Acts 1:3 (NIV) During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.

This past Sunday, we celebrated Resurrection Sunday, which is the day that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The resurrection proved that Jesus is who said that He was and that He had power over death, the grave and everything else, for that matter. It must have been exhilarating for the disciples to see Him alive and in His resurrection body! I can just imagine the astonished look on their faces when Jesus appeared in a room that they were in without going through a door or a window. He just walked in as though there were no barrier that could stop him, which of course there wasn't and there isn't. Then there were the next forty days of being with Jesus! What must that have been like? While it was incredibly awesome to live life with Him before His crucifixion, to do life with Him after He rose from the grave must have been an experience beyond what words can express.

After having said all of this, I'd like to point out something that a lot of people do not realize, and that is that we have an even better opportunity to be with Jesus that the disciples had during His ministry time up to His crucifixion and the forty days that He spent on the earth after He resurrected. While we can imagine the wonder of being with Jesus after He rose from the dead, we many times are not thinking clearly about the fact that we are in a much better position that the disciples were. That's why Jesus told them that it would be better for them if He left (John 16:7). It was because He could send the Holy Spirit, which is none other than His Spirit, after He ascended to the Father. The amazing truth is that now we don't just get to be with Him outwardly, but we get to fellowship with Him inwardly as He makes our bodies His residence. Jesus now lives in us! That is a concept that I am sure the disciples could not understand until the Day of Pentecost came and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. How would they have been able to imagine that without having experienced it? But experience it they did, and it was an experience that radically transformed their lives. They went from weak men who failed at the end to a powerful group of people that turned the world upside-down with the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

There is life after the resurrection and that life lives in us. That life is the life of Jesus and His Spirit is available to all who ask the Heavenly Father for it (Luke 11:13). Live life to full measure just as Jesus said He came to do for us by being filled with the Holy Spirit and becoming a force to advance the Kingdom of God until either Jesus comes or you go home to be with Him for eternity. Yes, there is life after the resurrection...abundant life! Hallelujah!

Pastor Joey Vazquez