“Steve from Berkley” was what everyone called him. I’ve written about him before. He has left an indelible mark on my life.

His long stringy hair was oily and gray. His beard was scraggly. We usually met in the dining room, but when I arrived at the nursing home to see him near the end of his life, he was unable to get out of bed.

When I first met him a couple years prior to his death, he was in a federal prison hospital. Thirty some-odd years before, he had robbed a bank. Though behind bars and confined to a wheelchair, his heart had soared in freedom. Freedom of the Spirit. Freedom from sin.

Now, on this visit, he was out of prison on compassionate release, but he was bedridden and near death. When he saw me, his smile grew from one ear to another. He sat up a little and stretched out his hand for a hug.

I don’t remember of what we spoke, not that particular day, but I do know that it was typical of him to brag of God’s grace and mercy. Even near death, Steve from Berkley was full of joy. In fact, his joy, while always full, now seemed to flood the entire nursing home.

I hope and pray that, when my time comes to leave this world, my joy grows by leaps and bounds. In fact, Why wait? — Lord, let the joy that you gave me overflow to those around me.

The Gospel of John seems to have more red font in it than any other. It is chocked full of the words of Christ. Reading through it this morning my heart stuck on three of the countless things that Christ says in chapters 14 and 15… The promises. It is those promises that compelled me to remember Steve from Berkley.

John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

John 15:11″These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

Joy, from what I can see in John, is not a decision we make, not a discipline, and not an attitude. It is a gift from Christ all we have to do is receive it.

There is no doubt that death is scary, even for Christians like Steve from Berkley. It is a lone journey; no one may join us.

Yet Christ promises us that we shall never be alone. Always. Even until the ends of the earth, Christ is with us, holding our hands, gently leading us along, sharing His joy.

God Leads His Dear Children Along

In shady, green pastures, so rich and so sweet,
God leads His dear children along;
Where the water’s cool flow bathes the weary one’s feet,
God leads His dear children along.

1. • Refrain:
     Some through the waters, some through the flood,
     Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
     Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
     In the night season and all the day long.

2. Sometimes on the mount where the sun shines so bright,
   God leads His dear children along;
   Sometimes in the valley, in darkest of night,
   God leads His dear children along.

3. Though sorrows befall us and Satan oppose,
   God leads His dear children along;
   Through grace we can conquer, defeat all our foes,
   God leads His dear children along.

4. Away from the mire, and away from the clay,
   God leads His dear children along;
   Away up in glory, eternity’s day,
   God leads His dear children along

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I heard all these euphemisms for death and dying when I was a boy, especially in old movies. I don’t hear so many of them today, or maybe I simply avoid the topic of death. One that I could identify with was the last one, “circling the drain.”

As a child, my brothers and I loved to swim in the Finley River which meandered through the farm where we grew up. Sometimes we would go upstream to Riverdale, an old mill and dam, and float back to our farm. On the way back, we would stop at Blue Hole and swim, for even when waters were shallow, Blue Hole always had enough water to dive and swim. It was inevitable that somewhere along the float trip, conversation would turn to whirlpools.

Whole floating we would sometimes pass a whirlpool, but never the life-threatening sink holes that one found on the James River, the larger stream that lay a few miles down from our farm. The James, it was said, was full of whirlpools that would suck swimmers and boaters to the bottom and drown them. Every year, we heard stories of new drownings.

Turns out the stories are based on facts. There were significant numbers of drownings on the rivers of Southwest Missouri when I was a kid. The whirlpools – the deadly kind – were not just turbulent eddies, but sink holes that opened into underground rivers and caverns. Get near one of those, and it would suck a swimmer straight to the bottom.

Sin acts the same way, for those Christians who are weak in their faith and still flirt with sin, it takes little temptation to lead them into sin. Sin, without fail, leads to eventual death. Sin sucks got right in and – once it has you – there is no escape. It is a bottomless pit that leads to death, a whirlpool from which the is no escape. Sin, when it claps is wicked hands around your throat, does not easily turn loose.

Only Christ can compel sin to loosen is grip on your heart. Only Christ can toss you a life saver.

At a local amusement park in Branson Missouri, there was -in the 1960s – a ride called The Float Trip. On one turn was an artificially constructed whirlpool with a manikan perpetually circling it, as if condemned to an eternity of drowning. The ride has been transformed and renamed. The lifelike dummy is gone now, but the whirlpool remains. Temptation always remains, but Christ can transform you so that you no longer dive into it.

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Holiness is, perhaps, the most misunderstood concept in Christianity. Anyone who has striven to follow the life of Christ can likely tell you that it is impossible to do. No one can match His love, His grace, or His compassion. For no one but Jesus is perfect. Once the believer is filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, though, he or she is filled to the brim with the love of Christ, and desires nothing more than to please God and follow in Christ’s steps. The love of sin is gone. In its place is a love and passion for others. That is Christian Holiness. This is Christian Holiness Daily.

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I had done so much wrong in my life that I was convinced God could never forgive me. I had been such a wicked sinner I had feared that I had crossed a bridge too far. After all, I had been saved, I knew right from wrong, I knew what God expected. I just found that I didn’t want to do what was right. Doing right involved sacrifice, and I didn’t want to sacrifice. It involved giving up control, and I liked being in control. Because I couldn’t see anyway to fix my life, I could not understand how God could fix it. I had no faith. I had no self-discipline. I had no comprehension of the power of God. And I had no grasp of the depth of God’s love.

Here is what I thought I understand. I knew that Hebrews 6 talked about those who sin too much and lose their salvation, or that’s what I believed. I knew that Romans 1 spoke of those who sin so much that God gives them over to a “reprobate mind.” I had read, in Acts 7, the sermon by my namesake, Stephen, that God had once given up on the nation of Israel and turned them over to worship false gods. And, I knew that the psalmist had spoken of that same event in Psalm 81:12.

It was in the Bible. Those people had gone too far, and God had given up on them, turned His back on them, and let them reap the rewards of their sins. I feared I was in the same place as the People of Israel. I didn’t worship a golden calf, but I did worship the idol known as self. God was, I was convinced, angry at me.

Here are the two points that we will be looking at as we continue our study on bondage to sin and freedom from sin through the power of the Holy Spirit.

First, sin is a frightful thing. Its grip on the life of an unbeliever or a weak believer is nothing less than a Vulcan death grip. Sin latches on to your heart and your soul and squeezes you, harder, and harder, and harder, and is not happy until you collapse, dead. If you manage to resist and break the grip, it stalks you, and doesn’t give up until it possesses you once again. It never gives up. Paul describes the wages of sin in Romans 1 as a depraved mind. God – knowing that the people of Israel would not repent – turned them over to the wages of sin, to live with their own bad decisions and willful disobedience, and as a result their minds and souls grew dark, and filled with muck, and the only word to describe them is depraved.

It didn’t have to be that way, though. They had plenty of chances to repent.I had once been convinced that Hebrews 6 tells us that we can lose our salvation by sinning too much. A closer reading reveals that that is not at all the case. Instead it says that we may lose our salvation if we stop believing in Christ the Messiah. I had done many, many things wrong, but I had never stopped believing in Christ, and I had never once thought that there is any other route to heaven but through Him. He is the Way and the Truth and the life. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—  not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV).

Sin can take you down. But it is only if you stop believing that your salvation may be in jeopardy. Your good works didn’t earn you salvation (salvation is by faith), so your bad deeds will not lose it for you. Sorry, you are not more powerful than the grace of God.

That Vulcan death grip was a farce. It didn’t work. Dr. McCoy saved the day. Jim wasn’t really dead. Spock showed emotion at the recovery of his captain. And, guess what. There is a cure for the death grip that sin has on your life, too. Confess your sins. Repent of them. And trust in God. It is NOT TOO LATE. 

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Holiness is, perhaps, the most misunderstood concept in Christianity. Anyone who has striven to follow the life of Christ can likely tell you that it is impossible to do. No one can match His love, His grace, or His compassion. For no one but Jesus is perfect. Once the believer is filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, though, he or she is filled to the brim with the love of Christ, and desires nothing more than to please God and follow in Christ’s steps. The love of sin is gone. In its place is a love and passion for others. That is Christian Holiness. This is Christian Holiness Daily.

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“But, three or four people have died trying,” said Bobby. His brother nodded in agreement.

“If no one has ever been able to reach it, then how do you know it’s there?” I asked.

“It just is. We know,” they said.

We drove a couple hours south of town before turning off into the wilds of the Ozark Mountains. Squeezed between two hillsides, the opening was barely wide enough to slither through on my belly. Inside, though, one could sit up. In a lower cavern, I was able to stand up. The sound of distant rushing waters could be heard from below. We crawled through an even deeper passage into a large cavern. The room was cold and damp. At the far end, an underground river rushed beneath a ten-foot drop. A rope that had been tied from the top led into the river and disappeared beneath the black water.

“There it is,” said Mike, stripping down to his shorts. He plunged in, flashlight in hand.

I was frightened. The two other boys followed. I was the last one to dive in. I was afraid of being pulled under by the current and sucked into the rocks where the river again disappeared. I was more afraid, though, of being called chicken. Eventually, I, too, dove in. When I hit the water, my flashlight went out.

The boys, dived underwater. I was left in the dark. They followed the rope underwater and beneath a fallen stalactite. They came up just out of sight on the right of me. I could see the glow of their lights but, around a corner. I was left in the dark. They taunted me, and told me to follow them, but I had no idea how to get there, and no light to guide me. I could make out where they were, but just barely.

At last, I could take no more of their name-calling and dove under the water into icy darkness. I followed the curve of the slimy stalactite, eventually finding the rope, and came up some twenty feet away beyond a large rock. The little mud beach on which they sat was covered with old beer cans and the remains of several campfires. We were not the first ones to make this journey, as we had supposed. This had been a party spot for years.

I have often looked back at that day, and the many summer days after it that the four of us visited that cave with girls whom we wished to impress, and wondered why it is so easy to follow the taunts of peer pressure and so hard to follow the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. Why is it so easy to fulfill the desires of the body, and so hard to even hear the leading of the Spirit? Why is it so important to us to please the ego, while we neglect pleasing God?

That summer was all about answering the call of the cave. I learned the hard way that it is not always best to give into peer pressure. Several weeks and several visits later, some of us went back to the cave with girlfriends. The girl I was with lost hold of the rope and was swept away into the rocks before she was able to come up for air. She had a gash on her forehead and was barely able to make the swim out of the water and climb up the rope and out of the cave. Nearly an hour later, when we finally exited the cave, she was covered with blood from her head. The cut took several stitches. It was all her dad could do to keep from pummeling me. I deserved it and would have felt better had he done it.

God eventually took me to the place where I begged Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and keep me from such temptations, but it took many more near-tragedies and many more years before I heeded His call. The cave has since been block off. The pile of rocks in front of it remind me that God no longer lets me go down to such depths. Instead, He protects me; by filling me with His Spirit, He has given me the strength to… well to live; for what I called living before, was really no life at all.

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Still, we all endure loss. Some more than others, but it is a universal experience. As someone who is middle aged, my experiences with death are probably quite common. I have lost all my grandparents, both parents, a handful of friends, a couple of childhood playmates, an old high school girlfriend, and a couple of coworkers. Still, I have always had this nagging feeling – as we all do – that death has a particular grudge against me, and that few others have witnessed so much death as I.

The Bible tells us that it is appointed unto man once to die; every one of us shall die. Job declared,

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Take another look at that passage. You have probably heard it at funerals. You almost always here it on television depictions of funerals. “The Lord giveth… and the Lord taketh away.” The part that I find astonishing is that Job praises God. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Can you praise God in the midst of such tragic loss? Can I? Can we look death in the eye and say, “I don’t understand God’s plan, but I will praise Him nonetheless?”

I could if it is my own death to which I refer; I have been ready to go for a while. What kind of faith does it take to say that when faced with the death of someone as close as a spouse, a son, or a daughter?

Church tradition tells that the Apostle Peter’s wife was led first to her death at the hands of Emperor Nero. As the guards led her away, Peter called to her, “Remember the Lord!” What faith. What wonderful faith!

In correspondence with a friend from Africa who has seen friends and family martyred, he has reminded me that we can be certain of a few things pertaining to death. Take comfort in them:

• Everyone will die, even those who persecute us.
• Death is not the end, look at the story of Lazarus. Our bodies will be restored at the Return of the Lord.
• The very day that we die, we will see Jesus is Paradise.
• We will see our loved ones in heaven. 2 Samuel 12:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:17

Death is certain, but so is eternal life for those who have aloud Jesus to be Lord of their life. I have always known for certain that God took my mother because He loved her too much to allow her to suffer longer.

There is one more thing I know for certain. We must faithfully love those whom God has given us, because they are just on loan to us. He will want them back again someday.

Fear Not, for we shall see our loved ones again.

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In Psalm 34, David gives thanks for God’s protection, for delivering him from his enemies. This Psalm was written while David hid from King Saul among the Philistines. David spent his entire life, it seems, in a cycle of sin, repentance, and forgiveness, followed by sin again. And again. And again. You and I are much the same. 

In a passage similar to Psalms 34:4 (2 Timothy 4:18), we find Paul Pouring out his heart just before facing Caesar and execution. He says,

“The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.”

Both David and Paul were fully human, full of sin, murderers both, yet they are considered great men of God. Why? They fell on their faces daily and repented. When God revealed to them their deceitful hearts, they sought God’s mercy and asked Him to cleanse their hearts and change their lives. 

The difference in these passages, one written by David and one written by Paul, is this. David’s plea was answered when God rescued him from a dangerous situation and hid him in the unlikeliest of places. David lived many more years. Paul’s prayer was answered by his immediate execution. In Paul’s mind (and in truth), though, his execution was rescue. He was “taken safely to [God’s] heavenly kingdom,” which had been his hope for years. 

Both were delivered, but in very different ways.

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Jairus had no warning when tragedy struck his house (Mark 5). He was a man of some importance, a ruler in the synagogue, which is more or less like the chief administrator at the church. Life had been good to him. He was prosperous.  He had a family. What could go wrong?

For most people, though, something usually does go wrong. Jairus’s daughter fell ill, very ill. He was desperate. This girl was the love of his life, his reason to live, as any daughter is for any good father. She was obviously dying and there was nothing that any doctor could do for her. 

Then, Jesus arrived on the shores of his town. He begged Jesus to heal her, and Jesus immediately headed to his house, followed by a throng of people. On the way there, though, Jesus stopped. 

“Who touched me?” said Jesus. 

Jairus panicked. His daughter was deathly ill. There was no time to waste. He must have thought Jesus crazy, for He was surrounded by hundreds of people, each vying for His attention, yet the Master had asked who touched Him?

In his mind, Jairus screams, “Come, hurry, Jesus. There’s no time for this…” Only the dignity of his position prevents him from grabbing the Master by the arm and dragging him to his daughter’s side. 

No sooner does Jesus bless and heal the woman that had touched Him, than Jairus sees his servants rushing into the crowd. They need not speak. He could tell by their expressions that his daughter had passed. 

When the servants did speak and confirm his deepest fears, he lost it. Tears welled in his eyes. His lips quivered. His hands shook. His heart sank. Death had called on his home, and taken his daughter. Oh, that he could take her place. If only the woman hadn’t distracted the Master. If only… 

The Master, though, had heard the servants and took pity on Jairus. “Do not be afraid. Only believe.”

Jairus heard those words and looked into the eyes of the Master and saw not death, rather he saw eyes full of life, light and love. What he felt as he did so compelled him to believe. For when Jesus spoke, the ruler of the synagogue understood this: no one loved his daughter more than he, except the Master. And, at that very moment, Jairus knew that whatever he found when he arrived home, all would be well because his home was in the hands of the living God. 

Oh, that I had understood the lessons of Mark 5 twenty years ago, when the sheriff called my office and asked me to meet him at the scene of my wife’s accident. I would have saved myself a world of grief had I trusted in God like Jairus.

So long as we listen to the words of Jesus, keep our eyes on Him, and invite Him into our home, all will be well. No matter what tragedy strikes, it is but a small bump in an eternal road; God will provide us the strength to endure whatever besets us. “Do not be afraid. Only believe.”

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There’s an old joke about a Sunday school teacher who asks her students if they want to go to heaven. Everyone raise their hands but little Tommy. The teacher asks why he doesn’t want to go to heaven, he responds, “I do. I just thought you meant right now.”

Most of my life, I felt that way. I wanted to go to heaven, but not yet. When I was a child, my Sunday school teacher was also my first and second grade school teacher, Mrs. Alice Ada Orrell. I thought she was ancient, but she was only about 60. She taught nearly 20 more years after teaching me. She played piano when called upon, organized Vacation Bible School, and was always ready to testify when given the opportunity. I remember many times she testified that she was ready to “go home.” She meant that if she were to die that very day, she would be happy, for the life that awaited her on the other side would be far superior to this life, weighed down by the burdens and cares of this world. 

I didn’t understand that then. I do now. I am ready. I am ready end the battle against sin and death. I am ready to be done with health issues. I am sick of the struggle of wondering where my next meal is coming from, and wondering if I will make enough money to pay my bills next month. I am sick of the aches and pains of an aging and abused body. I am ready to go home, and ready to be the person God intended me to be. 

That’s not to say that I will be discontent to stick around until God calls me home, even if it is many years in the future. My prayer is for God to continue to sanctify me, lead me into holiness, and allow me to continue to feel His presence on a daily basis. Still, I let Him know that I am ready. 

The Apostle Peter tells us that Christ has prepared us a new life in heaven…

according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 

1 Peter 1:3-5

Are you ready? We never know when we will be called home. 

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