beauty all put together and it was an exciting dream and I talked to my small band of people then we had only about 300 members today we have 11,000 and of the 300 almost half of them thought it was a crazy wild awful idea and the others thought it was a sensational some thought it was Sensational others thought it was sinful and I was in the middle and when you're the pastor of a congregation and it's split down the middle and half of them are totally enthused about a dream and the others are dead set against it and you're caught in the middle that's what you call a problem I had a problem well it was to get worse unknown to me a dissident element in the church hired an assistant Minister and they hired him for one specific purpose to meet with them privately secretly to try to see how they could possibly kick me out I had a growing problem you might say meanwhile I was saddled with an unavoidable uh commandment by the church board to give leadership to this church and get it developed and built it off the ground it was a drag the drag BEC an emotional drag it became a depression thank God I had majored in my undergraduate work in college in Psychology but hadn't been for that I don't know if I could have survived it but as it was in spite of my intellectual rationalizing knowledge of the emotional processes that were at work within me I could intellectually sort it out but I wasn't able emotionally to sort it out I had a problem of depression where the will to die was stronger than the will to live and that's what you call without profanity a hell of a state of affairs and it was about that time that Life Magazine came out with a cover and the cover picture was the back of a Minister's head and the robe like that and you couldn't see his face and it said in big headlines why Protestant ministers are cracking up holy cow I knew for sure I would be next that night I never slept hour after hour I tossed and I turned and I tossed and I turned and the sheets became hot and the pillow was too warm and I began to perspire then Panic approached me with its demonic mood and the thought went through my brain Schuler you're cracking up I can laugh about it now but it was sheer hell and I laid on my bed and I prayed a prayer more sincerely than any prayer I've ever prayed I said Jesus Christ are you dead or alive I don't know I believed it I've been preaching it every Easter are you alive do you care if you're alive either take my life I would have welcomed a fatal heart attack neatly off the hook you know might have been a nice funeral even either take my life or heal me and what happened next I shall never forget so long as I live and even as I reach out it now I feel the Shivers under my Rob underneath my skullbone probing deep into my brain came a finger it's all I can call it a finger Like a Surgeon as if it was anesthetized and I could feel the pressure but no pain the finger went deep and it slowly withdrew and as it withdrew it took out of my brain all anxiety all depression all fear of failure and I tingle of Joy went from the top of my head over my body body as if I was immersed in peace and I knew it was he he was alive and he healed me and I fell into the deepest sleep awoke the next morning walked out to go to my office and was startled and stopped in my tracks by the beautiful roses turned quickly to say to my wife honey the Roses are blooming she said oh Bob they've been blooming for 3 months they had been blooming and so helped me I never saw them I was not aware of them no awareness the anxiety paralyzed my perception of reality around me exactly the way some of you have subconscious negative emotions that are paralyzing your your perception of the reality of God who is around you this very moment guilt will do that so you commit your sin you wash it away with a drink you put on a clean shirt tomorrow's a new day but it doesn't just go away that way you can bury a worm you can bury a can you can bury a piece of wood you can bury a a stone you can bury a bone but you can't bury a worm you can't bury a worm and some of these guilts and some of the grease and some of the shattering disappointments and some of the horrible hurts and some of the awful resentments and some of the terrible jealousies and resentments and self-pity these negative emotions are churn deep into your subconscious my friends they become a stone in front of your own tomb and your is dead as Jesus was before the sun broke and the stone rolled away dead because you're not aware of the flowers the awareness is not there the love of life is not there the involvement in the beautiful things of life it's not there the Vitality is missing the enthusiasm isn't there you're really not alive you can come alive because he is alive that's my Easter message you can come alive because he's aware of you he loves you he's involved in your plans he has Vitality energy for you and he'll give you enthus enthusiasm and then you'll come alive and you'll have an awareness and you'll have love and you'll be involved in life and in your dreams again and you'll become a dreamer and a builder and achiever and you'll be in filled with vitality and enthusiasm once more that's the good news so how are you doing some of your dreams turn to ashes some of your high plans come crashing down if there are crashes or ashes there can be new flashes of New Birth Jesus will touch you and help you many of you know the story of Peggy Brook how she had her two little boys and then Sammy was born and he was the most beautiful baby of them all she said and then she couldn't wait finally for the F when she finally got this doctor's appointment with this specialist and opthalmologist and hoped that he'd find out what was wrong with little Samy's eyes he looked into the one eye he said the pupil response seems to be good looked in the other eye said the voluntary muscle response seems to be good kept looking at the other eye said nothing to the other eye said nothing and he pulled out a chart and said the optic nerve is very dull and then without looking at Peggy's eyes he kept looking at the chart and he said you know the retina is made made up of many little tiny nerves and they get branches and get bigger until they converge and at the center of the retina there is the optic nerve very very large and it connects to the brain that's what makes a child see in sami's case and he drew some lines in Samy's case I can't find the little nerves and uh the optic nerve is almost not there and Becky said will he be able to read and the doctor said well he might be able to see forms he might be able to tell the difference between light and Shadow and Peggy walked out of there holding her little Sammy such a beautiful little baby then suddenly the word came to her blind Sammy blind of course the first thing she thought of was a miracle and they prayed for healing one day 2 days 3 days they wept they cried they were angry all of the negative emotions killed them and the fifth day she remembered remembered that a minister said that God heals your heart when you start thanking him anyway just say thank you God anyway so she said I did thank you God for Sammy anyway then she said he touched me he did didn't touch Sammy he touched me and I had a vision very clear Vision it was at the moment of Samy's conception and God was looking around the world in his hands he was holding a beautiful blonde blue-eyed gorgeous baby boy and he was walking around the earth looking for a home and saw a rich home but passed it by he came past a poor H and passed it by he came past the home where there was a woman un married who did not want to be pregnant he passed her by then he saw this little home tiny little house two little boys healthy boys normal boys and he saw a Bible in this house and he saw a cross on the wall and God said I've got a very special little boy here super special super special gift I will give him to you and he brought Sammy down to me and she said in that moment I knew blind yes but exceptionally bright and beautiful he would be crashes ashes flashes of Hope oh Jesus is Alive in different ways never the same he comes to touch the hungry and the hurting soul but if you really know him You'll Never Walk Alone you You'll Never Walk Alone thank you Lord for the good news Jesus is alive he's aware he loves he's involved he has the vitality and he can give us enthusiasm Jesus I pray now that you will search out the hearts of these persons here in the sound of our voice those who are not alive because they are paralyzed to the perception of the joy around them by negative anxieties and emotions roll the stone away and may they come alive alive to Joy alive to Hope Jesus walk with them now and into eternity amen

Channel: Hour of Power Classics

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Id: Ch7rRF7llZA

Length: 22min 4sec (1324 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2023