This week the White ROCK Kids Cocoa House got an overhaul! (We meet Wednesday nights at 7pm!) We switched from rocking out to the latest Christian songs and learning how God speaks to us in song to talking about our emotions! We will still be jamming out to some rockin’ songs from time to time and sipping hot cocoa while focusing on how God wants us to handle our emotions!

 

This week we talked about happiness and how we can be happy because of God’s great love for us!  We talked about how our world can be unhappy in a lot of different ways and how we can maintain happiness in Christ Jesus.  This happiness is available because we know that God sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins and was resurrected from death three days later.  We learned that no matter how grim our situation may look; the end result, if we have asked Christ to forgive our sins and live in our hearts, is that we will have eternity in Heaven with God!  That can bring us joy in any situation!  

 

Our memory verse this week is: “How you made me is amazing and wonderful.  I praise you for that.  What you have done is wonderful.  I know that very well.” Psalm 139:14 (NIrV).  God made us amazing and wonderful; all that He has done for us is wonderful!  Pairing that truth with the truth that Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave for our sins creates a truth bomb that can cut through any bad day that we could possibly have!  We can’t wait to see what emotion we might talk about next Wednesday night!

Easter is no laughing matter…but laughter absolutely does matter! While celebrating Resurrection Sunday we managed to slip in a few fun “April Fool’s Day” moments. The teen band rocking an ancient Hebrew song about the resurrection turned out to be “Go, Fight, Win.” The promise of a double-feature of two full length sermons turned out to be one average length Easter message with some closing wrap up thoughts. The teens passing out brownies…er, I mean brown “E’s” (pieces of brown construction paper cut out in the shape of the letter “E”) to the congregation at the end was an instant classic for sure! But my favorite had to be the Rock Your Debt program. The reminder of the crushing weight of financial debt coupled with the hope of someone coming alongside and bringing some help and support was something all of us could buy into! And what a painful moment to realize it was all a hoax! But the point behind such a prank? Well…that was no laughing matter. The truth is that all of us are in desperate shape because of our sin debt. We owe a debt we cannot pay. Nothing we can do to be good enough. Nothing of any value that we possess that could cover our debt. The wages of sin is death…eternal death. And sadly, that debt is getting called in. We are getting foreclosed on. We are dead in our sins and lost forever…but…all is not lost. The cross of Jesus Christ stands as the greatest Debt Consolidation Program in all human history. We could not pay, so He did. We faced death, so He died in our place. He took upon Himself all the sin debt of all humanity and paid it all off with the sacrifice of His own life. He was sinless and pure, and paid off our sin debt with a currency we did not have. Hallelujah to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who paid our debt, who bought our freedom from slavery to sin, and who lives and reigns forevermore! This is the hope…no, It’s not just a hope…it is the truth and the reality of Easter. Your debt has been paid. You are set free.

As I remember it, hunting eggs is probably one of the most exciting parts of Easter in the eyes of kids!  The candy, the hunt for candy, the sugar rush!  When the eggs are all empty and there is no longer candy to find, kids go home with bags full of candy to last them months.  All the while, parents are praying that some of it gets lost and forgotten somewhere in the car on the drive home.

 

This Saturday kids will not only get the change to hunt for eggs filled with sugary goodness and empty those eggs into their baskets to take home, they will also get an awesome opportunity to learn about something that Jesus left empty! Come join us Saturday at 2:00 at 21070 Schulley Road in Noblesville for hunting candy, and to hear about what Jesus left empty…and why He did it!  RAIN or SHINE!

 

-Pastor Ryan Christopher

He does not fit into your simple little picture of who He is.

 

He’s not some “deity”, some “celestial being”; He is utterly the most awesome, terrifying, horrifying power you can’t even dream up, imagine, or pretend to imagine. He is more awesome, and scarier than you can possible imagine. He is not a lord, He is not a king, He Is THE Lord and THE King. Ultimate authority, Ultimate power, Ultimate being in perfect form and strength and wisdom. He is more than the best of everything, more than our eyes can take in, more than our minds can fake like we can imagine, more than our senses can process or even make sense of. He is the Epic, Eternal King of Kings and Lord or lords from all time and all places and all beings. He is not just a baby in a manger or this Jesus of Nazareth fellow. HE IS GOD ALMIGHTY, and the earth will shake with His presence and the hills will melt like wax before Him.           

 

He does not fit into your simple little picture of who He is.