As we walk through the Christian year together, each season will be accompanied by a guiding question – a question to wrestle with, pray through, and bring to God. During the season of Easter, as we celebrate and practice resurrection, we’re asking together: “What are we seeing come alive?”

Our passage this week uses the metaphor of a refiners fire – a fire that purifies by removing all that stands in the way of our wholeness. Maybe this is a strange question, but in hindsight, what is something you’ve “lost” in a hard season that ended up making you more whole?

Joy is, at heart, relational.  Both neuroscience and scripture testify to this. Neuroscientist and researcher Dr. Alan Schore defines joy relationally as “someone who is glad to be with me.” What are some of the ways we might better cultivate joy as a community? As a Church?

Resurrection is not simply a belief. It is a way of life.

“The most eloquent testimony to the reality of the resurrection is not an empty tomb or a well-orchestrated pageant on Easter Sunday but rather a group of people whose life together is so radically different, so completely changed from the way the world builds a community, that there can be no explanation other than that something decisive has happened in history.”

— William H. Willimon, Acts

The tension between the promise and the fulfillment

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

1 Peter 1:3-4a NIV

We cannot lose what Jesus has won for us.

Triumphalism

Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

Hebrews 11:36-38 NIV

Determinism

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9 NIV, emphasis added

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-7 NIV

What we suffer is never wasted in the hands of God.

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

1 Peter 1:8-9 NIV, emphasis added

Joy is less a product of what we face and more the fruit of who we are with.

Even when I can’t see his purpose, I can trust his presence.

Resurrection doesn’t happen in isolation.

What is standing in the way of your joy?