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God can still interject a BUT!
When Jesus received word that Lazarus was sick. Jesus’ response to the news was “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”
After two days He told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
He waited to go “so that they might believe.” The delays of God always have a purpose. There are greater depths of faith that He wants to take us. He had already shown them that He could heal; now He was teaching them that He had power over even death. This would only be possible if He delayed.
Is it possible that in God’s timing, in God’s seeming absence, that He wants to teach you something greater, something more meaningful, something that you don’t already know?
Can you humble yourself enough to accept this? Can you believe that if God is big enough to create everything, then He is big enough to have a reason for allowing your suffering that you cannot understand? Can that help you to trust, knowing that God is perfect in His love, justice, and sovereignty, sees the end from the beginning, and knows what He is doing, even when you can’t comprehend it?
Have you prayed for your loved one’s healing and yet your beloved one died?
You may think that it is all over. BUT God still says, “My name will be glorified through it.” Do you believe it?
In John 17:24, we read words that, on close and prayerful reflection, should be very near to our hearts when a loved one dies. Carefully consider the desire of Jesus: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
He desires that His people be with Him. Jesus is completely happy and satisfied as He reigns from heaven, but according to His prayer in John 17, He still has a certain unfulfilled desire: that His people join Him in the home He has already prepared for them (John 14:2–4).
When a loved one who knows the Lord dies, we should remember first and foremost that the Father has answered Jesus’s prayer. God is sovereign over our loved ones’ deaths, and He has purposes we may never understand, but we can cling to the truth that Jesus has prayed to His Father to bring His people home. When a Christian dies, the Father is granting the answer to His Son’s request.
We can at least say this much: When a loved one dies, Jesus gains a lot more than we have lost.
Yes, we have lost. We will never again share sweet fellowship with that loved one. The magnitude of the loss often eludes our words. But the loss is never beyond Jesus’ words: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.”
We may shed enough tears to fill buckets, but those streams of tears running down our cheeks will glisten with joy when we realize that our loved one’s death is nothing less than an answer to Jesus’s prayer.
Here we see hope.
Quote: Christians never say “good bye”; just “until we meet again” – Woodrow Kroll
Prayer: Lord I thank you that in the midst of grief that we can have hope that soon we will meet our loved ones again. Amen
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