Children of God

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NIV)

16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

God promises His children that they wil be in heaven with Him. There will be a time when those who have died and those who are alive will all be together in the presence of The Lord.

In their book Building a Church of Small Groups, Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson relate the words of Lyman Coleman as he reflected on the death of his beloved wife, Margaret:

The most painful decision of my life was asking God to take her home. She had been suffering from repeated brain seizures and her body was wasted. I whispered in her ear: "Honey, I love you. I love you. Jesus wants you to come home. We are going to be all right. We give you permission to let go." She closed her eyes and fell asleep….

As I write this letter, I realize I am without my editor. My greatest critic. My teammate. Soulmate. Prayermate. Partner in everything. We traveled the roads less traveled together in hard times and good times. Honey, I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I will keep the light on for the kids. I will be there for friends. And one day, we are going to join you. All of us. Because Jesus promised it. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."

[Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson, Building a Church of Small Groups (Zondervan, 2001), p. 61]

I had a man tell me once, “I don’t know about me and God. I don’t know if I’m good enough for heaven.” I took the time to explain there is no one perfect in this world. All our righteous works are like dirty rags. There is no one who even comes close to the righteousness of God. It is why it is so important to understand Jesus Christ is God’s son as well as God. I know our minds have a hard time conceiving that, but it’s like an egg. There is a yoke, the white and the shell, yet it is an egg. With God, there is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ, fully God, was born of this world. He lived without sin, just as God the Father is without sin. Christ was tortured, beaten and crucified for our sake that we could be free from the punishment of sin. Jesus rose to life three days later showing us that we too would have a new life. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Trust, belief, faith that is how we enter God’s kingdom. The man I talked with said, “I want that today” so I prayed with him and he now knows that he is a child of God. One day will be in heaven with all God’s children.

Listen and build them up

Romans 15:2 (NIV)

2 Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.

We need to remember to encourage our family, neighbors and friends. We need to let them know that a Holy God loves them and will be there with them.

Someone told me the other night about an Anton Chekhov story called "The Lament." It is a simple story about an old man who drives a horse and buggy for hire through the city.

The story goes that the old man's son died recently and he wants so desperately to tell someone. A wealthy man hires the horse and buggy for a ride across town. As the wealthy man steps into the carriage, the old man says, "My son, my son. Let me tell you about my son." But the busy man doesn't have time to listen.

Well, after the wealthy man leaves, another man steps into the carriage. He wants to be driven to the other side of the city. Again, the old man says, "My son. My son. Let me tell you about my son." And again, this second man also doesn't bother to listen.

At the end of the day, the old man returns to the stables, unhitches his horse, and as he begins to brush the horse down for the night, the old man begins to tell the horse, "My son. My son." And he tells the horse the tragic story.

[Christopher de Vinck, Simple Wonders, (Zondervan, 1995), page 157]

Many of us are just too busy to listen, but there are many people who want someone to listen to them. They want to share their griefs, their conflicts and their emotions. When someone comes to you be ready to listen and build them up.

God our Mighty Warrior

Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV)

17 The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

The Lord our God loves us. He takes delight in us and provides us with His mercy and grace. He does not continue to rebuke us, but instead leads us in songs of praise that we can know He is with us.

When Marion Duckworth was in first grade, the Depression had just ended, and talking about anything related to sex—especially sexual abuse—was taboo. So when an older man coaxed her away from her paper dolls one afternoon and fondled her, Marion felt she had to keep her dirty secret to herself. And she did.

Marion didn't tell anyone about the incident until she was 21 and engaged. Her fiancé, John, was furious. He wanted to hunt the perpetrator down, but she pled with him to let it go. She insisted the man was too old to hurt anyone else.

What Marion couldn't tell John, though, was that she had suffered from flashbacks ever since the day of the abuse. She had no visual memory of the incident, but she could feel—vividly—the man's repulsive touch. Any lurid or sleazy image would trigger these sickening flashbacks.

One afternoon, as Marion and John perused a drug store, John showed her a steamy magazine cover, disgusted by what children were regularly exposed to. Experiencing a flashback, Marion quickly agreed with him, then hurried to another part of the store to be alone. She writes in Today's Christian:

While I pretended to contemplate Noxema, the Holy Spirit spoke shocking words to my mind. "You'll never relive these feelings again." The message rang with authority; I didn't doubt it was God's voice. I decided I'd know for sure this was a genuine miracle if the feelings never returned. They never did.

Not once through the years had I asked God to heal that memory. It hadn't occurred to me that He would do such a thing. I was too ashamed to talk about it to a Christian counselor—much less to a holy God. So I simply tried—unsuccessfully—to suppress it.

From that day forward, whenever I was exposed to some image of sleaze, I reminded myself with profound gratitude of what didn't happen. There was no flashback. Just sorrow over sin and a prayer for God's intercession in our broken world.

[Adapted from Marion Duckworth, "Stolen Innocence," Today's Christian (May/June 2006)]

What things do you need to say to God? Are you holding in pains of the past? Perhaps you are struggling with issues in life. Whatever they are you have a loving God that wants to help you and help you rejoice in life.

Safe haven

1 John 5:14-15 (NIV)

14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

God waits for us to stop in and take safe haven with Him. We can be confidence if we seek God according to His will we know we are heard and we will have an answer.

Christian trauma expert Dr. Jamie Aten notes, "When our friends and loved ones are impacted by violence and mass trauma it can leave us feeling helpless, cause us to 'freeze' up, or say things we wouldn't normally say," often relying on harmful clichés. Dr. Aten claims that the best thing we can do is summed up in two words: "offer refuge." He explains:

Some examples of how you can serve as a refuge include listening with acceptance, being present in your helping, and giving the gift of connection … I learned the importance of refuge from a Hurricane Katrina research study my team and I conducted just weeks after the storm made landfall. I'll never forget the evacuation experience one of the survivors we interviewed shared. He described trying to escape from his home along the coast by car. However, as he tried to drive away the winds and rain grew stronger. He quickly started to loose visibility. He knew he wasn't going to be able to go much farther.

About the time panic started to set in he saw something moving just ahead off the side of the road. A neighbor he'd never met before was standing outside in the pouring rain and howling wind with a homemade particleboard sign with the words "STOP HERE" spray-painted on it. Rather than continue alone on his journey, the man turned into his neighbors drive and found a safe haven.

[Jamie D. Aten, "3 Things Not to Say After the Dallas, MN, and LA Shootings," Psychology Today (7-8-16)]

Reliance on faith

Hebrews 11:6 (NIV)

6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Faith is putting trust in what we fully don’t understand or know. Faith is often following God who we have never met face to face. Faith is the hope to see something greater that right now we are too blind to see.

Is it rational to trust God even when we do not fully understand what he is doing? One of the most illuminating answers was put forward by the Oxford philosopher Basil Mitchell in his celebrated parable of the resistance leader.

Imagine you are in German-occupied France during World War II and you want to join the resistance movement against the Nazis. One evening in the local bar a stranger comes up to you and introduces himself as the leader of the local partisans. He spends the evening with you, explaining the general requirements of your duties, giving you a chance to assess his trustworthiness, and offering you the chance to go no further. But his warning is stern: If you join, your life will be at risk. This will be the only face-to-face meeting you will have. After this, you will receive orders and you will have to follow them without question, often completely in the dark as to the whys and wherefores of the operations, and always with the terrifying fear that your trust may be betrayed.

Is such trust reasonable? Sometimes what the resistance leader is doing is obvious. He is helping members of the resistance. "Thank heavens he is on our side," you say. Sometimes it is not obvious. He is in Gestapo uniform arresting partisans and—unknown to you—releasing them out of sight to help them escape the Nazis. But always you must trust and follow the orders without question, despite all appearances, no matter what happens. "The resistance leader knows best," you say. Only after the war will the secrets be open, the codes revealed, the true comrades vindicated, the traitors exposed, and sense made of the explanations.