Meditations on Death

My grandfather passed away this past weekend.

Here, as in all things, I want my mind and heart to be molded around the Scriptures, to feel what I feel and think what I think in response to what is true, what cannot be changed. To discipline all emotion, since what is in me is disordered, always.

This is not to feel less, but to repent where repentance is necessary.

So what must I know, O Lord of all things? For beneath your feet lie all your enemies.

The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable.

He perished. His body failed, overcome by the corruption, fighting, fighting, but overcome. He had in him his own destruction, a body which was meant to die, in one way or another.

External, physical, perishable, strength until the end as any who shook his hand knew. But this strength, unwilling but made weak, was taken.

Him? Who was he?

A man. He knew God.

And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

O how the flaws in every man shall be taken when the perishable is clothed anew with the imperishable! Yet now, he echoes still, more so than most men but much less than some. He had a job he loved, a work within which he excelled, admired to a degree that would seem satisfying but in the insatiableness of every heart was not.

He did eternal things. There is something here forever through him, beauty on earth that cannot be taken, a family sanctified through his prayers, children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope

But listen! We shall see him again, made clean, made whole. He shall be like Christ when we see him, strength proper, his eye sharp for the beauties of the new earth and we shall hear of them from him, contented. He will talk with the joy of a sanctified purpose. And we his family and all who know them will admire again what he was only in shadow here, since we too will be what we should be.

Sin, gone. Death took him so that it could return him. And we wait for this.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death

Fact

Present day evangelistic platitudes are mostly attempts to avoid actually doing it while making ourselves feel better.

Meanwhile people are dying.

Some recent ministry one-liners

All of us are trying to prove to ourselves, using one method or another, the superiority of the ministry we are leading over all others.

The curse leveled upon work by God in Genesis 2 extends into the vocation we have in ministry; we may try to define ourselves there as readily as men do in any other vocation.

"If you harbor bitter envy or selfish ambition in your heart, do not boast about or deny the truth." So says James. Shouldn't we admit that we are often bitterly envious of other ministries, and that our ambitions for our ministries are often selfish?

The constant tendency of our heart towards self-justification is extremely dangerous in ministry. We must search our motives with the Scriptures!

What my sinful heart wants out of a discipleship relationship is often quite different from what the other person needs.

Are we really considering what will build up the individuals in our ministries? Can we honestly assess this and not simply justify existing practices?

Ministry deals with the deepest, most profound and important needs of people. Programs and systems will not address these! They just won't. Individual care is the only thing that will.

Do not criticize, to anyone, ever, the efforts of other ministries, unless they are clearly unBiblical. It is the easiest thing in the world to criticize, and it is almost never useful. Better to pray.

We must be constantly coming back to the pride that is in our hearts, all of us who minister, and searching for it, attacking it, killing it. Pride is there, in every decision we make.

We all pay lip service to prayer, but few of us make serious time for it.

Our heart in ministry must be authentic transformation. Know the quality of a ministry by the fruit it bears in the lives of individuals.