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March 30, 2026 · 58 min · Jim Graff
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Jim Graff is a respected pastor, leader, and author who loves helping people fulfill their unique
potential while finding their significance in Jesus Christ.
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Resurrection Worship and Praise 0:00 We'd love to have you as a part of our online community. Simply subscribe to a significant life on YouTube, and you'll be able to catch up on past teachings as well as watch extra content from the entire team. You can0:11 follow us on Facebook and Instagram too and on our website, a significant life dot com. You can listen to our latest podcast, sign up for our weekly step into significance devotionals, browse helpful0:23 resources, and let0:25 us know how we can pray with you. God bless you. America is at a crossroads with decisions to make that will affect generations to come.0:37 This reality can feel overwhelming, even unsettling. But when tomorrow appears unclear, our hope lies on focusing on today. What can we do today to build a faith that stands the test of time? This is the0:48 question Jim Graff answers in his new book, Rock Solid Faith. He shows us how to build a lasting faith that will inspire for generations to come. Reserve your copy of Rock Solid Faith today at a significant1:01 life dot com.1:09 Happy. Blessed and highly favored. Secure. So loved. Happiness. Joy and I. Loved. Happy. Loved. Saved.1:20 Gratitude. Loved. Free. Makes me feel blessed. Thankful. Grateful. I'm so grateful. So thankful.1:32 Thankful. So thankful. Thankful. I'm so thankful. Thankful. I'm thankful. Thankful. Thankfulness. Thankful. I'm so thankful.1:55 When I think about the lord, how he saved me,3:39 So come on. We're gonna lift our praise to heaven. We're gonna release the sound of resurrected and free people. You ready? Come on. Let's sing it. Love the 1. I am free. I am3:51 free.7:29 And now, on a throne of majesty, the fathers will come clean.15:17 Jesus.17:10 If you've ever been pulled up out the pit. If you made it through it, it makes no sense. That's how you know it was here.17:22 If you got a savior18:11 Anybody in here can testify. If you got a story, how he changed your life. If you18:36 snatched you out of the fire? Who healed all of your deceased?18:50 Tell me who slew all these. God did. Amen. Scripture tells us that the same power who conquered the grave19:02 lives in us. Amen. That means that same power is here in this room this morning. So I wanna invite you to lift this up. And let's sing this with faith this morning. Come on.19:14 For how you saved my soul. For how you made meGod's Mercy Provides New Life 21:36 Well, I'm really looking forward to, getting into God's word today with you. But before we do, I feel like I would be amiss if I didn't mention, all of you who worked so hard to make Holy21:48 Week the incredible experience that's been here at Faith Family. So would you first of all give our creative team a great big hand clap? Wouldn't it have they done just an amazing job? All of our creative ministries, I22:00 think we had about 97 people commit their life to Jesus at the Good Friday service. Can we give all those people a hand for embracing their new beginning in God? And then I wanna thank22:12 all of our family ministries people. How many of you know the people who are out there with all of our 2 year olds may get the biggest reward in heaven. Right? Somebody said we should put a scripture out there. We will22:24 not all sleep, but we will all be changed. That happens some Sunday mornings. But anyway, you know, we're such a great family ministries department. I hope you'll thank everybody who's a part of making that happen22:35 after service today. And then our outreach department, who's making such a difference in the lives of people every day. Can we give all those people a hand clap? I mean, every week they're doing amazing things,22:47 and they did so good on love your neighbor day. Making sure that there were avenues for people who who found joy in in touching lives and helping people experience the love of Jesus. And of course22:59 our operation ministries, we we couldn't operate here without all of you who are working the way that you do behind the scenes. So I wanna take a moment as your pastor and just say, I know what you're doing and I'm so23:10 grateful for what you do to make our church family all that it is. Amen? Well, we're gonna pray together because I can put it in and I've worked hard on this message because no pastor23:22 wants to lay an egg on Easter. Can you say amen? How many of you wish the price of eggs would come down? Can you give me another amen? But let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your word. Where would23:34 we be without your word? It's a light to our path. It keeps us on the path to life and blessing, protects us from the work of evil. And, Lord, as we study it today, we thank you for the power it23:46 has, and, God, for the things it's done to bless us, protect us, and lead us into a life, God, we could never experience without your goodness. So, Lord, we quiet your heart to cease, stir, so that your voice will be23:58 loud in our heart. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Growing up, I had a friend who was a hockey player, and he was really good. In fact, there were professional24:09 scouts who were looking at him to see if he could play at the next level. And I'll never forget our senior year, we realized that we were gonna be separated, and we probably weren't gonna see each other a whole lot after24:21 this year. And so neither 1 of us had taken our required art class in high school. And if you saw me draw my stick, man, you would know why. And he was about as bad as I was,24:33 so we came up with a plan. We were gonna take art together so that we could enjoy some time together our senior year. And, it was quite an experience. We really liked our art24:45 teacher because she said to us as people were laughing at the things that we tried to create. She said, if you'll brush off the laughter, she said, I'll give you a better grade whenever you come to the end of the24:56 semester. So we brushed off a lot of laughter. And I'll never forget 1 piece of art that he made that caused me to laugh so hard. I actually Googled it to see if I could find a25:08 picture. And I found 1 that looks a lot better, by the way, than the 1 that he created. But here it is. It has a hockey goalie and it says, Jesus saves, but Esposito scores on25:20 the rebound. Now that tells you a lot about where my friend and I were at that stage in our life. And that is he knew a whole lot more about hockey goalies and what caused them to make25:32 safe so that the puck didn't end up in the net. I knew a lot more about baseball closers who saved games if they could get the last batter out. But neither 1 of us understood very25:44 well what it meant for Jesus Christ to save us and to do the things that Jesus dreamed about doing in our lives. And when Peter was an old man, of course, he was 1 of the 1225:56 apostles and he was really a very, very close friend of Jesus by the end of his life. And as he looked up at society, he realized there's a lot of people who end up in that26:07 position where we know about God and we probably even believe in God, but we don't totally understand what it means to experience his salvation well in our hearts. And Peter wrote26:19 these words beginning at first Peter 1 verse 3. He said, praise be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want you to notice this exclamation mark because he's saying26:31 that all of us as believers should live very excited about the things that God is up to in our life. And then he told us why. He went on to say, in his great mercy, he's26:43 given us new birth into a living hope. Then notice it's through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who was who was risen from the dead. So let's unpack that this morning.26:55 First of all, God wants us to know that he has great mercy on every single 1 of us. What that means is whatever mistake we've made, whatever misery we're going27:06 through, whatever, issue is going on in our life that makes us say, I wish somebody would feel for me and help me. God is saying to us, how about me? Because I want you to27:18 know that I'm here to help you get past your mistakes, and I'm here to help you get through your misery into the good life that I promised you you could experience in scripture. And the Bible says that27:30 God wants to birth new and living hopes in our life. But then it tells us how those hopes come into our life when he says it's through the resurrection of Jesus27:42 Christ. So if I wanted some water, you know, for that water to get to me, somebody needs to understand, you know, how to get it up out of the ground, how to pump it to where I am.27:54 Whenever water doesn't come to me, I need a plumber who can help me. Right? And in the same way, Peter is gonna help us get rid of the things that keep us from enjoying the new beginnings28:06 and the living hopes and the blessings that God wants to bring into our life. Now, just a little bit of fact before we get into application this morning. The epistle of first Peter was28:18 written about 64 AD. And Peter was an older man at the time. In fact, he wrote first Peter. He wrote second Peter just a little bit afterwards. And then he was28:30 executed by the Emperor Nero just shortly after that. And so, as I said, Peter was an old preacher. And, some of y'all have heard me say this, that I love listening to old preachers because28:42 how many of you know they're going to heaven soon and they don't care what anybody thinks about what they say. Right? So, Peter's gonna get this straight for us this morning. The other thing I wanna point out is that28:53 Nero was the Roman emperor from 54 to 68 BC. And, Nero's listed as the first of 11 Roman rulers who tried29:02 to destroy Christianity and,29:02 of course, failed according to the National Catholic Register. In fact, the bloodiest years of martyrdom the Christian church experienced were before29:14 64 and 67 AD. There are 2 Roman historians whose whose writings are still prominent in our time, and their name is Tacitus and Suetonius.29:26 And, I want you to listen to what Tacitus wrote. He he he wrote this about Christians, that in their deaths, they were made the objects of sport, for they were covered with hides of wild beasts, and they were29:37 worried, which meant they were mauled to death by the dogs. He also wrote that they were nailed to crosses, and they were set fire to. And as the day declined, they served as nocturnal29:49 lights in Nero's garden. So here's what I want us to see, that Peter wrote this epistle during very difficult days, for Christians. It was very tough to30:01 be a disciple whenever Peter wrote these words. And I know I'm talking to people this morning that you may be in a very, very tough season of your life. Maybe you had a spouse who betrayed you and you30:13 never trained that that was going to happen to you in life. Maybe you have people scheming against you at work and you say, you know, I don't even know what to do about this scheme that people are bringing against me in30:25 life. Maybe you're fighting a debilitating disease today and you say, pastor, can you help me get the power of God into my life that was at work through the power of the30:36 resurrection so that I have a new beginning, and I walk into the hope that God has in his heart for me. And Peter's words are gonna help us do that this morning. He tells us 4 things30:49 that we're going to concentrate on, that Christ's resurrection should mean to us. And first of all, he says it means that God provides life that we could never experience without God.31:01 You notice that it says, he has given us new birth because of his great mercy for us. And it talks about how this new hope comes to pass through the resurrection of31:13 Jesus. In other words, it doesn't happen because we're such wonderful people, but it happens because of how God's at work in our life. The truth is some of us need to realize that God never31:25 expected us to be perfect. Maybe your mom did, maybe your dad did, but listen, just shake that off. Because what happens is you're condemning yourself whenever God wants to help you and God wants to call you31:37 into some new and beautiful things in your life. I loved when doctor George Hunter was with us because he said something so insightful. He said,31:45 many Christians aren't living in the blessing that God wants them31:45 to live in. Entireness of the Trinity. And here's what he meant31:57 by that. God is a community God. God shows up where people love him and where people let him lead them. God shows up where people love each other well and people32:09 support each other in ways that bring answers to our prayers. And we can see it in the very first chapter of the scriptures. The Bible says in Genesis 1 20 eight-six that God32:20 said, Let us make man in our likeness. Notice it wasn't just God the Father, but it was God the the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote of this in in second32:32 Corinthians 13 14 when he said, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. So you notice God the Father is the 132:44 that wants to make sure you feel loved today, that whatever mistake you've made, whatever misery you're going through, listen, God isn't intimidated by what's happened to you.32:56 He's inspired about the things he can make happen for you. Can somebody give me a good amen this morning? God the father wants us to be loved. The grace of Jesus, he hung on the cross. And the reason he33:08 hung on the cross is so we could experience the presence of God in our life. But how does that power make a difference? It's when we learn to let it come to our life through the power33:20 of the Holy Spirit. If you know me well, you know that I really loved my 2 fathers. First, I loved my biological father who raised me whenever I was a kid.33:32 To be honest with you, I was a lazy kid who needed a lot of help when I was young. And my dad lovingly taught me the value of discipline. He would say things to me like, you know,33:44 Jimmy, that smile is not gonna get you into your dreams. That that way you you're building friendships with other people. It's not the bridge to get you into your dreams. He said discipline is the bridge33:55 that's gonna get you from where you are into the dreams that you have in your heart. So I want you to I want to teach you to love discipline instead of despise and discipline in your life. And it broke34:07 my heart when my dad passed away, and I was just 25 years old. But can I tell you, I was so grateful to him? I had so much praise in my heart because I know I would never become who I am if he34:19 wasn't who he was in my life. And then when he passed away, I married Tamara later that year and her dad became a second father to me. And he's the 1 that taught me how to pastor34:31 people. He's the 1 that taught me how to preach God's word in a way that it would change people's lives. And he passed away when I was 38 and I was so bummed out about it. I felt so34:43 much grief. And I'll never forget praying 1 day, and the Holy Spirit dealt with me, and he said, you know, you realize that grief's a good thing. Right? You realize that grief you're feeling34:55 is because you were so privileged to have these 2 men in your life. And he said, but I want you to live not just with gratefulness for them, but I want you to learn to live with gratefulness for the35:07 fact that I'm now your father and I'm the 1 who's at work in your life. I want you to live with praise and gratefulness because you know what? Those 2 men birth some beautiful things35:18 in your life, but I'll birth beautiful things those 2 men could have never brought forth in your life if you'll let me have my way. Amen? And it helped me understand that listen. My35:30 my my my pipes were clogged. I needed God to help me. I needed to realize God cared about the misery I was going through, and he wanted to do something about it. And I wanna give you an35:42 application point this morning. Maybe this spring is a great time for you to say, I'm gonna start learning to be a Bible reader. Maybe you're not a reader. Maybe you could listen to it on an app35:54 or listen to it. But you know what started happening to me as a first generation Christian, the first 1 in my family to follow Jesus with all my heart? What happened is when I started reading the Bible regularly,36:07 I realized a lot of the things that went wrong in my life weren't God's fault. It wasn't because he didn't love me. It's because I never learned the right way to do things from God's word. I wanna encourage36:18 others of you to learn how to pray in the spirit, if you haven't learned how to pray in the spirit. And when we pray in the spirit, according to Romans 8 28, we're not just telling God what we want him to do for36:30 us, but God's starting to tell us the way that he wants to handle things so that we're blessed on the other side. And Peter's first point is simply this, that God provides for people who36:42 understand that Christ's resurrection means we can trust our God to provide. Here's the second thing Peter spoke of in in the next verse. He said, God notGod's Protection Shields Us 36:53 only gives us new birth into living hope through the resurrection, but it's into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. He said, this inheritance is kept in heaven for37:05 you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of salvation that's ready to be revealed in the last time. He's telling us that not only does God wanna provide for us in ways we37:17 could never experience without God's help, But God wants to protect our lives in ways we could never experience if it wasn't for the goodness of God being experienced well on the inside of our37:28 heart. Did you notice when Peter wrote that he talked about 2 protections? Number 1, he spoke about the protection that we're gonna thank God for when we're in eternity. Then he37:40 spoke about the protection we're gonna thank God for because of how he protects us amidst the life we're living on this earth. And I can tell you I needed both of those because when I became a believer,37:53 you know, all of my family, all of my friends were not excited. They were kinda upset that I had become a fully devoted follower of Jesus. And I'm a I'm a pastor. I'm a people pleaser.38:05 I like being liked by people. And so I didn't like it whenever the the family and friends that mattered most to me, I was at a place of disfavor with them. And I remember talking38:17 to the Lord about it. I thought, man, Lord, do I have to endure this adversity? Do I do I have to stand strong in the middle of this time? And then I recognized that, you know what?38:29 If I don't stand strong, how am I gonna feel whenever I'm standing on streets of gold? And I'm so happy this morning that I can say to you, I haven't had 1 close family member die38:41 without giving their life to the Lord Jesus Christ. My grandfather did it at 94 years old, y'all. But listen, I'm so glad that God protected me from making decisions where I wouldn't have been the person38:53 that I needed to be to hear Jesus say, well done, when I stood in eternity. But then there's a daily protection that we need. Because listen, it's so easy to give in to lust. It's so39:04 easy to give in to greed. It's so easy to get bitter about things that are going on in our life. It's so easy to be stopped by fear. I was thinking just the other day about how39:16 every living thing in the world deals with fear. I mean, cats are afraid of dogs. Right? Dogs are afraid of mean masters. Right? Masters are afraid of their39:28 wives most of the time. Right? And then our wives are afraid of spiders. Come on, somebody. How many of you know every living thing deals with fear? Now why is that true? Because there are evil spirits that roam39:40 the earth, and we all need protected from what they do to us. And Peter writes about that, and he said, I want you to know what the resurrection should mean to you. I don't want you to be39:52 somebody who hears Jesus saves, but you don't understand what Jesus saves means. Like, I didn't understand it as a kid, and my friend didn't understand it as a kid. I want you to know it40:03 means that he wants to have mercy on you. He feels for you when you make mistakes and when you go through misery in life. I want you to know he'll provide for you in ways you could never provide for yourself. He'll40:15 protect you in ways you could never protect yourself. God protects people who understand that holiness guards life for us. Holiness doesn't keep us from life or40:27 keep us from things that would make our life better. Here's the third thing Peter wrote about, and that is he said that God purifies our hearts so that our lives might becomeTrials Purify Genuine Faith 40:39 special. I love this next part because Peter, again, is speaking about what's going on in the Roman Empire when it's 1 of the most bloodiest times of persecution that the church has ever40:51 experienced. And Peter says, in all this, I want you to greatly rejoice. Man, it's not easy to greatly rejoice when we're going through very very difficult times, is it? But God wants us to do it because we Spirit that41:02 turns into a living hope that we rejoice in down the road. Spirit that turns into a living hope41:14 that we rejoice in down the road. And Peter said, I want you to greatly rejoice because now you have to suffer some grief and all kinds of trials. But these have come so that41:27 the the the genuineness of your faith may be proven that it's worth more than gold. What ultimately reveals the value of a precious metal? It's what happens when it goes through the fire,41:39 right? And all the impurities are taken out of it. You know, our faith is the same way when we feel fear, when we feel bitterness, when we feel like we don't know what to do, when we feel like we're41:51 in the fire and we wonder if our faith is really gonna matter to us. That's when our faith can matter the most to us if we'll do the right things. Because what's gonna happen is the things42:03 that kept us from living in God's best for our life can be dealt with whenever we're going through the fire. Again, these Christians were going through terrible persecution,42:15 but let me just finish the story for you, this morning. In 67 AD, man, they were under persecution. And the person whose portrait42:27 was on the Roman coin was the 1 who was making their life so terrible. But fast forward to the 3 hundreds, you know whose pictures on the coin? It's not the emperor, it's the42:39 cross of Jesus Christ because they won their society to God. Can you imagine how much joy they had in heaven over that? Can you say amen? I I went to Uganda when I was just in my twenties42:51 and I was a missionary evangelist and 1 of the first places I preached was the nation of Uganda. And I'm telling you, I slept on dirt floors. I ate ants. How many of y'all have ever eaten ants? Can I see your43:03 hand? It just feels like they get stuck right here on your throat when you're trying to eat ants. But but during that time, it was horrible because a evil dictator named Idi Amin,43:15 he he murdered and massacred hundred thousand Christians right before I went to Uganda. There were only 10000000 people in the country during that time. So nearly everybody I43:26 spoke with had somebody who'd been murdered, somebody who'd been harmed. I I saw so much pain. I saw so many tears come down from people's eyes. But, you know, a few years ago I43:38 received 1 of the most precious invitations I ever received. And, it was actually from a leading pastor there that the president of the country asked him to come back to speak to the people of43:50 Uganda. Benjamin Netanyahu was gonna be there because his brother died in the raid of Entebbe. Other people were gonna be there. And, you know what they were gonna celebrate y'all? They were gonna celebrate the44:02 fact that even though they lived through the reign of Idi Amin, Uganda is more Christian than the United States is today, y'all. You know why? Listen, when our faith44:14 is genuine, how many of you know the enemy can't keep God from doing good in our life? God's gonna do good. And Peter wants us to know that. He wants us to know that God's not mad at44:25 us. He sent Jesus to the cross because he wants to have mercy on us when we make mistakes. He wants to help us through the misery that we're going through. Listen. Some of y'all are struggling in your44:37 marriage. I get that. Maybe you came from homes where you were never taught marriage like you wish you were. What an opportunity for you to prove the genuineness of your faith and how God can bless people in44:49 the circumstances that you're in. Some of you are fearful about tomorrow. Can I give you another application point this morning? As you start reading your Bible and as you start learning to pray in the Holy45:01 Spirit, don't just read the Bible, but let the bible start reading you and purifying your heart and watch what God does in your life. Don't just pray like I did when I45:12 started. I was told I should pray every day, and I'd talk to God for 5 minutes. And I'd say, I'm sorry, God, but I'm out of stuff to say. Right? And I had to really learn to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying to get45:24 through my grief into the great things that I'm so grateful for today. But I wanna encourage you that God wants all of us to praise our God and father who sent the45:36 Lord Jesus Christ. That's why Peter put the exclamation point there. You say, how will I live in that place where my heart is filled with praise for God? Recognize God will provide if you'll let the45:48 Holy Spirit work in your life. God will protect you, and he'll help you not make bad decisions and end up in bad places if you let the Holy Spirit work in your life. God's gonna purify you45:59 and it's not easy, but thank him for it because it's gonna take you to a better place. And then here's the final thing that that Peter spoke of, and that is Peter told us that God promisesShow more In this video 0:00 Resurrection Worship and Praise21:36 God's Mercy Provides New Life36:48 God's Protection Shields Us40:36 Trials Purify Genuine Faith46:10 Heaven's Promise and Altar Call
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