Jun 11, 2014
Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God; trust also in Me. In My
Father’s house are many rooms; if it
were not so, I would have told you. I
am going there to prepare a place for you. John 14:1-2
June 10th, 2014, would have been my mother’s 94th birthday. So to celebrate her life, I carved out time to go home yesterday and spend the day with my father. I have celebrated her birthday with him every year since she moved to Heaven.
Do you struggle with knowing the will of God for your life? For your marriage? For your family? For your home? Knowing God’s will is not difficult – unless you are not abiding in Him. Jesus indicated that knowing His Father’s will is the fruit of abiding as well as asking: “You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” John 15:16, NIV.
God has chosen you and me for the purpose of bearing much eternal fruit – fruit in our character such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control exhibited toward those within our own home – fruit that is simply the character of God’s Son coming out in us. We are to bear much eternal fruit in our service as we lead other people to faith in Jesus Christ and help them to grow into maturity so that they in turn will produce much eternal fruit in their lives.
The emaciated bodies, the pale faces, the pain-deadened eyes, the hollow cheeks all gave silent witness to the helplessness and hopelessness of the diseased and disfigured and dying who lay, crumpled and sprawled, like discarded refuse on the terrace that led to the water’s edge. As the eyes of God scanned the mass of misery, He saw “a great number of disabled people . . . the blind, the lame, the paralyzed,” (John 5:3, NIV). Each pitiful sufferer focused all attention on the water’s surface, desperately pinning his or her hope on being the first to spot the bubbling movement and the first to react by jumping-or falling-into the pool. Each was totally preoccupied with his or her own disability-blindness or lameness or paralysis.
The multitude of the miserable were all focused on the pool, on the water, on the place, on a traditional source of help, even as God Himself stood in their midst! Where is your focus?
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Westminster Abbey in London. It is a grand cathedral where many of the kings and dignitaries of England are buried, and where the kings and queens receive their coronation. The narthex is small, dark, and cramped-just a brief space to pass through between the outside door and the door leading into the cathedral itself. I can’t imagine anyone visiting the abbey and being satisfied to stay in the narthex. I also can’t imagine anyone who would make an enormous effort to stay there with no thought to passing through to the glory of what lies beyond.
Your life and mine here on earth is like the narthex to a grand cathedral. Our lives are simply an area to pass through on our way to the glory of eternal life that lies beyond the door of death. Physical death for a believer is simply a transition into real life. And it’s God’s purpose that you and I live forever-with Him.
