Reality of Life and Death and Eternal Life

It is reality of life here on earth that we will attend funerals while living here. Mike and I attended our first funeral last week. It was a coworker’s husband who passed away. We worked with her in the same office and wanted to go. We didn’t know him but it was a very sweet celebration of his life and his death and this began to make me think about the importance of eternal life. We then had our friends who are missionaries in Liberia, Africa; send us an e-mail to say they had to fly back because his dad had only a few days left to live. Lastly, Mike’s ex father in law, the kids’ grandfather, passed away on Friday. With all of the deaths this past week, it made me realize how important it is to be sure people we know and people we don’t know have the opportunity to know who Jesus is and that He died on the cross for our sins and that He is alive now and desires to have a relationship with all of us. Fortunately, every one of these people had a personal relationship with the Lord so they know that they may have suffered in this life time but now have eternal life with Jesus in Heaven. For a lot of people they don’t have that assurance. I have never been afraid of death even when I was not living my life to serve God. I should have feared Him but I didn’ I knew in my heart when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior that I would spend eternal life with Him. What I didn’t really understand until I rededicated my life back to Him in 2000, is that He asks us to be obedient in all we do with our lives and wants us to be in His will not in rebellion. For those years that I rebelled, I made wrong choices and had to pay the consequences for them. God allowed the bad things to happen so that I would grow in my character and be who He created me to be and for His purposes. As death is so prevalent here with people dying of HIV/AIDS, it is so important to share the Word of God with people and let them know that they are forgiven for their past mistakes, that God is a loving God, but that they need to turn from their ways and allow Him to work in their lives. I know as we continue to build relationships with the people here that have HIV/AIDS that we will probably attend one or more of their funerals. We ask that you pray for the Holy Spirit to use us as His tools to deliver the message that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) and that we are the vessels by which lives are changed.