April 21, 2013
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Today’s topic is going to be quite
intense. Because you see, I am
dying. Not from any disease, or cancer,
or any other terminal ailments. I am a
healthy young man with no terminal ailments, but I am dying. We are all dying. We never know when death’s grip will take our
bodies, and our spirits departing wherever God decides them to be. We never think of death until it happens to
somebody close to us or strangers around us.
Whether it’s a car accident, a suicide, a diagnosis of a terminal
illness that happens to us or someone else and is inoperable, a terrorist
attack (foreign or domestic), an abortion, or a massacre, we never ruminate
upon death unless it affects us personally or our surrounding environment. Death is very serious, and it will happen to
every single one of us. It’s because it
is so serious and frightening that we choose to ignore it until it finally
comes to take us or someone close to us (or not so close when it’s a massacre,
or the death of a favoured celebrity). We
have to prepare for it. Living in
acceptance of it is to live free of it — the fear of it, the grip of it — just
as Jesus Christ has defeated death. In
the U.S. Army, statistics show that more soldiers die in a car accident at home
than they do in combat in the Middle East.
Today is an early Sunday morning, and after I am finished with this
memoir entry I could get in my jeep and on my way to church die in a car
accident due to any variety of causes. I
say that not because death can take us at any moment, but because driving a
vehicle is really dangerous (hence the statistical fact I mentioned). It could be from wrong judgement calls on the
road, or even losing the use of my legs at any moment due to my spinal condition
(more on that another time). While I was
in the army I would tell my mother all the time these statistics and that technically
makes me safer in Afghanistan than I am at home, especially being in the band
since all we do on deployment is play music and that it’s a non-combatant MOS
(military occupational specialty). But I
do not fear death. I acknowledge its
possibility in many situations, but I do not fear it, and I’ll tell you why.
Many people, even Christians, fear
death, and they have their irrational reasons.
(I say irrational because phobias are irrational fears, although they
appear rational to the victim.) Some
fear it because they’re unaware of what comes after death, or simply don’t
believe in Heaven or Hell. There are
Christians who fear it because they doubt their salvation — they live in so
much guilt of their sins that they doubt God’s mercy and therefore doubt they’ll
inherit God’s kingdom as co-heirs of Christ, which is a huge problem. If you’re living in so much guilt of your
sins, repent and renounce your sins and you will
find mercy (Proverbs 28:13). Repenting
is the easy part; God will forgive you instantaneously. Renouncing them is the hard part, where you have to do the work to turn from
those sinful ways and not do them anymore, otherwise if you continue in that
sin you’re still guilty of it. There’s
also the fact that a saved, born again, baptised Christian cannot lose his or
her salvation. Once you have Jesus
Christ, you have Him forever, unless you turn from Him, for He says: “Therefore, everyone
who will acknowledge Me before men, I will also acknowledge him before My
Father in heaven. But whoever denies Me
before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven” (Matthew
10:32-33). This message is as true to
believers as it is to unbelievers, whether we wish to believe it or not. Harsh realities are always difficult to
manifest. You can come into the faith
and easily stray from it.
However,
Christians who acknowledge Him before men wholeheartedly and do their very
best, as a human being, to live according to His name have this irrational fear
of death. They read the book of
Revelation and fear His coming, the loss of the earth, and ultimately their own
death. The coming of the Messiah is
supposed to be a glorious and victorious event! Christians who read Revelation and come out of
it with fear have a complete misunderstanding of the prophecy. All the terrible things you read of in the
Revelation prophecies happen to those who are left behind after Christ’s rapturing of His Church. They think that all those things happen then all believers go to Heaven. No, Christ raptures His Church, and those
left behind have to deal with all the tribulations afterwards, even new
believers after the fact (and they’ll be resurrected in Heaven at Christ’s
Glorious Appearing). If you don’t want
this to be you, repent of your sins steadfastly and submit yourself to Jesus
Christ in complete servitude. Remember, nothing can separate you from
your salvation except yourself. Romans 8:35-39,
Who can separate us from the love of
Christ? Can affliction or anguish or
persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: Because
of You we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be
slaughtered. No, in all these things
we are more than victorious through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor
life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will have the power
to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
What a glorious reality! What a marvellous victory we have over death,
through Christ, to give God praise for!
As a prospecting pastor, I write to Christians. Why fear death? There is not a single created thing on this
earth or even in Heaven or Hell that can separate you from Jesus Christ — your
salvation. The only thing that can is
your denial of Him before men. That may
seem to contradict what I just said, but it does not. That is an internal force. There is not a single external force on earth
or supernatural that can take the love of Christ away from you. This is why I do not fear death. I know where I’m going once I die, and it’s a
heck of a lot better than this world we live in now. So I’m looking forward to dying. This does not make me a risk taker. I am far too introverted for such activities
and I’m not foolish enough to make such decisions to begin with. God put me on this earth for one purpose only
and that is to preach His Word and help people with their faith. I simply live. I go with the flow of life and I trust God
with it.
That’s
another thing — trust in God. I trust
God in the preservation of my life.
That’s one more reason why I do not fear death. I cannot tell you how many times God has
saved my life every time I trusted Him with the preservation of it. I don’t only mean it in the poetic,
metaphorical sense either. I have
trusted Him with the preservation of my life in very dangerous situations,
whether it’s been on mission trips or my time of service in the United States
Army. Every time I have trusted Him in
the preservation of my life He has always delivered me. He has never failed me. He is incapable of failing His children. Do not misunderstand me, however. There have been plenty of times where I have feared
for my life. But with the Holy Spirit I
have within me, every time I was afraid I prayed a quick prayer saying, “God is
not finished with me yet. It’s not time
for me to die.” And immediately, my fear
is gone.
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