Struggling with Your Faith Because of this World? WATCH THIS!

The Reality of Death and Christian Hope Beyond the Grave

When I was in college, I worked for a hospital. One of the jobs that I had to do was transport patients from the operating room. And I, within my first few months, we had a 14 year old girl that had passed away and I had to.

Deal with it.

And that was my first experience of actually watching someone go from life to death within minutes. And I remember just walking back in the locker room and just crying. And about two years later, three years later after that, I experienced the same thing with my father and watching his lifeless body.

He was alive and then two seconds later, he's not. And what's so hard about Christianity in America is we try and console ourselves with the physical realm constantly.

And we live in a world where we bury our children. And only an insane person would look around and say that things are as they should be. Fearful, harrowing, haunting thoughts of the people I love the most dying.

There's something about it. It's terrible on the one hand. And on the other hand, it's like, all right, I'm faced with a decision here. What do I believe?

That's right.

About life after the grave. We're pilgrims.

Christianity Is Not About This World

I mean, we talk about this a lot.

We're pilgrims and sojourners in this life. And I think we need to take that to heart a lot more than we do because we feel too at home here.

It's not going to get better.

Not here.

You know, we're not going to get through this.

Many people who are listening to this podcast either are in or have come from an environment that is effectively an easy listening prosperity theology that is of a spiritual kind, right? Where you are told that if you do the right things and if you discipline yourself the right way and you reflect this way and your affections, you get those in order and you apply this the right way, then you will become so spiritually strong that you will live above the fray and you won't feel the depth of things that we're talking about right now because you're just going to be so spiritual.

That's right.

And it's like, that's not helpful. In reality, what we need to say is that this religion called Christianity is not about this world at all, actually.

That's right.

It's about the world to come. It's about an other world, a different one.

The Curse of Sin and the Hope We Offer the Suffering

Last year, I had the weird and unique privilege to speak to a hundred parents who had just lost or about to lose their child to incurable brain cancer. I go, what do you even say, right? And I stood up there for the first time and I almost was speechless, you know, just for a moment because then I knew what I needed to offer them.

But looking into the eyes of people who literally are asking you, please, please make sense,.

Right?

Just make sense of this for me. And what I told them was, this world is under a curse and it's broken. And unfortunately, we don't listen to our father when he tells us this. And we begin to believe the lie that we can live in glory now.

And what Satan does is he puts you way, way up on a pedestal. And when you're finally up there, he comes and just knocks it out from underneath you and you land flat on your back and you can't make sense of up and down.

And what scripture allows us to do is walk through the suffering without removing the pain, but walk through it with hope.

Yeah, amen.

I cannot offer you the restoration of the child or loved one lost. I cannot remove experiences and abuses. I cannot pull back your history. I can't do that. But I can give you something that is not natural.

Right.

It is from God.

Peace that flows from heaven.

It's powerful and it's so powerful. It's described as divine power and it's called knowledge. And that knowledge is this, that God will wipe away all tears and he will make all things new. And it's not possible.

It's actual. It's not hopeful. It's going to happen. The church is to come together to talk about the hope they have beyond the grave. This is why Peter says, set your hope fully, not half, not when you need it, all the time on the grace that is to come.

And it's like, Lord, may I believe what I'm about to read? He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. That's his posture. All this pain and all this suffering and all this sorrow that the curse has brought upon us all.

His MO when it comes to the end of it all is to wipe the tears away.

Our Great High Priest and the Promise That Death Will End

But you have a great high priest who knows your frailty.

Yeah.

And you can go to him and he will hear you and he will comfort you with his words and with his spirit.

And death shall be no more than neither shall there be mourning, no crying or pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And he says, I'm making all things new, man. And Christ will bring us all the way home.

Amen.