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On the last day of March, we celebrated Easter Sunday. For you and your family, that celebration might have included an egg hunt and Easter baskets, a big meal and an afternoon nap, or worship on Sunday morning. Hopefully, if you worship Jesus, you spent at least a few moments reflecting on the empty tomb, the resurrection of Jesus, and the joy of an Easter faith.

But did you know that Easter didn’t end on Easter Sunday?

In the Scriptures, Jesus appeared to his disciples, on and off, for forty days, clarifying his teaching and encouraging his followers so they could be prepared for what lay ahead. Once he ascended, they would be the ones who would carry on his work, share his Gospel, and build the church and set down roots of the kingdom of God, everywhere they went. To do that well, they needed to understand what the resurrection meant – but they also needed to experience Jesus. So he ate with them, walked on the road and the beach with them, and answered their questions.

For 40 days, they experienced the resurrected Jesus. And when Pentecost came and they started sharing the Gospel, the good news, they based their sharing not just in what the Bible said, or what they had heard from others, but in what they, themselves, had experienced. As 1 John 1:1 points out, “that…which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim.”

Such experience-based sharing of the Good News of Jesus didn’t end with that early group of disciples, either. The truth of Easter tells us that Jesus didn’t just come to life, but that he is still alive, and so his followers continued to experience Jesus across the generations. True, there were no more instances where people could touch Jesus with their hands, and few where they could see Jesus with their eyes, but somehow, people could experience the presence of Jesus and the blessings of Jesus. And as they did, they shared what they had experienced with others.

Experiences like this of Jesus are what we may have heard referred to as “testimony.” It isn’t the same as learning what the Bible says, or even working out what we believe. It is, instead, a real, lived experience of Jesus Christ. We may experience Jesus in a spiritual sense of peace or anticipation during a time of prayer; we may experience Jesus through a miraculous healing or encouragement; we may experience Jesus in an audible voice or in clarity of mind during a decision. We may even experience Jesus through the loving acts of another person. Whatever form it takes, we can have a faith grounded in experience – experience of the risen Jesus – and that opportunity leads to our responsibility to share our experience as a form of encouragement to others and way to witness to the resurrected Christ.

May you have a blessed Easter season!

Rev. Dr. J. Adam Tyler is the Senior Pastor for Farmville Baptist Church and he can be reached by email at pastor@farmvillebaptist.org.