Funeral Service for Terry Stevens (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Comfort for the Family and the Hope of Reunion

For the family, first of all, I want to thank everybody for being here today. It's been an honor and a privilege to be Terry's pastor for these past, I'm not sure how many.

Years.

I really was thinking that I'd get to see him again when he came up this time, and I.

Did.

But as I came by this morning, I stopped by, you know, to see, I thought, you know, I got a little weepy because he was a friend, a good friend. And I thought, if Terry was here right now, and it was him or anybody else, and I was doing that, he would look at me and he'd say, why are you crying for me?

I'm better off than you are. And I thought, yeah, that's about what he would say. And he always would encourage me with things that he'd tell me as a member of our church. And I appreciate his family.

I'm going to miss, you may not know this, before I get to the messages, lay a groundwork, but the family came up here getting ready to move this way. He told me that he figured this was where he would pass eventually.

And so he was moving here. And of course, he knew. I had talked to him some about the fact that my wife and I are also moving, and officially we'll be resigning as pastor next month. The young man you saw singing is our pastor now.

He'll be the pastor of the church, and he's done a great job as assistant pastor. He and the girls always blessed our church with good music, Sarah and Elizabeth and Brother Walker and some of the other people that we've had.

It's been a blessing. It's a good thing, you know, to have good fellowship with people that love the Lord. And in the Bible, and I'm going to be in John chapter 14, but what I'm going to be speaking about is a lot of it has to do with my own dad who passed several years ago.

He used to sing. And the song he always liked to sing was I've Got a Mansion Over the Hilltop. We were a large family and not that well off, but dad loved that song. And I thought about, you know, what heaven's going to be like one of these days.

And so in John chapter 14 is where the text is going to be. And I'm going to pray, and then I'm going to preach and say some things, but I want to say on behalf of the family, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I met a lot last night. Some of you I don't know, I don't really know much of you, but the Stevens family in Sunday Shield Baptist Church in Tucson have been a tremendous blessing. I mean, they have been a tremendous blessing.

And it was an honor for me to get to come up here to have a part in all this. In John 14, the Bible says, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You believe in God, believe also in me.

In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there you may be also.

And whither I go, you know, and the way you know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. Let's pray, Father, thank you for the Word of God. I pray you'd bless it, help each one of us right now to think about this.

In my heart, based upon what I know the Bible has taught me over these many years, Father, I believe with all that is within me that my friend, my brother in Christ, Terry, is in glory right now. And he's rejoicing in a day that never ends.

And Lord, I thank you for that. I thank you, Lord, that we can have assurance and confidence about him and about where he is. And Father, I pray that as we share the Word of God right now, the Holy Spirit of God would speak to every one of us, and we would apply this passage of Scripture to our own selves.

What if that was me today? What if that was me that was lying there? Father, I pray that you'd help us all to think on these things according to what the Bible teaches us, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, the idea of the message is this, it's about making preparation.

Preparing for Death and Heaven

Now, I don't know who was building the house. I guess it's some of you guys, right? This house that's being built for Miss Sarah.

Who is it?

Over here, okay. Well, I knew he was having a house built, and I even got to see a picture of it. And he was coming up to see it. But see, this is a thing that Brother Terry was doing. He was making ready.

In other words, he was preparing. He was already prepared for this himself. He really was. And he and I talked about it before. And he was prepared for when this day was going to come. What he wanted also to be prepared for was not just where was he going to be the moment after he dies, but what's going to happen to his dear wife and his kids.

That was important to him. As a matter of fact, guys, I want to tell you something. Sons, brothers. He said, I want my girls to get up there because I know my boys will take care of my girls. So there's a really, to me, important thing that he saddled you with.

And he was good to do that. He's counting on you.

He's counting on you.

You know, we spend most of our lives preparing for something. School, college, a career, a job, a wedding, a family, children. There's all these things in life that we work toward and we work for and we prepare.

And by the grace of God, we're successful. Maybe not in all of them, but in some of those things, we're successful in achieving what we were preparing for. But this is one thing that we don't like to think much about, much less to prepare for, and that's death.

How do I prepare for that? Well, that's a little bit about what Jesus was telling the disciples here in John chapter 14. You see, he was going to prepare a place for them. And according to what the Bible teaches, I believe that in heaven today, he is preparing a place for people who have prepared themselves for heaven.

Now, I didn't get saved or know Jesus Christ as my Savior until I was 25 years old. Even though I grew up in church and went to church almost all of my youth, I went to church. But I loved the things of the world and I did the things of the world and I didn't know Christ until I was 25 years old.

And there were lots of times during those years that I could have easily been killed in a car wreck or something like that. And God could have taken me out of this world, but he didn't. He was gracious and merciful to me.

Our God is gracious and merciful to all of us who are sitting in here today because all of us have not met this fate yet, which is going to happen to all of us one day or another. But the question is, are we prepared?

Heaven is a prepared place for prepared people. Somewhere up here, there is a place, three five-acre lots, I was told, that have been prepared. One of those five-acre lots was prepared for mom and dad.

Now, there's a place prepared for Terry in heaven and he's there. Whatever that is, he's there. And so the question is, will he get to see you there when it's your time to go? Because I guarantee you, that's the thing that's most important to him.

You who are his brothers and his sisters, the people that he spent his youth with, and you guys who did all the things y 'all did growing up, just like the rest of us do, things we look back on and we laugh about, things we laugh about and we regret.

He was a part of all that. But to him now, the most important thing these last few years of his life was knowing that his sisters are going to see him someday in heaven. That his brothers are going to see him someday in heaven.

That his sons and daughters and family are going to be with him someday in heaven. Because Terry prepared himself for that place and he was doing what he could in this world. Financially and hard-working and everything that he did there in Tucson and getting stuff ready for all of you.

He did all the preparing he could do. He can't do anything more now. But what his heart's desire is that when the Bible says it's appointed and a man wants to die, he believed that, he knew that, he lived by that.

And so as far as he's concerned now, his question for you is, will you do that? Will you prepare? Terry's more alive right now than he's ever been. I don't really begin to know how to understand that or talk about that.

But he hears things in heaven now that we can only dream about. You think about it as according to what the Bible teaches us, he's already appeared before the presence of almighty God who really is something beyond our capability of understanding.

Jesus we can understand. Do you know that Jesus is the only person, the only person in heaven who will have scars? Some of you guys are hard-working miners and different things like that, and I guarantee you've been beat up over the years, and you've got cuts here and scratches there and stitches there.

When you get to heaven, that part of your body will be all gone. But Jesus will have those wounds in his hands and his feet and his side. Why? Because those are the price he paid for you. So that he would die so that you and I could have everlasting life.

He wants you to have that. He died for that, to give you just that. And today whatever things like that Brother Terry had, there's no evidence of that. Just as there's no evidence, there's no evidence in heaven right now of any sin that Brother Terry ever may have committed.

No thing that he ever did, no wrong he ever did. You or anybody else, all those things are forgiven. All those things are in a past that's forgotten. Now if we're not prepared for heaven one of these days, we'll stand before Almighty God and we'll give an account for the things.

As the Bible says, the deeds done in the body. And if you're not saved, that's not a time that you want to be a part of. It's prepared for followers. It's prepared for those, the mansions, God's presence, no more pain, no more suffering, no more sorrow.

That's all gone. There's no more any of that for Brother Terry Stevens.

Never again.

Questions, Preparation, and the Call to Be Ready

Jesus in this passage of Scripture said, I go and prepare a place for you. But the idea was he was wanting the disciples. And Thomas was, in many ways, Thomas reminds me of Terry. Okay, and I say this, or Terry reminds me of Thomas, whatever.

Question.

You know, in other words, you could tell him something, but there might be a question. But what about, what do you think about this? What about that? I mean, he had a mind that he wanted to develop and think and know and understand.

And Thomas, he said, I don't understand. I don't know where you're going. How can I know? How can I understand this? And the answer to that was in the Word of God. God spoke to Thomas and he showed him and told him how.

And he showed Terry how. He showed Brother Terry how. How you can make preparation for heaven.

And he did.

Jesus wants you to be a disciple or a follower as well as Terry and the people in the Bible we read about. To follow his teaching and his example. And ask yourself, have I made preparation for that? Some of you in here probably have nice, fine homes.

Large pieces of property. Wonderful things that you've worked hard for all your life to achieve. And you're working even now, some of you, on accomplishing those things that are important to you. Because you're doing what he did.

You're preparing for your children, your grandchildren, your family. But my question to all of us right now is, are you preparing for you? The thing that I think Brother Terry wants me to ask you is, are you preparing for heaven?

Are you preparing for the time when it's you that will be here? When it's you that people will come by and look upon. And they'll think, I really liked whoever. They were a good friend. But as you look at that good friend and that person that you cared so much about.

Will you know in your heart of hearts that that man or that woman went to heaven when they died? See the world has this idea that everybody goes to heaven. Everybody doesn't. I wish they did. But we don't.

We don't all go to heaven. The Bible teaches that plainly. There's a very simple and important thing that we need to do. We need to be a follower of Jesus Christ. We need to come to the place in our life where we are honest with ourselves.

Honest with ourselves about life and the things of life. A lot of us, when growing up, we were little boys or something like that. We played baseball or football or some kind of thing like that. And in our mind, we imagined that one day we were going to play for the Yankees in baseball.

Or for the Diamondbacks that we have down there. Or something like that. But we didn't work at it. But we weren't good enough to get there. Listen, none of us are good enough to get to heaven.

None of us.

So we've got to prepare for that. And the way that we prepare for that is when we get to the place where we will ask God to forgive us. Of all the wrongdoings and all the thoughts and all the evil things that came into our heart and our mind.

And maybe in our actions. Because God, according to the Bible, is not willing that any should perish. That's the way the Bible says it. It doesn't mean die. He knows, unless the rapture takes place or something like that.

That every man, woman, boy or girl at some point will die. I have a sister who died at six months of age.

Six months.

My mother lived to be, help me there, 91? 91. My father had Alzheimer's. And before he died, the last week that I was there that I saw him. You know what my mom told me? She said, ask her how Danny was doing.

Because he didn't know who she was. He didn't know who I was. And I said, how's he doing? She said, well, he's, he don't know anybody yet. And we have to keep taking him to hospice. But she said, you know what he did?

She said, a couple days ago, he came in the kitchen and he looked at me. And he said, I miss Cindy. Cindy had been dead since 1958.

1958.

This was 2017. You see, everybody, everybody has a burden for family. If they're really where they ought to be, they love family. And they want to be with family. And Terry wants to be with family. Now he's with the heavenly family.

But he wants this family, all to be in heaven. Jesus promised to come for those who were followers of him. Sometimes there's things referred to as the rapture. And some people refer to things called the second coming.

And he said that if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you. My wife and I experienced the death of our son.

It was hard. Very hard.

He, as he was dying, they took him off the machine that was keeping him alive. He was in the military. They told us he could never talk. He could never do anything again. He was just gone. Just gone. But as we stood around our son in those last moments, he who could not move, according to them, from a bed of death, raised his right arm.

And he went just like this. And he saluted. Now, I thought that he was saluting Jesus. Remember, Joshua in the Old Testament met Jesus, the captain of the Lord's host. But then after he saluted, again, this young man who could not move, this young man who's dead, according to them, then, with both arms, he reached up.

He reached up.

As his dad and a Christian, my mind and my heart, I thought, he's reaching unto Jesus. He's going home. Because we know our son was saved. He wasn't perfect. I'm not perfect by a long shot.

Neither are you.

And you never will be until you get to heaven. So it's not a matter of that.

It's not a matter of being good. It's a matter of being saved.

It's a matter of knowing, not hoping. Knowing that when it's your time, you're ready to go. The thing that Brother Terry would want me to say more than anything is he wants you to be ready when your time comes.

Jesus said in John 10, verse 9, I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved. Paul encountered a man who threw him in jail in Philippi. That night, there was an earthquake, and he thought for sure, and when he woke up, that all the prisoners had run away.

But they weren't gone. As a matter of fact, he began to hear them, and they were in the prison, and they were singing biblical songs, I guess, some kind of songs at that time. And he ran into where they were, astonished, knowing that they'd been thrown into prison because of their Christian faith.

He looked at them and said, what must I do to be saved? He wanted to know. He wanted to know. And he got saved that night. This is your time to know. This is your time to seek and ask God. And there are people in this room who would be more than willing to talk to you about it, to help you to understand what the Bible teaches, and how that you can know that you have everlasting life.

The Bible says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. I'm glad that I'm able to stand here today and say that my wife, who loved me so much that she annoyed me continuously about going to church with her after she got saved.

And I was stubborn and stupid too, because I would be stubborn enough that I didn't want to go, but I would tell her I'd go on Sunday morning, but I'm not going on Sunday night because the football games are on Sunday night.

This was in fall. But God didn't give up on me. And just a month or so later, I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior. A preacher came to my house. He had somebody come to my house every Thursday night for a month.

Somebody showed up at our door. When he knocked on my door about 9 .15, 9 .20 that night, which was kind of late to be coming to somebody's house, and I opened that door, I said, Well, I knew it would be one of you guys.

That's how stubborn I was. But after my wife, who was in the other room praying and praying and praying, and Pastor Gwen's talking to me about the Bible and doing his best to tell me the truth, I got to the place where I realized I'm a sinner.

I've done a lot of things that were wrong. I've said a lot of things that were wrong. I've thought a lot of things that were wrong. And I can get saved. Jesus wants me to be saved. And I just asked the Lord.

All I had to do was pray and ask God to forgive me. You see, because God's not willing that anybody should perish, all he's looking for is somebody with a sincere heart who will willingly say, I'm a sinner, Jesus.

Please save me. You say, That's too simple.

It's not.

That's just it.

It's difficult because we're so stubborn. Now, I'm almost done. One of the things I liked about Terry Stevens, he's stubborn. Yeah, we all know that, don't we?

He was stubborn.

But, you know, when a person gets convinced of something, okay, and they're stubborn, it's hard to move them from that. Yeah? And I never had to worry about him where he stood on the things that he believed as a Christian.

I didn't have to worry about that at all with Brother Terry Stevens because once his mind was made up, it was made up. And for those last years, and the last years were bad, you guys have suffered a lot.

So many, so many months after the shingle started, so much was there. And yet, it's my memory, it's my last memory, was you and him going out the door. He was walking so slow, so feeble. And as I watched him going out the door, I thought, I knew he was coming up here.

I thought, I need to see him when he gets back. I need to go see him when he gets back. Well, I get to see him, but it'll be a while, I guess. But what about you? Will you get to see him again? I hope so.

I believe that Jesus' great desire for everyone in this room right now is that all of us know what Brother Terry knew, that there is a way to heaven through Jesus Christ. And it's not anything that we can earn.

He was a hard worker.

He earned a lot, but he couldn't earn this.

He couldn't earn this.

It's the gift of God, and it's called eternal life. And you can have it if by faith you'll trust in Christ today. Let's pray. Father, Father, I thank you for the Bible. I thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and the things that you've shared with us.

And Lord, I know that there are so many things, Father, that are a part of our getting to know Jesus as our Savior. But it's the sin that we so easily get caught up in. It's the stubbornness and refusal to admit we've done something wrong.

Father in heaven, I pray today that each and every one of us would take time to examine ourself.

Where am I right now?

What if it's me next? Do I know for sure that I'd go to heaven? Do I have that confidence based on the Word of God, not on my feeling, not on what somebody else told me, but on the Word of God? Lord, help us today as the musicians continue to play these wonderful songs.

I pray that we would all take time to stop and think about where we are, where we are. Let this day be the day. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time. That's what you said in your Word.

Please, Father, I pray that through the Word of God, someone today will come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ for your glory and to honor Brother Terry. Help us, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Closing Prayer and Service Dismissal

I believe that's going to be all the service. We turn over to Dale now at this time.