The Faith Factor in Life – Part Three
Read John 14: 1 – 7
Doubtless few challenges confront us that are as great as the death of a loved one. When grief comes as a result of the death of a loved one we can entrust them into the care of the Lord also.
It is like standing on a pier next to a vast sailing ship. Its great mast supports the unfolding massive white sails. The breeze catches the sails and the vessel moves out. We watch it intently as it slowly moves out to sea. Each moment it moves further away and gradually its size diminishes in our gaze. It appears smaller and smaller. Finally, it reaches the horizon and as it sails beyond, out of sight, we say, “It is gone!”
Gone? Gone, where? Gone from our sight, that’s all. The ship is just as large in mast and hull as ever. The diminished size of the vessel in our sight lies not in you or it. At the very moment someone at your side says, “She is gone!” There are others in the port to which she sails just over the horizon who are saying, “Look, she is coming home!”
Jesus has gone before us to prepare a place and He awaits us.
Faith is even more rewarding by the fact Jesus said, “I will come again.”
Present tense – – – to take them to myself, in time and for eternity. The resurrection of Jesus gives us such hope and inspires our faith. It did it for the first century believers and it will do it for us.
Often we think we have it difficult standing for Jesus, and it often is. Many of those first century Christians were thrown to the lions or forced to face gladiators. Nero once watched with wicked fascination as Christians knelt and prayed in the arena. He was astonished as they looked heavenward and their faces seemed to glow with a heavenly radiance. He asked one of his aids, “What are they looking at? What do they see?” His advisor was secretly sympathetic to these faithful beliefs and replied almost reverently, “The resurrected Jesus!”
They had confident faith in Him. They heard Him when He said, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11, 12). Will you be as faithful in your arena of trial as they and even rejoice?
Martin Niemoller, a Jewish Christian, was one of the few to survive Hitler’s Dachau Prison in World War II. To his last day he was tormented by the sight of men and women trudging to their deaths and the smell of burning flesh. Years later in a radio interview in Chicago he was asked how he kept his sanity during that time. He said, “You are much stronger than you think you are if God is dwelling in your life.”
You can stand far more than you think if you know Jesus is with you and you look at your circumstances through the eyes of faith.