The Power of a Changed Life

Pastor Pat begins Palm Sunday with good news from Kanazawa: Pastor Jay and Ayako Miura have signed a lease on a storefront where they hope to open a gathering place and share the aloha of Jesus. He also explains how gifts marked “flood” will go to our Share Aloha fund for long-term partners after the recent flooding, the same way the church responded after Lahaina.

Then he asks a question: how do we know when the kingdom of God shows up? We tend to use the world’s measures, bigger, better and faster. We also think faith needs airtight arguments. But “some of the most powerful evidence of God’s love, his power, his very existence is in a life that is changed.”

In Matthew 12:22, a man who is blind and mute because he is demon-possessed is brought to Jesus, and Jesus heals him. Pat reminds us that the Bible is a supernatural book. Demons are real but limited, Jesus has supreme authority over every one of them, and our battle is for truth and against strongholds in the mind. Every salvation is itself a supernatural work.

The crowd responds with a question: could this be the Son of David? The Pharisees respond with an accusation: he does it by Beelzebul. “See, humility asks questions. Pride makes accusations.” The Pharisees had plenty of evidence. What they lacked was willingness, because if Jesus came from God, they were wrong and they were not in control. Pat confesses he loves being right, the mayor of Rightville. He tells how Josh McDowell, author of Evidence That Demands a Verdict, set out to disprove Christianity and found that his real obstacles were pleasure, control and pride. “See, rejecting Jesus doesn’t disprove him. It really exposes you.”

Jesus isn’t rattled. A kingdom divided against itself can’t stand, and if he drives out demons by the Spirit of God, the kingdom has come. The strong man is already tied up.

Pat’s first application is to bring all of yourself to Jesus: doubts, disappointment, anxiety, anger, apathy, comfort. His second comes from the start of verse 22: “Then they brought him.” Somebody brought that man. Pray for people, invite them to church, Easter and Life Group, and share your testimony.

He closes with Palm Sunday. By Matthew 21 the crowd was shouting Hosanna, not because Jesus had won debates, but because “behind Jesus was a trail of changed lives.” Josh McDowell knew God was real when he could forgive his alcoholic, abusive father.