Daily Java

Daily Java: You are my King and my God, who decrees victories. (Psalm 44:3)

Life is a fight from beginning to end. And it is hard.

We look to try to win, to try to come out, if not on top, at least somewhere near the middle.

The problem is, however, that we really don’t have that much control over stuff.

We work hard and save and are thrifty, and the stock market dives and all our money is gone. Or there is a severe illness and we break ourselves financially. Or retirement doesn’t go like we thought, and we have to use our savings.

We work out and keep our bodies healthy, and a devastating illness comes along and ruins us physically.

We have children and train them up in the way they should go, spend money on their teeth and education, and love them and a drunk driver hit their car and they die early.

We plan for retirement and how we will travel and see stuff, and your husband dies the day after he retires and you are alone.

Life is a fight from beginning to end. And no one guarantees any kind of good ending. God surely doesn’t. At least not in life.

But even when stuff gets bad, when all our investments are gone, our children are gone, our health is gone, our mates are gone – God is still there.

And here is what is something else, really amazing. He has decreed victory from the beginning.

He said, live in me, love me, accept me as your God and there will be victory.

You may be beaten, battered, alone, sick at the end of your life, but God will still be in charge. And you come out of this life a winner, a victor.

He will give to us that crown of righteousness that the apostle Paul wrote of. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7-8).

No matter how it goes in life, it ends in victory.

And God has said so.

daily java.

Daily Java: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”- 1 Corinthians 15:55-57.

Fear of death is so strong, even in people who shouldn’t fear it. It is the way God made us, part of the survival instinct that everybody has.

The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that the Christian recognizes that God is in control, and that when he dies, he goes to be with God.

Death is not the end, it is the beginning.

The ancient Egyptians had that part right. They made their tombs with special doors so that the departed could go to the afterlife and do stuff. They gave him food and clothes, furniture and even slaves, freshly killed to serve him in the afterlife.

The problem with their view, though, was that it was wrong. I would imagine the slaves would tell you that, too. They viewed eternal life as just an adjunct to this life, another place to go.

In Jesus, eternal life is the end result of our physical lives. If we have served God in this life, we serve him in that life, too.

We don’t need a bunch of stuff when we go to be with God, because God has all we need. And besides, as Jesus pointed out several times, the afterlife is not like this life.

Relationships will be different, food will be different, there will be an absence of pain and sorrow, of suffering and sickness. In other words, it will be a perfect life, living only to worship the God who made us.

To those outside of Jesus, that sounds horrible and they cannot imagine it. When Hollywood or TV portrays heaven, it is just a white area with people flying around with no real purpose or point.

When you look at it this way, it is no wonder that people tend to romanticize hell.

Hell would be the opposite of heaven, pain and sorrow, suffering and sickness. In all, it would be the absence of the love of God – nothing but cold contempt and suffering.

I suppose that is the problem. If you do not love God now, you really can’t imagine spending an eternity with him.

But with him, death is empty. As a friend of mine said one time, when I threatened (jokingly, of course) to kill him, “Go ahead. Threaten me with heaven,”

That kind of takes the sting out of the threat. Death has no sting, death has no victory when you are in Jesus.

When Jesus died and rose again, he gave new meaning to life. As long as we are in him, we do not have to be afraid of what might happen when we die. He gives hope.