Chris Poch

But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. (Matthew 28:5-6 ESV)

The empty tomb is one of the easily forgotten parts of scripture. But the empty tomb is the proof that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, God’s only son. Jesus of Nazareth was a historical man who was born around 4 BC and died around 30 AD. Those facts aren’t largely contested, and are backed up by many sources from that period. Around that time period, Israel was being persecuted by Rome, and Israel felt distant from God. No prophet had spoken in years, and people were beginning to lose hope.

Many men had claimed to be the messiah, but all of them died human deaths and that was the end of their claim. People don’t follow dead messiahs. But that’s what makes Jesus different. The Romans were aware that they needed to produce a body to prove that Jesus was dead and gone, so they guarded the tomb so that his followers couldn’t take his body and claim he was still alive. But even with a large stone over the entrance and an armed guard wasn’t enough to stop the power of God.

On Sunday morning, the body was gone. Jesus rose from the dead and walked out of the tomb, where he interacted with hundreds of people until he went to be with his Father in Heaven. There was no corpse left behind on Earth. All the proof that was needed to show that Jesus was not the Messiah was a body. It wasn’t hard to produce a body when the most powerful military in the world was guarding the tomb, but no one was able to produce a corpse for Jesus.

The empty tomb is more than enough to show us that Jesus conqured death, and is now in Heaven with his Father. Today we celebrate that empty tomb. Don’t let yourself trivialize this amazing act of God’s power!

I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of his power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else in this world or in the world to come. (Ephesians 1:19:21 NLT)

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things. (Luke 23:44-49 ESV)

As we finish out Passion week and head into Easter, I have a thought for you all to consider. Last night, we remembered Jesus’ death and crucifixion as Good Friday (good for us that He died for our sins, not so good for Jesus. If we were to go back to that Friday, Jesus would be dead right now. As we celebrate Good Friday, we know the end of the story. We know that Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. But His friends didn’t.

They believed He was the true Son of God, but there had been other people who had claimed to be the Messiah. Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies and showed the power of God visibly on earth, so his followers knew He was the real Messiah while He lived, but I bet that Saturday was a hard day for them. Were they wrong? How could God’s Son die as a traitor to Israel, God’s chosen people?

Think about that today. As Jesus died with the weight of the world’s sins on Him, His friends were hopeless, wondering if they had wasted years following a false Messiah. Think how hopeless they felt. And tomorrow, use that hopelessness as the foundation for our great joy as we proclaim that Jesus is risen. Not even death is too large for God to conquer!

It’s been a busy last few days. Between meeting with a lot of people (mostly on vtONE stuff), two tests no one was prepared for, and a random afternoon in Roanoke, I’ve kept busy. Here’s a short recap:

Monday: studying for numerical methods test

Tuesday: numerical methods test, two homework assignments that I wasn’t aware of until Monday

Wednesday: classes, random adventure to Roanoke with Chris, featuring picking up a new taillight for my car, dropping off a broken sound board, buying a lifetime supply of printer paper, Best (Worst?) Buy, Harbor Freight Tools (the weirdest hardware store ever), and Krispy Kreme. Yes, I ate five hot original glazed doughnuts in one sitting. Michael, you’re right. I’m a fattie.

Thursday: sleeping in, vtONE dinner meeting, studying for the microprocessor system design (we had no idea what was on it until Thursday evening!), random trip to Joe’s Diner after midnight.

Friday: micro test, helping Ben with getting Fedora on his laptop (part 1 – defragging the drive), Good Friday service at the local Methodist church, grilling kabobs, movie with friends, and conversations until all hours.

Today will be a relaxing day. Tomorrow is the Easter service, and it’s with a number of churches and ministries in the Burruss Auditorium. Frank Beamer (head football coach) is sharing on why the resurrection matters in his life. Should be awesome.

Last night’s vtONE worship event was awesome. God was there, people were excited, and I feel that people left challenged. Even though we were probably the least prepared we had been in several events, God provided and things came together.

The night opened up with Isaac (Chi Alpha campus minister) leading two acoustic sets that I felt really impacted people. I especially enjoyed how he opened the night with David Crowder’s “Come and Listen” and closed his time with MercyMe’s “Word of God Speak.”

Sno led the first prayer time, which was done Passion style (groups of 3ish with one person praying at a time and the leader telling them when to switch). His introduction was amazing, and it ended with an individual time to get right with God that had a huge impact on people.

Our speaker for the evening was my co-leader Eric. We had invited several campus ministers to speak, but none of the people we thought could do a great job speaking on fellowship were available. As I prayed through who to ask, Eric just kept coming up. He’s the vtONE expert on fellowship, which is a harder topic than I would have thought it could be, and he delivered last night. I’ve never seen someone do that good a job with their first time speaking, especially to a crowd that was around 750 people. His talk is available online.

After Eric spoke on Redefining Fellowship, we had a group prayer time about being thankful for the fellowship we already have, led by Samantha from the Wesley Foundation. Incidentally, we’ve had almost no contact with Wesley in the past, but over the last few months they’ve become one of our strongest supporters.

One of the Cru bands rocked the last two sets with a collection of upbeat hymns and praise songs.

Josh from the vtONE network team (student leaders praying together) led a final prayer time, where we formed groups around campus ministers and the Christian faculty to lay hands on them and pray for them. Like the time we did something similar for campus ministers two years ago, the campus ministers and Christian faculty who were there were very moved by that time. I was in a group around Dr. Grisso from the Christian Faculty Fellowship, and he was so moved by our praying for him that he looked like he was about to cry.

We went from that prayer time into the Lord’s prayer, using the New Living Translation of the text to make people think about what they’re praying for. Marcus (from the leadership team) did an excellent job doing the intro and leading us in the Lord’s prayer.

After a few more songs, I briefly told people how they could support vtONE (including giving away a free t-shirt in the new design) and also introduced the prayer event. Unfortunately, not many people signed up for prayer event time slots, so we may need to try to hit all of our sponsors’ regular meetings before the prayer event. I closed out the night in prayer (I was the MC for the evening), and then we had one last song.

Despite a number of setbacks, such as not getting in our new album before the event, God was with us last night, and I feel that people left both encouraged and challenged. People signed up to get involved, had questions for the leaders, and were asking for copies of the talk. We even had people from several other local (within an hour’s drive) campuses show up–including some girls from Hollins University in Roanoke who are trying to start something similar to vtONE there.

Between the worship event and the prayer event, we’re blogging daily with a little devotion and a prayer to get us all unified in prayer leading up to the prayer event. You can check that out at http://www.vt-one.com/.

Thanks for your prayers and support of vtONE. We appreciate it, and we can see God moving at Virginia Tech!

Interesting thought that I’ve felt is true in my life this morning from John.  He writes:

There is a very interesting line in Psalm 37. It reads, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.” A lot of people interpret this verse incorrectly. They say that as long as I’m happy in God, He’ll give me everything I want – new car, hot wife, trip to California, sunny 80 degree weather for the rest of my life. Totally not the intent of that passage. What God is saying is that as we delight in Him, He changes us – we find ourselves wanting what He wants. We find ourselves desiring the things of God. That’s a very interesting way for me to take comfort in knowing that God is using even my desires to shape what my future looks like.

My desires are very different than they were in July 2003.  At the end of that month is when I stopped trying to live for myself and started trying to live for God.  Even though I had already had a relationship with God for about 10 years at that point, I felt a huge change in my life then.  And while I haven’t understood a lot of the stuff that God has taken me through since then, I can honestly say that I am closer to God, feel better about life, and feel better about myself.

I feel like God is getting ready to do something huge here, and I’m excited. It’s both intimidating and encouraging, but today especially, I’ve felt very encouraged by the people around me. Special shout outs (in order of my primary interaction with them) to Josh, the vtONE team, Isaac, Sno, and Michael. You guys rock.

Earlier, I added a post to the vtONE blog that I like. Check it out here.

I just got my Passion: Everything Glorious CD in the mail today. I’ve already listened to the whole thing, and it’s like being back there. Tracks that I especially like include How Marvelous (Chris Tomlin), We Are Yours (Charlie Hall), Everything Glorious (David Crowder*Band), and Our God Reigns (Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman).

I especially enjoyed Our God Reigns, which was recorded during the chill worship set after the last talk, where they commissioned us to go out and live out our faith. They were playing this song when the lights on the “GLORIOUS” banner changed to blacklights, so that all the writing on it became visible.  I’ve written about that very moving experience before, but I was definitely crying during this song. Hearing it on the CD for the first time made me feel like crying just remembering how awesomely God moved in my generation over those few days in January.

The CD is excellent, and was very encouraging to me on a day when things just didn’t get started very well. If you’re considering picking up a copy, you can get them for $10 for a limited time from 268store.com.

Our God reigns
Our God reigns
Forever Your kingdom reigns

– Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman – Our God Reigns

I’m one of the main contributors on a new blog about vtONE, found at http://www.vt-one.com/. Leading up to the vtONE worship event next Saturday, I am blogging about the four themes of vtONE: repentance, prayer, worship, unity. Notice the new order. I believe those four themes are a process. To be ready to do any of the other things, you must first be right with God through repentance, so that you have a clean conscience. To pray, you need to be right with God. Worship is our response to God for what He has done and who He is. Unity comes when we’re joined together through prayer and worship, crying out to God for our generation.

Over on the vtONE blog, I am posting some devotionals from Zack and Ryan, the vtONE fathers, over the next few days that talk about these four themes. Today’s theme is repentance. I encourage you to check it out.

There’s still a lot to do before vtONE–more than the team can expect to do, easily more than I can expect to do. But the cool thing is that it forces us to rely on God to do the heavy lifting.

Just a simple request for you to pray for me. I have several big things going on right now–I’m in over my head, getting spiritually attacked, and I am in need of God’s assistance. Please pray for strength and endurance–this next week is going to be an interesting one. I know that God will come through and that trials build faith, but more than ever I need to get myself out of the way so that God can work through me (John 3:30 paraphrase).

UPDATE:  Thanks for praying.  Things are still interesting, as just this morning, I’ve had several things that I thought were taken care of fall through.  I’ve been attacked mainly by a combination of small things that have stacked up to make a monster.

I just discovered that since March 17 I’ve spent 13 hours talking on my cell phone.  That’s pretty amazing, since my previous phone (which crapped out on me) which I got it June had just over 83 hours on it when I got it replaced.  I averaged about 9 hours a month with that phone, and I’m on track to hit 17 hours in the first month of having this phone.  I’m turning into Mike Swann!  He logs about 3000 minutes (48 hours) a month on his phone.