Posts Tagged ‘ Death ’
The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Proverbs 18:21, NIV
Do you talk a lot? Or not at all?
What do you say when you speak?
Is what you say uplifting and wholesome or tearing down and frivolous?
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
John 14:27, ESV
The One who has overcome death and the grave, conquered sin and violence, and sustains the Universe itself has given us peace.
Fall on Christ. It will break you, but you will be made whole and find His peace.
for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls,
1 Peter 1:24, ESV
We are destined to die.
But the next verse reminds us that the Word of God lasts forever, and it is this Word that saves us to eternal life.
My mom said to get the Wisdom of God, so start with some of the thoughts found at Proverbial Thought!
Last week, Jesus gave my mom a great big hug and took her Home, one day after her 53rd birthday. The amazing thing is how much joy and love for God was experienced and expressed throughout her final days.
It is hard to stay upset when someone on her way out stresses the importance of our Lord being glorified in the middle of everything.
It was my honor this past Saturday to share about my mom at her Celebration of Life service. I am sharing it with you … plus the last bit I knew I would not be able to say in that moment!
I remember telling my parents when I was a child that I wanted to be just like them when I grew up … only better.
When I first became a Christian, my mom was afraid I had joined a cult, but she could not deny the change in my life.
James 4:6 says, “But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” My mom’s response was “Well, I guess I’ll never get grace!”
However, she had a lot of questions, and within a year of my coming to Christ, my parents did to. But mom just asked more questions. As [Pastors] Todd and Scott can attest, she always had questions. Sometimes there were full arguments over Scripture and Christian life. She would often come to me, call me, or message me in some fashion asking if she was sinning for doubting and questioning so many things that came her way.
First, I would remind her that many people doubted, including the Apostle Thomas, and He is a pillar of the Church! And I would always respond with 1 Thessalonians 5:21, “Test everything; hold onto the good.”
Back to James 4, in verses 7-8, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
As a new Christian, I often wondered why more people would not help out as much as I did as a new believer. When my parents finally started following Jesus, there was no stopping them! Ask anyone: they dived in head first, helping out everywhere they could.
But my mom had compassion and love for others. She had raised me to not judge anyone, not for any reason, no matter what they looked like, no matter what they acted like. She certainly lived out 1 Samuel 16:7, which says “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Many of you here know how true this is. How many co-workers, youth, and others did she reach with her love and compassion? She very easily lived out 1 Corinthians 9:22, I will just read it: “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” She struggled through her doubts so that with compassion and love she could help others struggle through their doubts that others might be saved.
She learned to live out James 4:9, to “[become] wretched and mourn and weep. [And to] Let [her] laughter be turned to mourning and [her] joy to gloom” so that others would come to know the same Savior she knows.
And as verse 10 says, she learned to “Humble [herself] before the Lord, and [she is exalted].” I think needing to be moved to a larger hospital room to fit all of the guests, and the people sitting here and lining the halls attests to, she has been exalted. And for all of us who know Jesus, we will one Glorious Day see her again.
[What I would have said, but had written down]
My parents have been through many fires and trials in life, and they have grown to live Jude, verses 20-23, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.“
My parents have made it very difficult to do life better than them. I just look forward to that Glorious Day when we all get to reunite with our Lord and remember all of our stories together.
As I said last week, I am taking a break from the blog to recuperate from much school, work (at a school!), and ministry. Here is a reminder that there is great wisdom to be found at Proverbial Thought. The post for today comes from November 1, 2011. It seemed a good idea for the holidays celebrated this week!
Today is All Saints Day, Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos, All Hallows, or Hallowmas. No matter what it is called, today is a day that celebrates those who have come before and moved on to the next life. No matter the history of today and Halloween (All Hallows Eve, the day before All Hallows/Hallowmas … think what Christmas Eve is to Christmas), there is a rich history all over the world of honoring or venerating the dead.
I will not get into whether or not it is okay or even good to do such things or celebrate holidays here. That is for later.
I want to discuss death.
The picture I have above is from the website zombiejesus.com, and it is definitely satirical but not theologically sound. They quote two verses from the Bible:
1) He came back from the dead Acts 2:24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him
2) He encourages zombie like behavior John 6:53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”
As someone said elsewhere, “While precocious PKs (Pastor’s Kids) may try to pull off the Zombie Jesus costume, passionately asserting that Jesus did rise from the dead, a quick-witted parent will counter that He did NOT, however, rise from the UNdead.” The point: A zombie is the walking dead; Jesus defeated death. Zombies are in a state of perpetual death, never satisfied and never resting; Jesus was freed “from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him” and satisfies all our needs and gives us rest.
I have to point out that it should be “zombie-like,” with a hyphen. Other than nitpicking grammar, zombies do not drink blood. That is vampires. Therefore, they would have to include that Jesus is a Vampire. However, they are both undead creatures.
Ooh! There is a good point. These things are still creatures – CREATED THINGS! Jesus is not created, He is “begotten” or comes directly from God and IS GOD!
Moving on, I actually agree with this point for the humor-value (after fixing the small grammar issue), especially seeing as this very point is what kept many from becoming Christians in the first few centuries of the Church’s temporal existence. Though it is misguided, since we eat bread as Christ’s body and drink wine/juice/water as Christ’s blood.
Jesus is not a Zombie.
You might still here me (if you know me personally) occasionally refer to Christian Zombies, but it is slightly different (but only slightly).
Also, do not worship the dead or pray to them in the sense that you expect them to actually help you. They might hear you ask them to speak to God on your behalf, but if they do hear prayers (pray essentially means “ask”) I must confess to not thinking it matters much (sorry Catholic friends and family, but I have a point). We have a mediator: Jesus Christ. As I said above, He is God and is our connection to God through the Holy Spirit.
Do not forget to get your daily dose of wisdom from Proverbial Thought.
Perhaps you have heard the saying “Freedom is never free.” As carriers of the gospel message, we share with others how the price was paid for our sins by Jesus Christ. Many times, we carriers also must pay a high price.
price to be paid
for goodness to spread
for Truth to be proclaimed
for love to be known
for God to be famed
there is a need
a price to be paid
a price for all of this
is paid frequently
though not as often
as there could be
the price to be paid
needs to be paid by you and me
the Name advances
by this special price
it is a price that
no one could deny
it is the ultimate love
that we lay down our lives
Taken from deeper words for God from a simple man of God by daniel m klem, page 179.
Me doing the Cross Walk in 2008
If we honestly looked around our world, we could see plenty of good reasons why people would want to take their lives. Sad? Definitely.
Sorry to be gloomy and maybe even a bit sick, but what if they are on to something?
I read an article recently in Christian Research Journal (Vol. 34, No. 2, 2011) titled “A Christian View of Human Nature“. The author, John S. Hammet, had this to say about death:
Moreover, may not the end of life in this world be a severe mercy from God? True, death entered the world as the punishment for sin, but a punishment that opened the door to mercy. For once humans had fallen and become like God in knowing, not just good, but now evil, God intervened: “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22). It was the mercy of God that established the limitation of life as a fallen human; as redeemed persons, we are welcomed to the tree of life (Rev. 22:3).
Not only could God have allowed death as a mercy to get away from the suffering we brought upon ourselves (and for the record, I am not making any arguments today about the afterlife for all people; this is just about this life), but He used death to defeat death!
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.
But:
Since the children have flesh and blood, [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
From the beginning, God showed us mercy through death. Even if you do not hold to Hammet’s take, here are some examples:
What do you think? Is death God once again showing His grace in the midst of our punishment?
