Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Pastor Chuck Allen here, and thanks again for joining me on today's episode of the weekday podcast.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Today, let's talk about leaving the graveyard of religion.
There's this moment, maybe you've had it, where you realize you've been carrying the gone weight, the guilt, the cunts to prove to God you're still with his attention.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: It's heavy, y'. All. It's religion at its worst. A weight meant to hold you down when resurrection was always meant to lift you up somewhere. I'm not sure, but somewhere along the line, we traded in a living Jesus for a list of checkboxes. Go to church. Check. Pray before dinner, Check. Post a Bible verse when life's messy, Check. But meanwhile, inside, there's this quiet whisper. I'm exhausted.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: You know what Jesus never said? He never said, come to me, all you have got your junk together. He said, come to me, all you who are weary.
I can just imagine him standing there.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Not with a clipboard, with arms wide open. No judgment, just invitation.
You see, when rules become our way of religion and relationship with Jesus isn't about his invitation and our peace, something's wrong.
When we bury our faith under performance, we start living in a spiritual graveyard. Tombstones that are marked with should have,
[00:01:35] Speaker B: could have, and I'm not enough.
But resurrection, it has a power. And resurrection power calls us to leave the graveyard, to step out into morning light, still tender, still unsure, but wildly alive.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Some of us cling to religion because it feels safe. I mean, there's comfort in clear boundaries. But resurrection is. Is kind of wild. It's not tidy, it's not predictable. It's power beyond the rules. Power that can make a broken fisherman into a church leader, a persecutor into a preacher, a doubter into a disciple. When Jesus rolled away that stone, he rolled away the illusion that God lives in temples built by man's hands. I mean, think about this.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Jesus rolled away a stone and he rode away the illusion that God lives in temples built by human hands, own systems that humans control.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: God isn't waiting for you to climb the ladder. He's already climbed down into your mess. And he whispers, this is not where your story ends. And maybe that's the message today.
Stop guarding your tomb. Stop keeping the stone in place. Stop calling your dead routines faith.
You don't need to live in a graveyard when the gardener is calling your name. Remember Mary in the garden? She mistook Jesus for the gardener.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: How wildly fitting. The one who tends to life even when all you see is death.
Resurrection, power. Doesn't just raise the dead. It resurrects the living dead, those of us stuck in joyless, performative belief.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: It gives breath where religion took it. It gives heart where duty replaced it. So here's a thought today.
What if in your life, what is it that's in your life that, well, it smells like death but was never meant to stay buried? Some passion, a calling, a relationship, maybe your own faith story.
Let that rise. Let the stone move. Because resurrection didn't end in a garden 2,000 years ago.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: It's still happening. And it's happening, my friend, in you. The presence of Jesus says to you loud and clear, I came back from
[00:03:51] Speaker A: the dead so that you might live with my resurrection power. Oh, friend, don't settle for religion when you can have resurrection. Don't settle for a faith that calls for rules when you can have this wildly healthy relationship.
Choose Jesus and choose his resurrection power.
He came not just to give you heaven someday, but to give you a life that you could live passionately today.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Go enjoy that. God bless you. Thanks for joining me on today's weekday podcast.
