Before You Read Another Word
I need you to do something for me right now.
Say it out loud — even if you're alone, even if it feels a little strange, even if you don't fully believe it yet.
Just say: "GET UP."
Because I believe those two words are exactly what somebody reading this needs to hear today. Not a gentle suggestion. Not a soft invitation. A declaration. A command rooted in the most powerful event in human history.
GET UP.
I don't know what tried to bury you. I don't know what season you've been stuck in or what has been holding you down. I don't know if you're walking through grief or fighting a diagnosis or staring at a dream that looks like it's been in a tomb so long you've stopped expecting it to breathe again.
But I came today with one word — one declaration — that has been changing everything since the moment an angel rolled back a stone outside Jerusalem and said with the calm certainty of someone who already knew the outcome:
He is not here. He is risen.
On Friday, they crucified Him. On Saturday, they mourned Him and assumed it was over. They sealed the tomb, posted the guard, and began to grieve a future that would never come.
But then Sunday happened.
And when Sunday happened — when Jesus got up — nothing in heaven, on earth, or underneath the earth would ever be the same again.
This is not just the story of what happened to Jesus. This is the story of what is available to you. Right now. Today.
Because He got up — and He got up so you could get up too.
What Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Are Really About
I want to take you through three days. Not just as history. As a framework for understanding the season you might be in right now.
Because here is what I have come to believe: every person reading this is somewhere in the Easter story.
Some of you are in a Friday season.
Friday is the day of crucifixion. It is the day when the thing you trusted most — the relationship, the job, the dream, the plan, the health — got taken from you in a way that felt violent and wrong. It is the day when the sky went dark and the earth shook and the thing you built your hope on seemed to die in front of your eyes.
If you're in a Friday season, you feel it in your body. There is a heaviness that doesn't lift when you wake up in the morning. You show up to your life, you do what needs to be done, you even smile in the right places — but inside, something is grieving. Something is hurting in a way that is hard to explain to people who haven't been there.
Friday is real. Jesus didn't skip Friday. He lived it, fully and completely, and the Bible does not rush past it. The Gospel writers describe it in careful detail because Friday matters. Pain matters. Loss matters. And if you are in a Friday season right now, I am not going to minimize it or tell you to just think positively and get over it.
But I need you to know something: Friday is not the last day of the story.
Some of you are in a Saturday season.
Saturday might actually be the hardest season of all. Because on Saturday, the disciples didn't know Sunday was coming. They just knew Friday had happened. They were in that excruciating in-between place — where what they had hoped for was gone and they couldn't yet see what was ahead.
Saturday is the season of waiting. Of feeling stuck. Of confusion and silence and the terrifying possibility that God has gone quiet. It is the season where you've been praying the same prayer for so long you're not even sure what you're expecting anymore. Where you are doing the right things, showing up faithfully, and yet nothing seems to be moving.
If you're in a Saturday season, the enemy's favorite lie is: this is just how it is now. That the best is behind you. That the tomb is permanent. That the door isn't going to open.
Saturday is hard. But Saturday is also temporary.
Because Sunday is coming.
And the Sunday I'm talking about is not just a day on the calendar. It is a moment — the moment when everything that seemed finished gets rewritten. The moment when the tomb that looked like an ending becomes the launching pad for the most unstoppable force the world has ever seen.
Sunday is the day the angel says: Don't be afraid. He is not here. He is risen, just as He said.
Just as He said.
He told them this was going to happen. He said it clearly, more than once. And they still didn't fully believe it until they saw it with their own eyes.
Some of you have promises God has spoken over your life that you have stopped fully expecting. You believe them theologically. But you've stopped standing in front of the tomb expecting the stone to move.
Today, I want to reawaken that expectation. Because the same God who kept His word about Sunday morning is keeping His word about your life.
The Third Day Was Never Just About Time
Now I want to give you something that I believe will shift the way you think about the resurrection forever.
Most of us have been taught that the third day was a prophetic timeline. Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days — Jesus referenced that Himself in Matthew 12:40 as a sign pointing to His own burial and resurrection. He told the Pharisees, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). He repeatedly told His disciples what was coming: "On the third day, I will rise again" (Luke 18:33).
And all of that is true, and all of it matters.
But what if the third day was never primarily about a count of hours?
What if the third day was about testimony?
Think about this. The first day is when they count you out. When the enemy looks at the situation and says: it's over. I won. This is finished. The first day is when the stone gets sealed and the guards take their post and every human assessment says there is no coming back from this.
The second day is when the enemy gets comfortable. When the silence stretches long enough that even the people who loved you most start to quietly grieve what they thought was possible. The second day is the day of settled defeat — from the enemy's perspective.
But the third day is when God makes a liar out of every voice that ever said it was over.
That is the pattern. Not just in Jesus' story — in Scripture after Scripture. In Joseph's story, in Esther's story, in Lazarus's story, in the story of the Israelites at the Red Sea. The moment that looked like certain death was the setup for the most dramatic display of God's power anyone had ever witnessed.
And here is what I want you to carry with you: your third-day moment is not tied to a date on the calendar. It is tied to the moment you step into what God has already declared over your life. It is tied to the moment you stop living in Saturday and start walking in the authority of Sunday.
God is not waiting for the perfect circumstances to release your resurrection. He is waiting for you to believe — genuinely, actively, out-loud believe — that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is already living inside you.
"The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you."
— Romans 8:11
Let that sit for a moment.
The same Spirit. The same power. The same force that took a dead body that had been in a sealed tomb for three days and brought it back to life — that power lives in you.
Not a distant version of it. Not a reduced Sunday-school version. The full thing. Living inside you. Right now.
He Got Up — and So Did Everything You've Been Waiting For
I need you to understand something about the nature of the resurrection.
When Jesus got up, He didn't just get His own self up.
When Jesus got up, your salvation got up. Your healing got up. Your purpose got up. Your future — the one the enemy convinced you was buried — got up with Him.
Because here is what the enemy misunderstood about the cross. He thought it was a period. He thought: if I can just get Jesus to that cross, if I can just end it there — it's over.
What he didn't understand is that the cross was not a period. It was a comma.
It is finished... but the story wasn't.
Colossians 2:14 says that at the cross, Jesus "canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross."
That word canceled in the Greek is exaleipho — it means to completely wipe out. To obliterate. To make completely disappear. Like writing on a chalkboard being erased — not smudged, not partially removed, but gone.
Every accusation. Every legal claim the enemy thought he had over your life. Every generational pattern that had been following your family for decades. Every word spoken over you in shame, in cruelty, in small-minded limitation. Every lie you internalized about who you were and what you deserved.
Wiped out.
Nailed to a cross. Buried in a tomb. And then left behind when Jesus walked out of it.
Which means — and I need you to really hear this — the grave clothes are not yours to wear anymore.
Jesus left His burial linens in the tomb. He walked out without them. And yet so many believers are still wrapped in the things He already took off. Still wrapped in shame He canceled. Still carrying guilt He nailed to the cross. Still wearing the identity the enemy assigned to them rather than the one the resurrection confirmed.
Can I ask you something? What grave clothes have you been wearing that you need to leave behind today?
The Blood Still Speaks, and the Body Still Heals
I want to say something about the body and blood of Jesus that goes deeper than a communion ritual.
When Jesus said in John 6:51, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever" — He was not speaking only about a ceremony. He was describing a spiritual reality so profound that many of the people listening that day walked away because they couldn't receive it.
His body was broken so yours could be whole.
"He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed."
— Isaiah 53:5
By His wounds. Past tense. Already accomplished. Already settled.
But here's the part I want to add: when His body was raised, the healing wasn't canceled — it was activated. The resurrection didn't undo the work of the cross; it confirmed it. It sealed it. It declared: this is permanent. This is real. This stands forever.
And the blood — the blood that was shed on Friday, that seemed in that moment like the greatest tragedy in human history — that blood is still speaking.
Hebrews 12:24 says the blood of Jesus "speaks a better word than the blood of Abel." It is present tense. Speaks. Not spoke. Not once spoke and now is silent. Still speaks. From the mercy seat in heaven, where Hebrews 9:12 tells us Jesus entered with His own blood, making eternal redemption — the blood is speaking over your life right now.
It is saying: righteous. Redeemed. Covered. Whole.
The enemy wants you to forget that the blood is still active. He wants you to treat it like something historical rather than something present — because the moment you actually believe the blood is working on your behalf today, everything in your situation starts to shift.
So receive this: His body was raised, and so was your healing. His blood is still speaking, and it is speaking on your behalf.
When He Called Her Name
I want to take you to a moment in John 20 that moves me every time I read it.
Mary Magdalene is at the tomb on that Sunday morning, weeping. She doesn't understand what has happened. She sees the empty tomb and assumes the worst — that someone has taken the body. She is so consumed by grief that when Jesus Himself appears to her, she doesn't recognize Him. She thinks He is the gardener.
And then He says one word.
"Mary."
Just her name. Her specific name. And in that one word, the grief breaks open into the most astonishing recognition. She turns. She knows. She sees.
Rabboni. Teacher.
I want you to notice what He did not do. He did not appear as a spectacle. He did not come with thunder and lightning to prove a point to the people who had crucified Him. He did not show up first to the religious leaders or the Roman officials or the crowds.
He showed up to one weeping woman in a garden.
And He called her by name.
Family, the resurrection is not an impersonal event. It is not a theological concept that exists at a comfortable distance from your actual life. The risen Christ is a person who knows your name — your specific, individual, irreplaceable name — and He is standing in front of you today, in the middle of whatever season you are in, saying it.
You have been living in a grave you don't belong in.
You have been answering to names the enemy gave you that are not your real name.
You have been wrapped in grave clothes that were never meant to go home with you.
And Jesus — the same Jesus who walked out of His own tomb, the same Jesus who appeared in a garden and changed a grieving woman's entire world with one word — is standing in front of you today.
Calling your name.
Saying: "This is your third-day moment. Come out."
Will you answer?
The Legal Reality You Need to Understand
I want to get deep with you for a moment, because I think many believers are fighting battles they've already legally won — and they don't know it.
Everything in the spiritual realm operates on laws, covenants, and agreements. This is not mystical language — it is the framework the Bible uses consistently to describe how the spiritual world works.
When Adam sinned in the garden, something transactional happened. Dominion was forfeited. Satan gained a legal foothold in the human story through disobedience — and death entered as a consequence (Romans 6:23). The enemy had a legitimate claim. That's important to understand. He wasn't just bluffing. He had rights.
But the cross was not just a sacrifice. It was a legal transaction.
Jesus — who had no sin of His own — took on the full weight of human sin and paid its price completely. The debt was settled. Not partially. Not provisionally. Completely.
But the resurrection — that was the receipt.
If Jesus had only died, we would have been forgiven but still under the weight of death's authority. The cross paid the price. The resurrection proved the payment was accepted. It was heaven's declaration: the debt is canceled. The contract is void. The verdict is reversed.
Colossians 2:15 adds this extraordinary detail: Jesus "disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."
Public spectacle.
The enemy was not quietly put aside. He was publicly, permanently, irreversibly defeated. The resurrection was the announcement of that defeat posted across the entire spiritual universe.
Which means — right now, today — you are not fighting a battle where the outcome is uncertain. You are living in the aftermath of a victory that has already been won. You are not fighting for victory. You are fighting from it.
The question is not whether you can win. The question is whether you will walk in what has already been secured.
What Shifts When You Believe This
I want to get practical with you, because a resurrection that only exists as theology doesn't transform anything.
When you genuinely believe the resurrection, your relationship with fear changes.
Fear has always had the same foundational argument: something permanent and terrible could happen to you and there's nothing you can do about it. The resurrection is the direct answer to that argument. The worst thing that can happen — death — has been defeated. Permanently. Publicly. Irreversibly. Which means the secondary fears — fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of loss — have lost their ultimate authority. Jesus walked out of the worst possible outcome. And so can you.
When you genuinely believe the resurrection, your prayer life changes.
You stop praying desperate, low-expectation prayers from someone who isn't sure the God they're talking to is actually able. You begin to pray from a place of authority — not arrogance, but the settled confidence of someone who knows whose they are and what has been made available to them. Romans 8:11 becomes not just a verse but a declaration: the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me. I am not praying to a distant God. I am partnering with a resurrection power that already lives inside me.
When you genuinely believe the resurrection, your identity changes.
You stop answering to names the enemy gave you. You stop living in the grave clothes Jesus already removed. You stop treating your history as your destiny. Because the resurrection is the definitive proof that God specializes in turning endings into beginnings, tombs into testimonies, and Friday's sorrow into Sunday's declaration.
When you genuinely believe the resurrection, your relationship with time changes.
The enemy's favorite tool is making you feel like you're running out of time. Too old. Too late. Too far gone. Too much has already been lost. But the resurrection broke the power of chronological limitation. Jesus walked out of that tomb and appeared in locked rooms. He stood on a beach and made breakfast. He ascended to the right hand of the Father and sent His Spirit to live in His people. Time bowed to the resurrection. And if time bowed to Jesus, then your past no longer defines you, your present no longer limits you, and your future is not as closed as the enemy wants you to believe.
Seven Things That Rise When You Do
Here is what I want you to declare over your life today. Not as religious words — as living, Spirit-filled truth that you are choosing to stand on.
Your healing rises with you.
The same resurrection power that raised Jesus lives in your body. Sickness does not have the final word. Pain does not have the final word. Every diagnosis, every medical report, every prognosis spoken over you — it must be held up against Romans 8:11 and Isaiah 53:5. By His wounds, you are healed. That is not a wish. That is a declaration from the throne of God.
Your purpose rises with you.
Whatever the enemy tried to bury — the calling God placed on your life before you were born, the gifts and dreams and assignments that have been in a tomb while circumstances tried to seal them in — they are not dead. Purpose buried in God is not destroyed. It is preserved. And this is your season of emergence.
Your joy rises with you.
Not the manufactured happiness that depends on everything going right, but the deep, anchored, resurrection-sourced joy that the Book of John says no one can take from you (John 16:22). You were not created for a life of joyless survival. You were created for fullness.
Your family rises with you.
The generational patterns that have followed your family for years — the addiction, the poverty, the broken relationships, the fear — they were nailed to the cross. The resurrection broke their legal claim. You are not obligated to pass on what Jesus already canceled.
Your freedom rises with you.
Whatever has had you bound — the habit, the mindset, the relationship pattern, the inner voice that has been lying to you for years — it does not have authority over someone who lives in resurrection power. Galatians 5:1 says it plainly: it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
Your voice rises with you.
The resurrection shut the mouth of every accuser, every enemy, every voice that said the story was over. And the same truth that silenced accusation in Jesus' story is silencing it in yours. What they said about you is not the final word. What God says is the final word.
Your future rises with you.
Everything you thought was too late, too broken, too buried — bring it before the God who raised the dead and watch what He does.
A Prayer for Your Third-Day Moment
Father,
I come to You in the name of Jesus — the One who walked out of a sealed tomb and changed everything forever.
I pray for every person reading these words today. For the ones who are in a Friday season — who are hurting in ways they haven't been able to name, who are carrying grief and loss and confusion and pain that feels too heavy. Meet them there. The same Jesus who cried at Lazarus's tomb, the same Jesus who bled in a garden and asked if there was another way — that Jesus is not distant from their pain. He is in it with them. Let them feel His presence in the Friday.
For the ones in a Saturday season — who are waiting and don't know what they're waiting for, who have been faithful and haven't seen the shift yet, who are starting to wonder if Sunday is actually coming. Give them the faith to keep standing. Remind them that the disciples in that upper room on Saturday did not know what was about to happen — and yet Sunday came anyway. It always does. Strengthen them to hold on.
And for the ones who are stepping into Sunday today — who feel something cracking open, who sense the stone beginning to move, who are hearing their name called in a way that reaches somewhere deep — meet them in that moment with the full weight of resurrection power. Let the grave clothes fall. Let the fear break. Let the thing they thought was dead come back to life today.
I pray against every lie that has been playing on repeat in their minds. The voice that says it's too late. The voice that says they've gone too far. The voice that says the tomb is permanent. Silence every voice that is not Yours, Father. And let the voice that says "Come out" be the loudest thing they hear.
Let the resurrection be real to them. Not just historically. Not just theologically. Personally. Presently. Powerfully real.
Because You are the same God who rolled the stone away. You are the same God who folded the grave linens and left them behind. You are the same God who appeared in a garden and called a grieving woman by name and turned her mourning into the most extraordinary testimony in human history.
You are still that God. Today. Right now. For every person reading this.
Rise in them. Rise through them. Let the third day begin.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Declarations for the Rising
Say these out loud. They are not just words — they are spiritual positions you are choosing to occupy.
- Because Jesus got up, I am getting up.
- The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me — and it is working in me right now.
- The enemy's contract over my life has been canceled. The debt is paid. The verdict is reversed.
- I am not fighting for victory. I am walking in a victory that has already been won.
- My healing is not waiting to happen — it was secured at the resurrection. I receive it.
- My purpose was not buried permanently. It is rising with resurrection power.
- I will not wear grave clothes that Jesus already removed. I am leaving them in the tomb.
- Time does not run me. Resurrection does.
- Every word spoken against my life, my family, my future — canceled by the blood of Jesus.
- I hear my name being called. I am coming out of the grave.
- No more fear. No more shame. No more bondage. I walk in the power of the third day.
- This is my resurrection season. And I will never be the same again.
Your Sunday Is Here
Let me close with this.
The women came to the tomb on that Sunday morning to perform a burial ritual. They came with spices. They came prepared for a sealed tomb, a dead body, and the final ceremony of a grief they expected to carry for the rest of their lives.
They had no idea they were walking toward the most important moment in human history.
They came expecting death and found resurrection.
They came expecting a sealed tomb and found an open one.
They came expecting to say goodbye and instead received a commission: Go and tell.
I believe that is what is happening for some of you today. You came to this article carrying something heavy — a season of grief, a question that has been sitting in the silence, a hope you've been protecting carefully because you're not sure it can survive another disappointment.
And I am here to tell you: the tomb is open.
The stone has been rolled away. Not by human effort. Not by circumstances finally cooperating. By the same sovereign, resurrection-working God who has been faithful from the beginning of this story and who will be faithful to the end.
Your third-day moment is not somewhere in the distant future. It is not contingent on everything working out the way you planned. It is available to you right now — in this moment, in this season, wherever you are — because the resurrection is not an event that happened to Jesus two thousand years ago and then stopped.
The resurrection is a living, present, active reality that is at work in every person who belongs to Him.
He is not here. He is risen, just as He said.
And because He is risen — because He got up — you get up too.
Your healing gets up. Your purpose gets up. Your joy gets up. Your future gets up.
This is your third-day shift.
Walk in it.
— Pastor Nicole Washington
If this message found you in a season that needed this word, share it with someone who needs to hear that Sunday is coming. And if you just stepped into a third-day moment of your own, we want to celebrate with you.