Death is not the End

J. Vernon McGee writes, "The glory of the Christian faith is that it never views life as ending with death. This life is not all there is."

This week celebrated both the death of Jesus Christ on Friday and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The power of His resurrection dwells in me as a follower of Jesus Christ now inhabited by the Spirit of God. It is that power that will one day finally and ultimately bring me to my own moment of resurrection that is directly tied to and fully dependent upon the resurrection of Jesus years ago.

Death is not the end. Death was not the end of Jesus. It was merely the end of His suffering for sin. Death is a doorway into eternity that awaits us and everyone has an eternity awaiting them.

The Scriptures tell of only two eternities. The one more popular eternity stands at the end of a wide road on which many individuals are traveling. That road feeds into an eternity void of God and full of suffering the penalty for choosing everything else over God.

The other less popular eternity has a narrow road leading into it and few pilgrims who are making the trek. Yet the road, narrow and sometimes winding, leads into an incredible city and all the way to the throne of the King who will reign forever.

Death is not the end of any of us who walk in this world. By faith, however, Jesus Christ has placed us upon the path that leads to our home with Him. Death is but the finish line that once we have crossed it brings us to the author and finisher of our faith.

Where is you focus today? Where is your eternity? Are your eyes on the author and finisher of the faith that leads His followers to His eternal home?

Hope of the World

Billy Hybels, founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, said, "The Church is the hope of the world."

The Church is the hope of the world because the message of hope has been entrusted to the Church. As Jesus prepared His disciples for His return to the Father in heaven, He gave them this sacred trust of displaying and declaring the good news.

Only the gospel has the awesome power to radically, fully, and eternally change lives. The gospel alone provides forgiveness for disobedience, mercy for the rebel, and grace for the undeserving. And only the Church has been given the great task and inexpressible joy of displaying and declaring to the nations this gospel of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.

God's plan is always best and perfect. He never makes a Plan B. Plan A has always been that His followers, ever-faithful, would make disciples of all nations, advancing His kingdom into all the world and increasing His kingdom by increasing the number of worshipping followers of Jesus.

If the Church, you and me as the followers of Jesus Christ, are the hope of the world because of the good news we have to give, then every day the Church is either the world's hope or the world's doom.

We will be the hope of the world because we are faithful to carry the light of the gospel into all dark places.

We will be the doom of the world because we find it more convenient to stay than to go and choose to keep the hope we've received to ourselves rather than share with a world in need.

Are you living to display and declare the good news of Christ's kingdom as a hope-giver to the world?