7-9-18<\/p>\n
I recently delivered the message at a friend\u2019s memorial service. I was asked by her mother, who had only three months ago lost her husband too. Life and death are not supposed to run that way, mothers burying daughters. But I have learned of other sicknesses and deaths in my circle. And people who came to me after the service also shared many stories of recent sad news, deaths, and afflictions.<\/p>\n
Life happens. <\/p>\n
What should not happen is that we, God\u2019s children, take comfort in fantasies of our own imaginings. Not that these things happened at the service, but we often hear and perhaps say \u2013 and I pray not believe \u2013 that so-and-so is now dancing with angels. Or reunited with his or her favorite pets. Or watching over us.<\/p>\n
Such fables perhaps are well intentioned. But to describe Heaven, or to contemplate our own eternal lives, in such ways, reveal that we do not know the Bible. Or, if know the Bible, we thereby presume to know more than it says. Are we wiser than the revealed Lord? Will He turn the universe of His creation upside-down because we hope to act in a fictional play of our own desires?<\/p>\n
Whatever we do NOT know of death and eternity \u2013 indeed, all of life\u2019s mysteries \u2013 puts us in the position of wanting to create God in our own image. Let it not be so! The riches of His glory are so great, so literally indescribable, that we cannot begin to choreograph what He has in store.<\/p>\n
Remember that truth, that whatever we cannot imagine is so much greater than that which we know. Trust God: there is a reason we do not know all. Trust Jesus: \u201cIn My house there are many mansions [prepared for you], if it were not so, I would not have told you.\u201d Trust the Holy Spirit, who has been sent to lead us to all Truth.<\/p>\n
Coping, as we must, however, with life\u2019s challenges and griefs, and with all the mysteries of life, not to mention death, it is natural that many of us turn to books and tracts that collect Bible verses of comfort. They are sometimes arranged by category of concerns; otherwise a Bible concordance can serve the same purposes. They contain \u201cGod\u2019s Promises.\u201d Yes, from God\u2019s word.<\/p>\n
In all respect, literally, to God and to all of you, I say that we must remember that another \u201cPromise Book\u201d can be compiled from many proverbs, warnings, commandments, epistles, sermons, and exhortations in the Bible. These \u201cother\u201d promises are also God\u2019s words, after all.<\/p>\n
God, by His inspiration of writers and prophets and judges and apostles and disciples and missionaries, spoke of many things.<\/p>\n We are promised hard lives when we witness for God, when we follow Jesus.<\/p>\n We are assured of rejection. The Word is specific \u2013 that we will lose friends, that authorities will persecute us, that the world will hate us, that families will split apart because of our love for Jesus.<\/p>\n Many will suffer death as Christ-followers. This has been so for 2000 years\u2026 and happens in greater numbers today than all previous centuries combined.<\/p>\n You might lose jobs; your family and neighbors might think you crazy; you will be a lone, and very lonely, voice defending the truth.<\/em><\/p>\n These are not threats or warnings, strictly. Coldly, these are promises of God. The way of a Christian is not easy\u2026 never has been\u2026 never will be. In God\u2019s providence, He did not mean it to be easy. Jesus took up His cross, and we were told \u2013 yes, promised \u2013 that we must do the same to be worthy of Him, worthy of Eternity.<\/p>\n A downer? No! Even more Bible promises assure us that it is a privilege to die with Christ. We are His ambassadors here on earth. He lives within us, and His Holy Spirit empowers us\u2026 that we will be more than conquerors. <\/p>\n And those trials of life? Challenges, disappointments, rejections, fear? I ask you to look at the promise that He would never leave us nor forsake us, and remember some incidents.<\/p>\n Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could have been spared the fiery furnace if God chose to destroy it. Yet they displayed faith, and were protected through the fire. God could close up the Valley of the Shadow of Death\u2026 yet when we walk through it, we are protected by His rod and His staff; they comfort us. By faith, Abraham was even willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, yet the Lord stayed his hand, blessed Abraham and his descendants, and gave us a picture of Jesus\u2019s sacrifice when God was willing. And so on \u2013 the list of God\u2019s promises, and their fulfillment or puzzling postponement, that Mystery of His ways.<\/p>\n \u201cGod had planned something better\u2026 so that only together with us would they be made perfect.\u201d We are parts of that \u201cscarlet thread of redemption.\u201d The powerful truths of His promises do not depend on our understanding of them! He asks only faithful obedience.<\/p>\n