ALL SORTS OF DEATH

I think it’s safe to say we’re all affected by death; deaths of loved ones, the death of a season, of a pet, the death of a relationship—death comes for us all, but it’s what death means to us that changes how we experience its toll. 

A fair number of you know when I was very young still, about 12, my dad’s parents died in a car accident in early December. Their death was the first I’d really lived through, and it was among the first few traumatic experiences that changed my life, and Christmastime, from then on. My parents’ divorce was the first, and that happened the same year. It was as though it was the year of the death of family itself.

DEATH WAS NEVER THE GOAL

As I continue to live on, God continues to allow the suffering of this life to shape me and my faith into what I believe is His plan for my life. It’s certainly not easy, but for me, with time and age comes perspective, and having a stronger sense for not getting lost in the worldly perspective of death being a finality.

Death wasn’t the goal of the Creator of life, the God of heaven, who created us to live in the bliss of relationship with Him. Death came as a consequence to rebellion. Death is just the blink of an eye between one breath here, and another breath there. We only see it as scary when we don’t know what to believe occurs on the other side.

But, we’re told what happens on the other side—in the Bible. We just don’t want to believe it because it causes anxiety to consider our lack of faith is really the only difference between heaven and hell, that we’re actually going to experience eternal torment without faith in Jesus. 

CLINGING TO TRUTH, OR CLINGING TO WHAT DIES

If there’s been a common theme in my life when it comes to pain and loss, particularly in reaction to the different kinds of death in this life, it’s that I really need to not cling so tightly to family and approval, but instead to cling to truth, love, and my relationship to God in Christ.

I’ve experienced enough loss in my life to know that clinging to what dies will only continue to make death seem more powerful than it really is. Instead, we are to cling to life, and to cling to what will stay alive long after we’re all gone from this world. But when I say “cling to life,” I’m specifically referring to clinging to God, to staying true to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, and to shedding off of ourselves anything that doesn’t nurture growth and maturity in those relationships. Everything else, everything else—dies. 

THOSE WHO ARE STILL ALIVE TODAY

This past year, as I wrote in another article, a friend of mine passed away. She was 35, which is one year younger than me. What was more unsettling was that she was an unbeliever. I wept for days just because of that one detail alone. It was really hard to push through that, but one of the things that did help me through was God reminding me that there are people who are still alive today who haven’t made a decision for Christ yet. And I sensed Him asking me what I would do with those—how I would use my time to help them.

INSPIRED BY JESUS TO SPEAK UP

God ultimately used my friend’s passing to push my faith to new depths. You see, I currently work at a grocery store full-time and I see a lot of people every day as a result. Well, for the first time at my job, I began talking about Jesus with both customers and coworkers. I started referencing the Bible in conversations. I began working on inspiring others towards a higher standard of living, encouraging them to pray (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18), read the Bible (Revelation 1:3, 2 Timothy 3:16), and not to worry (Matthew 6:25-34). When my friend passed away at age 35, it hit me harder than ever that people really do think: “Well, that’s them. It will never happen to me.” But then it does.

FLIPPING THE TABLES OF FAITH

There I was, experiencing someone I knew me had passed away without Jesus as their cornerstone, and it was as if a message was being sent to me about the strength of my faith as a believer. It was time to go deeper, way deeper, and flip the tables of faith into “hot-and-not-lukewarm” territory. 

For a while, my friend’s death haunted me emotionally and spiritually. My writing started to translate more into urgency. People are dying every day all over the world, but how many of them are true Christ-followers?

Jesus told us this in Matthew 7: 13-14—

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

CASUAL LIVING IS DEAD LIVING

The above verse means most people choose hell because of their lack of faith. Many more people than not are living their lives casually without a care in the world about how their faith (or lack thereof) impacts eternity. To live blindly to this is to be conscious, but dead inside. Maybe knowing this was influencing something like a spiritual panic attack in me after my friend passed, but I am grateful because it shook me to my spiritual core, causing me to grow more deeply in just a few months. 

A FINITE LIFE BEFORE ETERNITY

As an adult pondering the fact that my grown friend, whom I’d known, seen, spoke with, and spent time with was just… gone… really hit home. Life really is finite here. My life here isn’t for forever, but it is forever somewhere, as is everyone’s.

Should we be so carefree in what we believe about the way faith shapes how we live our lives and interactions with everyone? Should we not be more intentional, focused, and consistent with the beliefs that hold us accountable in eternity?

Meaning—are we building something here on Earth, or there in the afterlife; heaven, or hell? If we’re not paying attention, we’re likely not building anything in heaven and nonchalantly going about our lives as though there is no spiritual “butterfly effect.” But that mentality, that spiritual apathy, leads to eternal destruction. It only sounds emphatic and grandiose when we don’t believe it. But when we understand its reality, we’re quite willing to consider the ramifications of how lazy living leads to spiritual death.

LETTING GO OF OUR CHAINS

Jesus replaces everything we are, taking away everything we used to be, and makes us new, clean; forgiven—righteous in God’s sight. That’s the transmutation between being an unforgiven, unrepentant sinner and being a new person in Christ Jesus through faith in His resurrection: our decision to let go of fleshly desires and take on a new life in Jesus is pivotal. If we don’t want to let go, then we haven’t actually accepted Jesus yet. If we haven’t chosen to let go, to die to the self, we cannot put on our new self in Christ (Ephesians 4:22-24).

How can we represent Jesus when we’re still actively in our sins? How can we receive the love of Christ without shame when we haven’t yet let go (repented) of the behaviors that kept us chained to the old self Jesus died for? We cannot. And if we cannot receive the love of Christ because we aren’t letting go of sin, then we cannot love in a way that reflects the light of Christ in us. 

WHAT CHRIST-FOLLOWERS CANNOT DO

This is rudimentary, but let’s break it down momentarily. We know we can all go to church and not believe in power of the Bible, right? We can sing worship songs and still go home and watch pornography. We can tithe and still gamble, party, and use hard drugs. But what we can’t do is call ourselves Christ-followers if we’re intentionally and consciously clinging to our old selves. That’s a contradiction, and it’s hypocritical.

WE CAN’T SERVE TWO MASTERS AND BE A CHRIST-FOLLOWER

We can’t serve two masters. We can’t perpetually and consciously cling to any addiction and say we love Jesus. We can’t be a drunk who is okay with being a drunk, and still love Jesus. We can’t take Jesus’s name in vain when we get angry and say it’s just how we are. No, it’s not how we are. We aren’t an alcoholic who’s just different from other alcoholics. We can’t love Jesus and love being drunk. We can’t love Jesus and love being an addict. Being drunk doesn’t glorify God any more than the abuse women partake through pornography does. Defiling our bodies with alcohol is the same as violating our bodies with drugs, promiscuous sex, self-harm, or any form of physical abuse. These choices are defiling our spiritual selves, too (2 Corinthians 7:1).

LET’S NOT WAIT UNTIL WE’RE DYING TO CHANGE HEART

All of this, everything I just wrote about hypocritical living and faith, circles around how we live and how we die before we even reach eternity. We all must understand how close death is, because time flies, and before we know it, we’re looking back and not liking how we chose to live. Let’s not wait until we’re old, weak, and miserable to turn around, repent, and choose Jesus now. 

CONVOLUTION OF SCRIPTURE IS THE WORK OF SATAN

Glorifying God requires the realization that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). The devil is actively working towards deceiving us into believing our body is actually ours, even if we say we have faith in Jesus. But really, our body isn’t ours any more than our soul is. Where do we get all these convoluted ideas? Satan. It’s as simple as that. Everything that isn’t of God, everything that isn’t biblical, is from the devil. It’s demonically influenced. We’re going to call it what it is and expose it into the light, in Jesus’s name! 

LIVE AND SERVE PASSIONATELY IN THESE LAST DAYS

Death has lost its sting, but we do still have a limited amount of time by which we serve God with our mortal life. 

My friend’s passing helped further ossify my faith because it reminded me of how short life really is, and that if I died anytime soon like she did, then I’d better use my time wisely, write passionately, live boldly,  and speak unapologetically with truth and love, and do it in the name of Jesus. We all need a push sometimes to understand the fragility of life, to take life seriously enough to live intentionally and with a heart for Christ.

Sometimes (or maybe always) I may come across as intense, but that’s because I believe in what I’m saying, and I deeply want others to consider their beliefs before it’s too late for them, too. What if I died tonight and this is my last article? Did I let God use me to glorify Him and motivate others to take faith seriously and not let this roll off the table, incomplete? Life’s too short! We don’t have time to waste.

MISSING PIVOTAL OPPORTUNITIES TO TRULY LIVE

So many of us think we have all the time in the world, planning this or that. We aren’t guaranteed another day (Proverbs 27:1). We have to understand that time is running out. If we don’t see it this way, we’re really missing a crucial element about the principle of having a life, and living it purposefully for the glory of God in heaven. 

We won’t find what we’re missing in life at the bar, or in a hobby, or in a movie or book, or with a certain person or at a certain time of day. We find it by placing faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and nothing less than that. Remember, everything else dies. Why cling so hard to the things of this world that don’t really nurture the soul behind the way we’re called to live?

REVELATION OF HAVING JESUS AND NOT THE WORLD

By fully receiving Jesus and letting go of who we were, we begin to experience His peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7). We begin to understand and embrace a joy unlike any other because we’re trusting Him with our lives. We begin to experience what it means to feel His love, and to love others from the heart that feels His love. The Holy Spirit moves and speaks, and we begin to understand what it means to be used for something much bigger and more eternal than just this life. Suddenly, death has not only lost its sting, but it no longer holds any weight in thought. We all die here, but who will live eternally after that?

EVERYTHING CIRCLES AROUND CHRIST

Things in this earthly life will start looking small and without any exciting value, and all that’s left in our plane of sight is what truly matters: who God is to us in Christ, and how we love Him and others. Our purpose will envelope around that. Our value system will shape itself around it; our morality will abide by it, our thoughts will adjust to honor it, and our daily goals and activities will become more precise and intentional to reflect what it looks like to love God first, and to love others as a response to the call of Jesus Christ to make disciples of nations.

EVERYTHING HERE DIES EXCEPT HOW WE LOVE LIKE CHRIST

There will be people who think less of us for throwing so much in life away, but really, we’re just keeping what truly matters close to heart. Everything else dies (Matthew 24:35). All that matters is that our faith is the cornerstone of our identity, and that our love reflects our understanding that Jesus died for us while we were sinners. He gave us a way to eternal life when anyone in this world would have left us for dead.

JESUS DID WHAT ONLY GOD CAN DO

Jesus came down and saved us while we were a mess. Loving a mess isn’t easy, but dying for a mess is incomprehensible. Jesus died for us knowing that He was dying for the new self He was going to raise in us by His resurrection. It’s something only God would do or could do. He did it so our sin wouldn’t stop us from truly living in this life, and so it wouldn’t stop us from being with Him when our lives here end.

While life is short here, it can be meaningful and purposeful and fulfilling because God will help us see just how loved we are despite the absolute mess that we are without Him. 

JESUS IS ALIVE AND COMING BACK SOON

Don’t let 2024 be your reason, let God be your reason. Don’t expect to get it all right the first time, let God help you through the trials and failures. Let the community of the church be an encouragement to you as you navigate new seasons and challenges. Allow Jesus to use you for His kingdom. He is coming back soon, so now’s the time to invest in the kingdom of God.

It’s not about what others are doing, it’s about what He’s doing in us and through us. Let go of the world. The world just follows itself (and Satan’s lies). We follow God in Christ, and He will never forsake us or abandon us. Jesus paid the price so we would always know that we are never forsaken. It’s time to live like Jesus Christ is alive and well, because He is! And it’s time to live like He’s coming back, because He is.

Be ready! 

 

Photo by Niko Tsviliov on Unsplash