Acts 4: The Encounter with the Risen Christ That Changes Your Life

Introduction

"There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among men, by which we must be saved!" (Acts 4:12). From this verse, Nobuo Tanaka, pastor of Yonezawa Kojo Church in Japan, preaches on "the encounter that changes a life."

He starts with a smile. In the congregation, some are single and waiting for a wonderful encounter. Others, he jokes, would like to go back to the day of the marriage proposal and say no. Then he states his conviction: life is decided in encounters. He even mentions that a person who had helped them in all sorts of ways had a family name that literally means "encounter," as if life itself were nothing but that.

Before the message, a mother from the church had given her testimony. She kept telling herself that she had to be a mother like this, that her daughter had to become like that, and in the end her body reacted. This testimony becomes the pastor's common thread. It shows how we turn living people into objects, how the risen Jesus makes life spring up in us, and how this encounter leads us to another one: the encounter with ourselves.

Outline of the Message

1. An encounter is one life speaking to another life

"An encounter is one life speaking with another life, one life resonating with another life."
The drama begins with those closest to us, our children, our grandchildren. We think we are speaking to their lives, but we speak to them as if they were things: "Go to a good school. Get good grades. Look at the neighbor's kid and become like him." Raised as objects, we become objects ourselves.
A thing does not move. Life, on the other hand, flows like a river, always in motion. Because movement is inconvenient, we try to stop it. Lives are made to resonate together, never to dominate one another, and yet we want to control the other person: "Do this, become that."
This is what the mother who gave her testimony went through: by wanting her daughter to match what she should be, she treated her like an object. Nothing went as planned, and her body reacted with stubborn itching.
"The heart can lie, but the body is honest." Someone invites you to share a meal, your mouth answers "I've already eaten," and your stomach growls.
The pastor uses the image of a car: it runs on gasoline. Putting in water because gasoline is expensive will never make it move. We would laugh at anyone who did that, and yet it is our own portrait: life feeds on life, and we replace it with what can be seen and measured. Money first, then health, the right school, the right company.
He observes that our era has arrived at artificial intelligence, made by humans, that is beginning to control humans. The most serious part is that we no longer even notice that we are being dominated.
He quotes the word of James: desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death (James 1:15). When life is diverted toward things, the body keeps moving, but what was meant to turn every trial into a treasure comes to a halt.
To show how the weakness of the human heart gets exploited, Nobuo Tanaka tells a well-known story. Two countries, A and B, are neighbors. A wants to conquer B, in the manner of the Japanese lords of the age of civil wars, and knows that the key is to strike down the leader of the opposing army.
He recalls that Oda Nobunaga, facing a larger army, would never have won head-on: he aimed at the head of the enemy general. But country A does not know where B's leader lives.
So A places three large stone oxen in plain view on B's territory. Behind each one, he leaves gold, shaped like droppings.
The people of B are amazed: in the neighbor's country, these statues produce gold! With no car or cart, they drag the heavy statues to a hidden place. On the packed earth, they leave deep ruts.
All A has to do is follow the tracks. He finds the leader and seizes the country.
The pastor notes with a smile that some people look like they do not find the story funny, and that others are thinking deeply. The lesson is there: what we covet leads us to the place where we lose everything.

2. Jesus is the life that springs up and does not stop

Conversely, if you are connected to authentic life, every situation can become a treasure and every trial can be transformed. Life is revived by life.
This life is not temporary. It is not merely a heart that beats and one day stops. Your life comes from your father and mother, theirs from your grandparents, and so on back to the God who created heaven, earth, and all things.
Because people did not understand him, this God took human form: he is Jesus Christ. And Jesus said: I am the life, I am the truth (John 14:6).
All you need to do is say to him: "Jesus, I love you. I want to give you first place in my life." When you believe in him, life begins to spring up in you like a fountain, and it never runs dry, because it is eternal (John 4:14).
This fountain does not only quench your thirst. It also quenches your neighbor's.

3. Peter and John: with Jesus without being plugged in, then transformed by the Risen One

The pastor recalls the context of Acts 3 and 4. The twelve disciples shared Jesus' life. Many people today say: "If Jesus were walking beside me, I would believe without difficulty, but that was two thousand years ago." What can we answer?
Peter and John were among the most prominent disciples. Peter even considered himself the first. Yet when Jesus was there, life was present without flowing in them like a spring: that connection was not yet there.
What blocks the flow of life, what clogs it, the Bible calls sin. Jesus came for all humanity, and for you, in order to take it away: he was crucified, he died, he was buried, and he rose again. It was by meeting the Risen One that Peter and John received this life, and this life changed what surrounded them.
A man lame from birth was begging near the temple, like those you sometimes see at tourist sites abroad. At that time, it was his only way of living. Peter said to him: "I have no silver or gold, but what I have, that I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!" (Acts 3:6). And the man stood up.
"Even together, you're not on the same channel at all." The disciples had Jesus right before their eyes without being connected to him. After the resurrection, when he was no longer visible, they believed in him and let him into their whole life, not just into their heads or as an accessory. They were changed, and miracles happened through them.
The religious leaders of the time were astonished. The people, for their part, knew who these men were: uneducated fishermen (Acts 4:13). John had been nicknamed "son of thunder" by Jesus because he flared up easily (Mark 3:17). Peter had promised to follow Jesus everywhere, then, at the moment of the cross, he trembled and said, "I do not know this man," and everyone scattered.
"As long as Jesus was there, they could see him and touch him, and they stayed the same." After the resurrection, they had an encounter of life. The same thing is offered to you: without seeing or touching, you can say "I believe in the one who is true" and call on his name.
The pastor calls this spiritual: no longer understanding yourself as an assembly of pieces, but starting from the whole, starting from life. This is the heart of the message: the moment you say "Lord, I don't quite understand, but I receive you," life is plugged in, it transforms you, and through you the people around you change.

4. The Risen One is already beside you

A mother received a smartphone from her son. One day, she asks: "Where is my phone?" The son answers: "Mom, you're holding it against your ear!" "I couldn't see it!" The room laughs, and the pastor asks: who are we really talking about?
He also tells the story of a man from an undeveloped country, amazed in a modern country. At home, he has to go down to the river with a bucket. Over there, you turn a tap and water flows. He buys a tap and goes home, delighted.
Another time, he sees a white box where you put laundry and detergent: you press a button, it spins, it washes, and it dries. He brings one back, gathers the whole village, pours in the water, presses the button. Nothing moves. People would say: "What a fool!" The pastor answers: "That's you."
The tap with no pipe, the machine with no power: this is the picture of the person who replaces life with things. Christianity calls this replacement sin, taking the false for the true. A machine only works if the current flows.
The current is Jesus Christ, the Creator of all things, who paid with his own life the debt of our hearts, who died, was buried, and is alive. "You don't quite understand? That's okay. The first time, it's perfectly fine like that."
The pastor suggests a very simple prayer: "God, I'm told your name is Christ. Christ, here is my situation. I absolutely need this current, eternal life, what never changes. I'm told that when I speak your name, it flows into me. So please, I ask you." There is no need to know everything: it is by doing it that you understand through experience.
He returns to the testimony from the beginning. Not all skin conditions come from stress, he clarifies, but many do. This mother had seen doctors and tried remedies without being healed. She kept telling herself "I'm worthless, I'm worthless." When she heard God's voice, she understood that she did not have to accuse herself: in the very midst of her self-reproach, Christ was with her, saying "it's all right as you are."
This "it's all right as you are" is not about what you do or do not do, the "doing." It is about your being, your life, whether you succeed or not.
He adds that everything that happens is part of a program for the best (Romans 8:28): the deeper the trial, the higher the summit of hope.

5. Meeting Jesus leads you to meet yourself

"The most important encounter is to meet what is true. What is true is Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Word." And this encounter opens another: meeting yourself.
"Many people live seventy, eighty, a hundred and twenty years, and end their lives without ever having met themselves." What is wonderful, he says, is precisely to meet yourself.
How does it begin? You see someone and you get irritated: "He's so quick-tempered!" In reality, it is your own temper that is awakened when you see him. The temper is yours. By listening to words like these, we begin to catch sight of "the other self," then to spend time with it, to take an interest in it, until we see it clearly.
Happiness is not reduced to money, to a healing, to the children's good school. "That's good too," but these are things, and things pass. The one who has met eternal life stands firm, whether he wins or not, whether he is sick or healthy.
Of course we prefer health to sickness and comfort to poverty, "we are human." But little by little we understand that there are joys we only meet in sickness, and true things of life we only taste in the middle of the storm.
Jesus said why he came: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). For the pastor, he comes to seek the one who has lost sight of himself, so that he may find himself again and live, in every situation, a "this is good."
Just before this saying, there is Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). A chief tax collector, he collected taxes for the occupying power and helped himself along the way. He was despised. He had a lot of money, subordinates, a good table, and he was not fulfilled.
Short in stature, he climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus pass by. When Jesus reaches the tree, he calls him by name: "Zacchaeus, come down. Just as you are. I'm going to stay at your house." Zacchaeus is stunned. "He had an encounter of life," and his life was changed.

6. Speaking to "the other you": you are God's work

The pastor greets a teacher seated in the front row, who has accompanied the church's story for a long time: first a student at his school of counseling, then a trainer. The day before, the church leaders had all made the same remark: he seems to be half his age.
This man confided that he had long studied the Bible with his head. Then he came to understand, deeply, that the risen Christ was alive beside him. Today he leads trainings for public bodies and companies on how to build an organization.
These trainings are evaluated: have the participants been changed? Has their company seen a difference? If nothing changes, the trainer is not called back. He, however, is invited again and again. In the past, a famous name was enough. "Today, people look at results."
The same goes for the Christian: what matters is not the "Christian" badge, but having someone say to you "I would like to become someone like you." For that, you have to meet yourself.
The pastor distinguishes the first person from the second person. The first person says: "I am somebody. What do you think of me?" It goes around in circles on itself. Meeting yourself means speaking to the second person, to the "you" who is within you: God's work, the one with whom the risen Christ dwells.
Today, people talk a lot about self-esteem. Some keep telling themselves "I'm awesome, I'm a god" and end up collapsing. The result does not lie. Blessing, for its part, comes when we do not take ourselves for the center and say to God's work in us: "I am inadequate, but you are wonderful."
He tells a tennis story from Wimbledon 2022. In the quarterfinal, Novak Djokovic lost the first sets, and observers had him losing against a young and brilliant opponent. During a break, he went to the locker room, then turned the match around. According to the pastor's account, Djokovic explained that you must not keep telling yourself "I'm strong," because then you lose. In front of the mirror, he told himself: "I am not much. You are great."
"In Christian language, we would say: you are God's work, the risen Christ is with you" (Ephesians 2:10). Those who say "look how great I am" often lack assurance: they want to be well regarded and they defend themselves. This "you are wonderful" is neither a personal wish nor the opinion of the world, it is an eternal message that depends neither on what you do, nor on your poverty, nor on your illness.
How do you know you are drifting away from it? "There is no more peace." When adversity comes, it carries you away. What is needed is to live in the second person, saying in front of the mirror "you are wonderful" to the work of God that you are. Bringing everything back to the first person and treating others as objects makes you go around in circles.
"Does this world exist? Yes. Can we experience it? You are already experiencing it." If you do not feel it, it is because this rich world has become so obvious to you that it goes unnoticed.

7. Stop looking for what is good, learn to savor

"Today, people look for things that are more and more delicious. It is because they look for what is good that everything seems bland to them." The point is not to eat what is good, but to eat with taste, whatever you eat.
He imagines the reaction of someone in the room: "Well then, let me taste it." But it is up to you to do it. Say goodbye to the time when you were looking for what is tasty, and learn to savor.
In practice: live in the second person, look at the center of the circle rather than at what surrounds it. If you do not quite understand, call on the name of Jesus and say to him: "Thank you, you are with me." "That's all. That is enough."
The pastor invites you to taste it and to repeat it throughout the week. As with a device you do not understand: "Press here, say this," and a whole world starts to work.

Key Takeaways

An encounter is one life speaking to another life. It dies when we reduce the other person, or ourselves, to an object to be controlled.
Replacing life with money, diplomas, or success is putting water in the tank: the Bible calls this sin.
Peter and John were transformed not by seeing Jesus, but by meeting the Risen One. He is beside you today, even if you cannot see him.
Meeting Christ leads you to meet yourself: to say "you are wonderful" to the work of God that you are, instead of repeating "I am somebody."
The fruit is seen in peace in the midst of adversity. There is no need to understand everything: call on the name of Jesus and thank him for being with you.

Personal Application

With whom in your family do you tend to say "become like this" instead of letting your life resonate with theirs?
What "things" have you put in the place of life: money, health, your children's success, the image you project?
Are you near Jesus like the disciples before the cross, or plugged into him like after the resurrection? Would you dare to pray simply: "I don't understand everything, but I receive you"?
The last time someone irritated you, what did that irritation reveal about you?
This week, can you tell yourself each morning in front of the mirror: "You are God's work, the risen Christ is with you"?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an encounter according to Nobuo Tanaka?

For Nobuo Tanaka, an encounter is one life speaking to another life and resonating with it. It is lost when we reduce the other person to an object we want to control: "Go to a good school, get good grades, become like him." Life, for its part, flows like a river and does not seek to dominate.

Why did Peter and John change after the resurrection of Jesus?

As long as Jesus walked with them, Peter and John saw him and touched him without being truly plugged into his life: Peter even denied him. After the cross and the resurrection, they met the living Christ. His life flowed through them, and a man lame from birth stood up in the name of Jesus (Acts 3 and 4).

What does "meeting yourself" mean in this message?

Nobuo Tanaka distinguishes the first person ("I am somebody, look at me") from the second person: speaking to "the other you," the one God created and with whom the risen Christ dwells. Telling that person "you are God's work, you are wonderful" is what it means to meet yourself. The fruit is seen in peace, even in the midst of trial.