For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again. This commandment I received from My Father.
John 10:17-18
Have you ever heard the voice of the Lord? Has He ever spoken directly to you? In one way this is what it means to be a believer in Christ. You are essentially saying that this man, who lived 2,000 years ago speaks to you. A Christian isn’t defined by their doing good deeds, atheists do this. A Christian is not someone who prays, because even a pagan prays. A Christian is not someone who is zealous, for who is more zealous than a Muslim? A Christian isn’t someone who keeps a religious law or commandment, this is the entire history of Jews. While it’s not to say that a Christian doesn’t do good things, pray, is zealous, and keeps certain commandments; this isn’t the fundamental definition of a Christian. Also, there is a complete list of the articles of the faith, once for all delivered to us (Jude 3); However, I want to focus on the essential, vital, and uncompromising item upon which everything hinges. This is the domino effect of our Christian faith. This is the source of the Christian Rule Goldberg contraption – Do you hear the Lord Jesus Christ speaking personally to you?
A number of years ago, as a younger believer I distinctly remember multiple times that the Lord personally visited me and spoke to me. However, it wasn’t until the passing of my mother that this fact has been anchored and solidified within me to a much higher degree. Now at the time and shortly after her passing I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with death. I had lost one of my grandmothers while I was a child and my mother’s mother only a year earlier than her passing. However, I wasn’t really ready for her. Maybe because the shock, maybe because of my age, maybe because I am the baby of the family and a “mommas’ boy”, or a combination of all of those things and many others; I just wasn’t ready for her death. I distinctly remember all of it. It was Friday, September 2nd 2016, around 9 pm or so. I had just finished the first in a series of meetings for a weekend Christian conference I was at when the phone rang. It was my father. I drove four hours through the middle of the night to make it back home and repack in order to catch a 6 am flight back to my hometown. After landing, I was immediately shuttled by my sister to the hospital where I walked into the room, only having somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 minutes to speak into the ear of my unconscious mother before she left me for good. In the days and weeks following I wrote a poem based on my dreams, a poem based on my nightmares:
The first thing that I see
Are your deathly blue lips
Beginning the process of haunting me
I see your foggy eyes rolled back
I see the pale in your face
I see the tubes and machines
I see you teetering on a fence
But what I remember most
What I cannot forget
What I see through the nights
What haunts me to this day
When I slip into that pain
Are those ghastly blue lips
Oh to see you dying
Right before my face
Oh to see the misery
Oh my God the disgrace
Where is the pink and peach
The life in my mother’s face
Because what fills my mind’s eye
Is that cobalt blue shade
Now, with all the dreams, all the sadness, all the pain, all the memories; nothing tore at the fabric of my being more than one thing – Not being able to hear her voice! For fear of losing myself to an abundant amount of misery and even deception, I even had to stop listening to the voicemails from her still stored on my phone (Thank the Lord that the older generation still leaves “messages on a machine”); but nothing could comfort me from losing her speaking. Even writing this now, just the small thought and look backwards causes a splash of water in the well of that pain.
I say all this, not with the intention to pull on your heart, to make you cry or have you commensurate with my suffering. I don’t say all this in an attempt to instill sadness. I say it with a desire to instill hope! A hope that without her passing and the experience of that suffering I would never have. A hope that saved me again. For we were saved in hope. But a hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes in what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly await it through endurance. Moreover, in like manner the Spirit also joins in to help us in our weakness, for we do not know for what we should pray as is fitting, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Rom. 8:24-26). What do I hope in? I have hope that one day I will speak with my mother again. That I will see her face to face. Now, of course, since her death, I “do not see”, I do not hear her. I have not experienced it. So you might ask what gives me this hope? What grants me to “eagerly await it through endurance”? I tell you honestly, it’s not the future hope of hearing her speaking, but the present speaking of my Lord Jesus Christ!
The greatest truth not only in the bible, not only in this human life, but in the entire universe is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! While spectacular that God became a man, each one of us is born in humanity. While marvelous that He lived a perfect human life on earth for 33 ½ years, each one of us live. While immeasurable His suffering and death on the cross, every human dies, even my mother! There is no one stronger than death! There is nothing more powerful than death! Who can resist death? Who can beat it back? Who can stop it from happening? Who can break its grasp? There is only one thing! There is only One! See we might say certain things about the resurrection. We say God came that we might have life, we say we have been born again or born anew of this life. But what is this life? In your Christian living, have you been able to answer what is so special about this life? Certainly I, like many believers, have had experiences objective and subjective of this life. But there is really one key characteristic of this life. One thing that makes this life absolutely unique – It’s the only life that passes through death! What gives me such a hope? This Jesus Christ speaks to me! Is He speaking to you? Well maybe you do not believe, because you are not of His sheep, but His sheep hear His voice and He knows them, and they follow Him (John 10:26-27).
Maybe you know someone that was born, lived and even died because of witnesses, or in this day in age because of photos and video; but I know (not only that I will speak to my mother but) that He, Jesus Christ my Lord, was resurrected from the grave, because He speaks to me. This is the greatest truth in the universe. Put away your mourning; put away your “sackcloth and ashes”; rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice (Phil. 4:4). Do we really realize what it means to hear the Lord? The apostle Paul got a clear view of this. Although he was Saul and at the time persecuting the church; he got knocked down and blinded by a light from heaven. He then heard a voice speaking to him, which he responded, who are you Lord? The speaking answered back; I am Jesus (Acts 9:3-5). Oh, brothers and sisters, how little do we value the speaking from Jesus our Lord, the true and living God. How much we might take for granted that He has and continues to speak to us! I tell you, once you lose the speaking of someone you love, you really begin to understand what it means. Lord how we repent for casting our pearls before the hogs (Matt. 7:6). Lord we agree that man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of your mouth (Matt. 4:4). Forgive our fat hearts, our closed eyes and our heavy ears (Matt. 13:15). Lord, we are your people, speak to us again, so that we can follow you! You are the speaking God, the one who calls things not being into being (Rom. 4:17). It is by your speaking that all things were created, that all things have life, even that we have Your life (John 1:3). Lord, speak for your servant is listening (1 Sam. 3:10).
COMING FORWARD 