You guys look gorgeous. If anyone hasn't told you that you look good today, I'm going on record telling you that you look good. Thank you guys for being here today. Thank you so much for joining us online or if you're in the room, present. We about to have church.

And so I want you to turn to 1 Thessalonians 4:13. And I'm just gonna be honest, I'm a little selfish with this. I'm excited about this today because this is the first time I've preached this message not at a funeral. And so I hope that gives me the liberty to sometimes say some things I probably wouldn't say in a funeral. Now, don't be worried.

I'm gonna keep it PG rated. Last week I told you G rated. I made it PG just a little bit over. That's all right. But today I want to talk to us about grief.

But before you think it's gonna be depressing and somber, I'm telling you it's not. Because, folks, we have a reason to grieve the right way. What we're about to read. Paul didn't say don't grieve. He just said, don't grieve like the rest of the world does who have no hope.

So stand with me. Let me go ahead and just read the text. I'd like to read it in its entirety.

Starts with verse number 13. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep so that you will not grieve as the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in the Lord. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord. That word there is Logos, by the way.

That is the word used to describe our Lord. That those who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord absolutely will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. There's another of those triplets that Paul likes to kind of use in here. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up, raptured together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, the first imperative of the entire book. Comfort one another with these words that's called all of us, ladies and gentlemen, that the person next to you may be grieving and they need to hear about the hope that sustains you. Father, speak to us today in Jesus name.

Amen. If you could have a seat. I have so much that I want to say, and I'm so excited that at the end of this message, we get to celebrate the Lord's Supper, we get to celebrate communion. We get to be reminded of what it is Jesus did for you and for me that we might have future hope.

But in this life and in this world, we grieve. Some of you in this room have just went through a hard season of grief. Some of you are in a season of grief, and some of you may soon go through a season of grief. And guys, we grieve more than just losing a loved one. We grieve the loss of things.

House fire, we lose. We grieve the loss of jobs and sustenance and ability. Back in 2007, 2008, in the recession, there was a lot of people who grieved their 401ks.

And then we grieve the loss of relationships, tension and heartache that comes because someone maybe cuts us off, rejects us, or pushes us away. Many of you know are familiar with the five stages of grief that were written about and described by Dr. Elizabeth Elizabeth Kubler Ross. Those five stages, if you think about it, in some ways don't make sense when you lose someone. But that's not what she wrote them for. She wrote them for someone who has received a terminal diagnosis that her patients would have a way to kind of feel their way through this process called grief.

I believe grief is the description of the emotions that someone feels when they are processing a loss of any kind. When we lose a loved one, there's disillusionment. When we lose a loved one, there's depression, there's sadness.

And all of those, I believe, are a necessary evil, maybe like an untamable animal. But it is a necessary process that all of us will navigate through till we come to that place of acceptance. And it's not linear. Some of us think that we lose someone or lose something and we go, all right, well, I have felt sadness. Check.

I won't feel that again. Well, that's not true. It's really more cyclical. Like, we will experience sadness, and seven years later, you may experience it again. I remember after Laura's mom died, my first feeling of deep sadness.

About three or four weeks later, I was in our washroom, and there was an article of clothing that had her smell on it. And it hit me. It hit me in that moment, and I wept.

Sadness and Many of us today, we're sitting here and we're like, well, what do we do when I'm in a time of grief? I just came out of a time of grief, and we don't know what tomorrow holds. How do I grieve? Different than the world. One of the things I appreciate about Kevin and some of our conversations about counseling is this embracing of the idea that grief may describe the emotions.

But when I apply biblical lamenting, it is the active participation of me in my grief. What is lamenting? Let me describe it the way I think about it. It's taking Paul's words when it says, take every thought Captive and Romans 12:2, to renew my mind, to focus on the truth of God. Because, see, when you grieve and your emotions are all haywire, the last thing you want to hear is truth.

Though it may be true, though you may recognize that the words of Christ and his promises are true, sometimes the hardest thing to receive is a truth about the reality of a situation. And we Christians are sometimes fickle and funny. We say some of the dumbest things. I mean, all of us have been the recipient of kind words standing next to the casket of our loved one. But some people just aren't thinking.

They're trying to do right. They're trying to say something that would encourage you. For example, they might say, you know what? I know exactly how you feel. Folks, look at me.

No one knows how you feel. They did not lose what you lost. They did not accumulate the strength of relationship that you may have had with a mother, a father, a grandparent, a spouse. No one knows when Laura's mom died. I remember weeks later, Laura's dad had a friend who lost his wife as well.

She lost a battle of cancer. And her dad, because of his sympathy and his shepherding heart, went to sit with his friend. He didn't come to offer any words. He just came and sat. That's empathy.

By the way, folks, you don't have to come up with an answer to someone's grief. And as he's sitting there, somebody came up and they meant well. And they said to this man, I know what you're feeling. And this man said, no, you do not. In this room right now, there's only one person who remotely knows what I feel, and he's sitting right next to me.

Your grief is your grief. Your grief is unique. But, folks, we don't have to grieve like the world grieves. Listen again, Paul did not tell them not to grieve. He said, but we do not want you to be uninformed.

In the Greek, that word, when you move it over into English, looks like the word agnostic.

Now, that's not what Paul is saying here, but in our culture, an agnostic is someone who says that God cannot be known, that knowledge is not forthright. Typically, in our culture, it means that if God exists, he's not the Christian. God is what they mean. But I don't want to submit a lesson embedded in that, because when I allow grief to overwhelm me, logic goes out the door. But the greatest thing I need in my moment of grief is the truth of God, his promises and what is to come.

I must focus my eyes on the future. Otherwise my eyes will be fixed on the dirt of a grave and not on a throne positioned in heaven that when I leave this life, that I'm going to a place that's not my past recreated.

I should have prefaced by saying I'm probably going to bust a lot of your myths about heaven. God is not focused so much on you that he's going to recreate your presence and your past. What God has for our future is indescribable.

It's not to make you comfortable for eternity. It is centered around the throne of God, who gives light to all of heaven. Yes, we read of streets of gold and walls of Jasper.

What we know is that when I step out of this life into the next, the Word of God promises that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I hope Laura can hold me to this if I beat her in death. I want my last word on this side of eternity to be thankful so that the moment I open my eyes in heaven, I can say you for what you've done. Because I'm here because of what you've done. We must hope in something different way, better that's waiting for us in the future.

Abraham had this promise. The writer of Hebrews said in Hebrews 11, 9, 10. By faith, Abraham lived as an alien in the land of promise. Folks, you're living as an alien in the land of the United States. This is not your home.

If you think God's going to recreate the United States in heaven, you're wrong. It's going to be so much better. Don't settle. Don't settle for now. Long for what's coming.

He said that he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, who were fellow heirs of the same promise.

For Abraham was looking for a city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. Listen, guys, I'm not looking forward to the day death knocks on my door. I've kind of got a list of ways I don't want to die.

All of us in this room knows that death is not something. That process isn't something to look forward to, but the end result.

I can't wait to see my Savior, you see, because when I leave this world. Let me bust your bubble even more. If I haven't meddled yet, I will. I remember sitting at a funeral service for a young lady who was killed in a car wreck. She fell asleep and hit a tree.

Her boyfriend, almost fiance, was sitting there with his head down with her family, grieving the loss of this young lady. And if I'd had a hymnal in my hand, I'd have thrown it and hit this preacher in the face as he looked at them and said, you know, God just needed another angel in heaven.

That's heresy. We were not created to be angels. You will not get wings or a halo. You know what you're going to get? You're going to get a crown.

That's right. I'd be crying, too.

I wish I could have made that preacher that day cry, because that's a lie. If you're joining me online, you do not become an angel. You were created to be a human. You diminish the incarnation of Christ when you say that you became an angel. Did Jesus become an angel?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. If you believe that, you believe heresy, too. Jesus is the son of God who put on flesh for eternity so he could become like us, so he could die in our place, so that we might have life eternal. And he's still the God man.

Hallelujah. Be to our God that even in our ignorance, he's ready to correct us. So Paul says, I don't want you to be uninformed, guys. You need to eat, drink, and breathe everything about the promise that we have about heaven. I remember Laura saying to me after her mom died, what's my mom doing?

Where is she? You know why? Because she's hurting. Her mom died at 64, way too early, in our opinion.

And we began to look at different things, of course, scripture. But she got ahold of Randy Alcorn's book, Heaven.

I'm telling you, if you got to chew it and it's thick, like, some of you be like, nope, I can't even read a book that's this thick. I can't even read the pamphlet that's in the doctor's office.

But don't you want to know about where you're going to spend the rest of eternity. Like we're experts in life. But I want to know what it's going to be like when I get there. And what I know for sure is that our Savior is there now, sitting at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for you and for me.

And there's a horde of people, a cloud of witnesses.

One more comes into the kingdom. One more comes into the kingdom. That's why I said a few weeks ago, I want Jesus to come back. But if I said there was only one reason I didn't want him to come back, it's because there's one more that didn't get there. Does it burn in you to want to see your neighbor, your family member, your schoolmate saved and become a Christian?

Because if it's not, buckle up. Because I told the pastors this morning, when we start this next series on explicit discipleship, you're going to hear something every week about how to witness to your lost friend.

Our pastoral staff can't reach 26,000 people. He called the body of Christ to do it, and there's got to be some fuel, some motivation. Well, can I give you some? Jesus is coming back. Amen.

You know, getting back to my notes.

Forget the notes.

I like going and exploring cemeteries. Yes, I'm weird, but I love old cemeteries because they write stories. I mean. I mean, we found some pretty neat. I found one of a Civil War soldier who was shot.

Said he was downed by six musket balls. Well, they had to bring his body back from the north to the south to bury him, and it told his story. We found Alexander Hamilton's grave when we visited New York. You can't miss it because it's six feet tall.

But on there is inscribed his story. Well, if you go to the coast of Georgia, it's no different. There's a cemetery there called Oak grove Cemetery in St. Mary's Georgia, centuries of years old. And there lies a man by the name of Samuel Burr who passed away on April 2, 1831, at the age of 42. I want you to hear what it says on his tombstone.

Here rests what was mortal of Samuel Burr in search for help far from his endeared home. Death arrested his progress. On the 2nd of April, 1831 arrested his progress. What was his progress? The pursuit of life.

This man was born right after the birth of our nation. I know we don't know all the nuances of what it was like to live in a country where now they were free from imperial rule, but they're trying to figure out what a democratic republic looked like. Y' all know that, right? We were in a democratic republic. We are not a democracy.

That's all I'm saying. Coming back. His pursuit of life was arrested. Death came and put handcuffs on him and threw him in a prison.

Here was someone like you and me living life with dreams and ambitions.

And as the late Herman Cain once said on his radio program, death makes no appointment. It interrupts suddenly and it arrests our progress.

Aren't you glad that you know a man who arrested death? I mean, I don't. I don't. I am not bound by death. It may stop and impede my physical life and my mortal life, but.

But there's so much more to come. The grave that I will lay in someday is not my end. It's a doorway. Because someday our Savior's gonna come back. And what we just read says that he is going to raise the dead.

That means that my soul and my spirit is going to be reunited with an immortal body. Not this one with skin tags and scars and. And ailments and sicknesses. It's going to be an eternal body. It won't be riddled with disease or crippling.

I watched a video the other day of a man who's deaf and mute, and this man was interviewing him and asking him about did he have faith to be healed. And the man, through sign language, says, well, maybe.

But I'm anticipating the day that the first voice I hear will be the voice of Jesus Christ. When I'm on the other side, Folks, we hold on so much to this life, and we have hopes that God's just going to take the life I have now and make it a little bit better. I think that's selling God really, really short. We know the words of Jesus when he said, brothers, don't let your heart be troubled. If you believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father's house are many rooms, many mansions. If it were not so, he said, I would have told you. He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will say will. I will come again and receive you to myself.

That where I am, you will be also. Such a personal promise that in the moments of death, we get stuck on the death and not the eternal life. I actually had to tell a lady about 15 years ago that she was too consumed with the cemetery and not enough with lost people.

All she ever wanted to talk about was expanding the cemetery and why couldn't we let people in the community use the cemetery? And I told her, I don't care about a cemetery because that's not the end. It's just a door to the end. Do you have a hope for the future? Do you have a hope for the future?

The only reason you would be hopeless is if you're dead in your trespasses and sin. But if you know Jesus Christ, your sins have been taken away because he died the death that we deserve because of the curse. And he was raised again to show that he beat death because he lives again. And if he lives again, death has been defeated. If he lives again, sin has been defeated.

By that, hell has been defeated. And we know in the end that death and hell will be cast into the lake of fire and we will have no part of it. Because my name is written down in, in the Lamb's book of Life because of the faith I've placed in him. He's coming again.

See, that's why it's so important as you're going through here, that you see these uses of the parousia, the return of Jesus. The angels ask his followers that day at his ascension, why do you stand looking in the sky? This Jesus who has been taken away from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you watched him go into heaven. First Corinthians 15:19 says, if we've hoped in Christ only in this life we are of all men most to be pitied because our hope in Christ isn't for just this life. It's for the life to come.

Some of these kids that came to Bible school that put their faith and trust in Christ were saved and made an appointment that may come to fruition 70 years down the road. Some of you made that decision a long time ago, but the beauty of that decision has been lost because your hope is fixed on the here and now. And you're no different than those who grieve with no hope. So let me give you some points. Let me give you some points.

I want to get to where we worship. Point number one says, this experience, there is security in times of loss because of the hope of eternal life. That's such a basic point, but that's where he begins. He says, but I don't want you to be uninformed brethren about those who are asleep. This is not an eternal sleep.

People don't just zap out and then wake up when Jesus returns. They are cognizant, standing in the presence of the Lord. How do I know that? Well, when John was seeing the seals opened, one of the seals were the martyrs of Christ underneath the throne, crying out for vengeance. I think they knew what happened to them and I think they knew where they were.

I think we need to think about that because a lot of us think that God kind of zaps our mind when we get to heaven. He doesn't zap your mind. They knew what happened to them. Then he says, so that you may not grieve. This is a conditional tense in the Greek.

You can choose to grieve like the rest of the world, or you can choose to grieve differently. And the security I have is because of the hope that I have. Go ahead and take my life, because my victory will be when Jesus comes and raises me from the dead. Why do you think the disciples would die and lay their life down for something they just partially believed? Every one of them suffered persecution for the truth of Jesus Christ.

Do you. Do you have that kind of confidence in the power of God, that no matter what happens to you in this life, you know that you will stand before your Savior and you'll be raised from the dead? This sounds weird, but I remember talking to a lady years and years ago who actually worked in the church with us, and she said, well, when you die, you go to heaven, okay? We believe that that's not the end of the story. I said, you know, you will be raised from the dead.

She said, what do you mean?

She had never heard of the bodily resurrection, the church. If you are born again and you believe in Christ when he comes back, this text promises you are first, you will be raised from the dead. And if you have loved ones that have passed on before you that trusted in Christ, guess what? They gonna beat you to the punch. And you'll see them again.

They cannot be your primary focus. Our Lord must be. Don't let the experience of grief debilitate you because you choose to let emotion cloud truth.

That's hard when you're going through grief. It's hard to stop the depression, the sadness, the anxiety.

But I read in Philippians 4. 7 that God gives us peace that will guard our hearts and our minds, our feelings and our thinking. That will help set me on a path where I can embrace the hope that I have in him. Paul wrote in Philippians 1:23, but I'm hard pressed from every direction, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is much better. Then he says, we are a good courage.

I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord? Why would he write that if what is to come isn't better than what we have? Don't let the dust of the grave debilitate you from seeing the hope that we have in Jesus.

C.S. Lewis lost his wife in 1960. They were married three years. If you want to read Grief Ugly, he wrote a book about his grief called A Grief Observed. It's about this thick.

It's a little bit better than heaven. It's like that. But I'm talking about he's getting in the weeds, saying, like, God, why would you let this happen, Lord? Don't you know what kind of person I am? He goes, I mean, he gets ugly with it.

Did you get ugly with your grief? If you did, then you're like Paul and you're like C.S. Lewis. You realize, hey, no one grieves. Perfect.

But you got to let grief have its perfect work. Don't let grief stop you in your tracks. Don't let death arrest your progress. Point number two, there is secure. Excuse me.

There is certainty in the future resurrection from. For the saved, because Jesus was raised from the dead. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with him those who have died, fallen asleep in Jesus. You remember the story of Thomas, right? Thomas wasn't there when Jesus made his first appearance.

And later he's like, well, if I don't touch his scars and put my hand in the side, I can't believe this. So Jesus appears and he comes up to Thomas and he says, go ahead. I mean, like, it's kind of weird, but you can put your fingers in my scars. They're fresh. And put your hand here in my side.

Believe. But then he says this. Blessed are you because you have seen and believed. But more blessed will be those who have not seen and yet believe. That's the testimony that we have received, that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved.

This is the evidence that I can stake my life on. You know, the Pharisees came to Jesus and they said, you know what we need a sign that you are who you say you are, that you have authority. And he said, no other sign but the sign of Jonah will be given. So these Old Testament experts were like, well, what do you mean by that? Jonah went into the belly of a fish for three days and came out.

And he said, so it will be with the Son of Man. The Son of Man would go into the ground for three days and come back out. And then he makes a point. The people of Nineveh at the preaching of Jonah, repented, but yet you stand here and mock the Son of God. But I'm going to show you the power of God.

When I bust that grave wide open, that is the evidence that we can stake our claim. As Paul said in 1st Corinthians 15, if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. The essence of the Gospel is his resurrection. If we don't believe that, what do we have? We have no hope.

Paul said later in that same passage, for if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, not only is your faith vain, it's worthless because you're still in your sin. And if you're still in your sin, you will stand under the judgment and wrath of God. The death of Jesus was the wrath of God. Some of you in this room, you're stuck in grief because there's a little justice thing going off inside of you.

It's like, why would God take my loved one the way they did, why they did when he did? You know why that's debilitating you?

Because you think because you're a good person, you deserve better than somebody else. So if a heathen loses a loved one, does that mean that they deserve that? Folks, this is not about deserving or not deserving anything. We live in a fallen world that sin has overcome. And because sin is in the world, bad things happen.

Well, why doesn't God do something about it? I'm glad you asked. Because he did. He sent his son to be a propitiation and covering for your sin to so that this world would not be your final home. And for those of you in this room, said, you know what?

Well, why would God take my child? Why would God take. Why would he take them from me? Does he not know what that feels like? Actually, he does.

Because not only did Jesus die his only son, it was his plan. So, yes, God the Father knows exactly what you feel like. If you've lost a child, why not cry out to him for empathy and comfort? What happens in our grief is we get mad at the God above and we close and shake our fists at him and all he wants to do is draw you to himself and give you comfort that you can't imagine. If we let emotions rule the day, I will become stuck in my grief and I will grieve like the world who has no hope I don't think any of us want to be there.

What do you believe about the future, number three? What is your expectation? See, Paul had to give him some information. The Thessalonians thought Jesus was coming back, like, right then, and he didn't. And we're still waiting for him to come back.

I mean, last I checked, I have not seen a mass resurrection of the dead. Have you? Does anybody remember reading in History? The only one I remember reading is the day Jesus died. When he took his last breath.

The graves opened in Jerusalem, a foretaste of what was to come. But we know that Jesus was the first fruits according to Paul's teaching in First Corinthians 15. And like he was raised from the dead, so too we will be raised from the dead. There is confidence knowing that Jesus Christ will return. Look at verse 15.

I want you to look at the three words will not proceed, or whatever your translation has. That is a double negation. Absolutely not. Those who are alive and remain will not beat the dead to heaven because they're already there. I know that seems weird to us, that the souls in heaven will come down and put on bodies and then be raised back into heaven.

I know that sounds weird, but that's exactly what Jesus did. Did. Jesus said, father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And then three days later, he put back on that flesh. If you want to know what that flesh looks like right now, read Revelation, chapter one.

It's not like it is now. It's glorious and powerful. And it says in the text, for this we say to you by the word, not suggestion. This is Logos. This is the word of the Lord.

That we who are alive remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. So, Thessalonians, you're worried about those who have died. I mean, you're talking about a year's time, that people in that church had already passed away. And they're worried, like, where are they? We thought Jesus was going to come back.

Does that mean something's wrong? And he's like, no, this is not a moment for your faith to diminish, but. But to increase. And he said that the Lord will come with a shout. I mean, can you imagine what the shout of heaven is going to be like?

Myriads and myriads of angels shouting for the return of Christ and the archangel. I don't know what he's going to say. He's going to shout something like, it's here. He's here. And a trumpet sound.

Guys, you're not going to miss that. It will be worldwide known and it has not happened yet.

And anyone who would discourage that Paul wrote in 2nd Timothy 2, 16 saying that those who are saying the resurrection's already happened are upsetting the faith of others. Guys, our faith hinges, leans on and is founded on the fact that Jesus Christ died, raised again, ascended to heaven and and is soon coming. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? Because the last one here is our encouragement.

Our encouragement. The first actual imperative in this whole letter is in verse 18. Therefore comfort one another with these words. What words? 13 through 17.

You don't have to grieve like the world. If you believe Jesus died and raised again, believe that he will raise you too. And he's going to bring back those who have died in him. We're going to be caught up. The word there in Latin was translated to mean rapture, means to snatch away.

It's the word we get rapture from. Now I'm not going to deviate and talk about when the rapture happens. Take one of our end time eschatology, revelations. We'll go revelation. Well, I just broke my own rule, Fred.

It's not plural singular. It's revelation. So if you say revelation, stop. It's revelation. There's comfort knowing he's coming again and he's coming again soon.

But there's not comfort if you don't know him. The words of Jesus returning to the hopeless don't mean much unless they put their hope in him. Charles Ryrie wrote, the encouragement or comfort of the Christian's hope in the resurrection is a sharp contrast to the hopelessness of the heathen in the face of death. It's the hope, it's the work of the word of God. Our lives living in expectation of the imminent return of Christ.

Following Christ in such a way that people can see the gospel alive in my life, that they too might have the same hope that I do. Living in such a way that when I grieve, I don't grieve without hope because I know where my destination lies.

Do you have that hope today when you look at the people around you, if tomorrow grief knocks at their door, would you have the encouragement to help them to have comfort in their time of loss? Folks, we've got to be resolute in the return of Jesus Christ to result in life sustaining comfort. Let me close. Picking back up the story was Samuel Byrne see that tombstone? Red Death was arrested his progress that talked about his mortal life.

But there's a young group of guys who in 2015, was walking that cemetery, saw that epitaph, and it bothered them that the words Death arrested his progress. Like how hopeless of a statement that is to be left in that situation. Death may have arrested his progress here, but Jesus Christ arrested Death when he came back from the dead. Death may seize me someday, ladies and gentlemen. Death may seize you as well, but it will not hold me captive.

Because Jesus captive, captured and arrested Death, Brandon Coker and three other boys sat down, men, not boys. And they wrote the lyrics to a song we just sang a few minutes ago. When Death was arrested, that's when my life began.

Can I ask you today, before we worship, are you right with God today? Does the words talking about Jesus returning make you scared to stand before God? You have comfort and hope to stand before him because you've been washed by the blood. When you stand before him, he's not going to role play all the bad things you've done in your life. If you are a believer, it's not what he's going to do.

You've watched too many movies and listened to too many old songs to try to scare you into believing in Jesus.

When I leave this world, if I stand before Christ, I know I've passed Jesus judgment. For many of you today, you're hurting and I'm not downplaying diminishing grief. I just told you Paul said, grieve, but don't grieve like the world. When we get to the invitation in just a little bit, after Fred leads us through taking the Lord's Supper, I want to encourage you. If you're here today and you're stuck in grief, come let us pray for you.

I don't know any other thing I can offer to you. Come, let us pray for you that God will remind you of the hope that you have in Christ as you take this cup in just a few minutes, be reminded Jesus died so that you could live.

And just because you've lost somebody doesn't mean you have to stop living. One of the phrases that Laura's dad said to us after Diane died was this. Today I can choose to start dying where I can choose to start living.

He's been a widower now for 12 years. He's living life because he knows that Christ has a purpose for his life. Whoever is the oldest person in this room, God has purpose for your life. Whoever's the youngest person in this room, God has purpose for your life. But that purpose isn't just to make life comfortable.

It's to live for his coming.