"Where, O Death, is Your Victory?"

Through the past few weeks, death has been on my mind, on my heart, and in my walk with Jesus. Honestly, it's been all around me. It's hard for it not to be, seeing how I was in a hospital full of death's decay and I've attended two funerals in the past week. The LORD has taught me and stretched me during this time of loss - in ways only this time of loss could. It's not my lose that He's taught me through, but the lose that friends have experienced and how He's lead them during this time.

First, the LORD has taught me through these funerals that life is short, life is sweet, and I should glorify Him through every breath.

"Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
Remind me that my days are numbered—
how fleeting my life is.
You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.
My entire lifetime is just a moment to you;
at best, each of us is but a breath."
Psalm 39:4&5

The LORD has blessed me in life. He has surrounded me with a loving family, both legitimate kin of mine & the family I serve with at NewSpring . Through this time of death, the LORD has shown me how a church should love and care for one another - celebrate, cry, grieve, and hurt - together. He has shown me how much I truly love my parents, my sister, and close friends. I, like most of you, have taken for granted the simple and constants of my daily life. The passage from Psalm is my prayer. Through it I feel the LORD will protect me from laziness, apathy, and pride.

Second, the LORD has taught me that I serve beside true disciples of Jesus. A couple I serve with, recently lost their child while only a few months pregnant. What a loss. I cannot fathom the amount of pain a mother and father would experience at such a time. My mind cannot comprehend the feelings I would harbor toward God, toward the doctors, and honestly, any person wanting to communicate with me during this time. However, though in pain, hurt, and sorrow, my friends worshiped God, giving Him every ounce of glory they could muster. They don't understand why their daughter was taken from them, but they don't need to. I went to the funeral to show them that I loved them, but God used their daughter to express His love, His power, His faithfulness, and His strength. I know that God will send them His peace and express (through time) His reasoning for taking their daughter. God has shown me through this situation that we can only rely on Him for true love and strength. All the things of this world are temporary - its time to start living like I know that truth and help build His Kingdom, the only everlasting Truth. It's time to step up, live giving Him praise through every breath I breathe, and live in awe of His glory.

Fast forward a week.

The second funeral where God rocked my small world. This funeral was for a man, Mike Hunt, whom the LORD took home after cancer overwhelmed his body; but not his spirit. Mr. Hunt's funeral was a celebration of his life. A life that he lived completely glorifying God. This disciple of Jesus, found out that he had brain cancer on a Wednesday, and the next Sunday, he was at NewSpring Church serving God. The God who most people would have been upset with because of the circumstance, but not Mike. He praised Him, served Him, and told everyone he could about how good God is. Mike was bold in his faith. Actually, he was straight up bold in life. The LORD used this man and his funeral to nail home to me that I need to be bold. I need to live as Mike did - giving all the glory to the LORD - no matter what the circumstance, hurt or joy. Again, that this world is temporary and the only Truth is Jesus. That this life can easily change, be taken away, but that I should live each day for Him.

This sums up what the LORD taught me through Mike: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20

The LORD has blessed me. He has placed His disciples strategically in my life so that He may further sanctify me. With the sanctification, I have grown to know Him and love Him more. God has taught me that He always gives in time of lose. He gives us life so that we can join the rest of creation in praising Him. He sustains our life because He wants to know us and work through us so others may know Him. He concludes life so that we, His sons and daughters, may go home to Him, becoming truly alive. Also, for us to realize that we are small and He is infinite - that He will always be able to strengthen and soothe us.

Third, the LORD has taught me this:

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the Church of God -- even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ."
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1

I feel the LORD will receive the most glory when we can say verse eleven with every word and action.

"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 15: 55-57

And that is why all glory and honor and praise go to Him, Christ Jesus.