By Life or By Death

“This spake he [Jesus], signifying by what death he [Peter] should glorify God.” (John 21:19a)

The Westminster Confession decrees that “man’s chief end” is to glorify God. agree. Our most meaningful goal, as recipients of the undeserved grace of God, must be to use whatever means God puts at our disposal to magnify and glorify Him. One way that can be easily overlooked is what we find in this verse in John: our death. And make no mistake; this article is directed to the young as well as the old, perhaps more so, because, statistically, while older people are living longer, young people are dying earlier. Therefore, just as it’s never too late to think about living, it’s never too early to think about dying. And as the verse in John indicates, just as there is more than one cause of death, there is more than one way to die. If there are some deaths that glorify God, there are others that do not.

Yesterday, on my birthday, I became even closer to the Psalmist’s observed allotment of 70-80 years of life (Ps. 90:10). I may or may not appear to have lived this long, but the fact remains, I have; and to deny or dismiss this reality would not only be deceptive, it would be dumb, says the Psalmist. “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

On the same day that I turned sixty-eight, Steve Jobs, the brilliant technological innovator, who founded Apple, died at the age of fifty-six. He had been battling cancer for some years, and he told a group of Stanford graduates in 2005, “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” This echoes what the Psalmist said, though I have no way of knowing if it helped him make the right decision on the most important choice in life: where he will spend eternity. But he was correct to say that one is not ready to truly live until he or she has prepared for death.

How, then, shall you and I glorify God by our deaths? Not only in the Bible, but down through history we have countless examples of deaths that served to inspire, and, in some cases, inflame those around them. I’m thinking now of the impact of Stephen’s death on the Apostle Paul and the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam by Chinese Communists in 1934. In the memorial service for them at Moody Bible Institute, over seven hundred students stood to consecrate their lives to missionary service. These are only two examples, but, in each case, I would venture to say that the common thread among them all would have to be this:

The people who glorify God in their deaths, are those who glorified Him in their lives.

Those who live well, biblically speaking, generally have a way of dying well. Their accomplishments may not have been spectacular, but their lives magnified the name of Jesus Christ. It is good to remember that we may plan our funerals, but others will take care of the eulogies. And, personally, if anything good is said about me at my home going, I don’t want it to be vague hearsay. I want there to be convincing evidence. I want my death to make Heaven seem more real and more accessible. I want the reality of Christ in a life to be more validated than ever. In short, I want my death to glorify God.

“According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.” (Philippians 1:20)

She Came...and She Stayed

“And she said, I pray you, let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves: so she came and hath continued even from the morning until now, that she tarried a little in the house.” (Ruth 2:7)

There are five words in this verse that I call Ruth’s trademark: “…so she came and hath continued…” This girl had many admirable qualities, but none that spoke more about her than this. Her decisions were not made lightly because her resolve was deep. People who are quick to make a promise are often just as quick to find a reason not to fulfill it. There were many reapers in the field that day, and no doubt, some of them found the work too hard and the sun too hot for their liking, so they quit before the day was over. Not this girl. When she resolved to leave her homeland and go with her mother-in-law, she willingly subordinated herself to Naomi’s supervision; and this was part of it — the hard, backbreaking part.

I wonder if this could be said about you and me? I’m not talking about housework or other day-to-day projects that can become tedious. I’m talking about when following God takes every bit of strength we can draw from the Word of God and the Spirit of God, when the possible jumping off places in a marriage are coming hard and fast, and when the title “mother” feels more like a ball and chain than a badge of honor. If you have never encountered some flicker of these feelings, you’re either a new Christian, a new bride, or a new mother. J

Some people are slow starters, but I’ll wager there are more who are fast quitters. At least, that has been my observation. Something my husband says brings some clarity to this problem, I think. He contends that anyone who has trouble making and/or keeping a commitment to God cannot be trusted to keep a commitment to anyone else. When Ruth committed herself to the keeping of her mother-in-law, she vowed to Naomi, “…whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16).

Remember, you are not required to outdo, just outlast; you need not dazzle, but you should not fizzle. Your friends, your family, and most importantly, your God are not looking for perfection, just perseverance.

Gotcha!

“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.” Phil. 3:12

Your only claim on God is His claim on you.

This thought occurred to me recently, and I scribbled it down on a piece of paper, thinking there was more here than the obvious truth that “we love him because he first loved us” (1 Jno. 4:19). As Charles Spurgeon said, “There will be no doubt about His having chosen you, when you have chosen Him.” But I think it goes farther than this.

We have all met people who claim to have and know God, yet their lives reflect merely a passing acquaintance. Paul says in Philippians that He had been “apprehended” by Christ, and because of that, he was constantly striving to lay hold, as it were, on all that this means, (“…that for which I also am apprehended of Christ Jesus”). Why does God lay claim on an individual, in the first place? He tells us plainly in John 15:16a. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.”

What I’m saying here is that the only justification for anyone to claim that he or she “has God” is an indication that God has him or her. I can claim to be related to Queen Elizabeth II, but if I live in abject poverty, you would have reason to question my claim, would you not?

Paul characterized himself as following after Christ, and this goes hand in glove with John 10:27. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus called Himself the “good shepherd,” and characterized mankind as sheep. An apt metaphor, for many reasons. You and I talk about black sheep, but the Bible doesn’t. It only talks about His sheep and ones who are lost and gone astray. These the Shepherd goes after, calling them out personally, by name. If they truly belong to Him, He says, they will hear His voice and follow. Not the voice of a stranger, only His (v. 5).

In a precious verse in Song of Solomon, the Shepherd tells his lover that if she wants to find Him, she only needs to trace “the footsteps of the flock” (1:7-8). The footsteps will always lead to the Shepherd, and the footsteps of a true believer may be hesitant and slow, even wobbly, but they will always be following the Savior.

There is an old Dallas Holm song that says, “Jesus got ahold o’ my life, and He won’t let me go.” That pretty well says it. When God gets hold of a man or woman, boy or girl, He doesn’t let go. And if you or I just cannot get away from His claim on our lives, no matter how much we are tempted and fail, it’s a good sign we’ve been “apprehended” by Grace. God has reached down His omnipotent, loving hand and said, “Gotcha!”

A Real Eye-Opener

“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.” (Job 42:5)

It took a lot of heartache, pain, and tears for Job to get to this point. It could be argued that through most of the book he claims unique, first hand knowledge of God, while his “friends” are vehemently insisting that the opposite is true. As it turns out, they were all wrong. One reason we know Job’s claim in verse five was now true is that God says so in verse seven. Another reason is found in verse six, where Job says, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” We can be sure Job was now truly seeing God, because he was now truly seeing himself.

Faith comes by hearing the witness of the Word (Rom.10:17) and in most cases, the witness of men (10:14); but seeing requires the witness of the Holy Spirit (Eph.1:16-18). This is why to quench, grieve, or lie to the Holy Spirit is to put blinders on our spiritual eyes. When Christians and non-Christians alike say, “I just don’t see it,” when a plain Biblical mandate is laid out before them, they’re right. They don’t see. They hear; but they can’t see, usually because there is something between them and the Holy Spirit that is blocking their view.

Because we can find no other overt sin in the life of Job, it is probably safe to assume that spiritual pride was his great failing, which more often than not requires drastic measures to uncover. Still, God knew Job would pass the test of Satan’s sifting and be the better for it (Job 42:12a). What could be better than seeing God? For my money, nothing. Does this mean you and I must suffer to the extent that Job did in order to experience such reality? Not necessarily, though I do think there are places in the soul that only suffering can reach.

What I do know is that we all have things in our lives that have the potential for hiding the face of God. Some are common to us all, clear and plain in the Word of God. Others are as individual as our individual relationships with Him. And only those who truly seek the face of God will submit to the search light of His Word.

When I am willing to see myself as I truly am, I will see God as He truly is. And in both cases, it’s a real eye-opener.

Slippery Places

“Abstain from all appearance of evil.” (1 Thess. 5:22)

Obedience is only manifested when there is an opportunity to disobey; but at the same time, when we go looking for opportunities to disobey, obedience is less likely to be manifested.

We should “abstain,” or refrain from those things that appear to be evil, says our text; but the fact that we are able to see them says we are not unconscious of, or oblivious to, them. To seek to isolate oneself from the world is not feasible, or even advisable, according to Jesus, in His intercessory prayer for His disciples, found in John seventeen “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (v.15).

When it came to the lost, Jesus never promoted isolationism. In fact, He was criticized on more than one occasion for fraternizing with people of questionable virtues. What He did affirm was that a true disciple may be in the world, but he or she would never be of it. In other words, those of us who name the name of Christ may rub elbows with unbelievers, but we should never put ourselves in questionable circumstances where we may rightly or wrongly be accused of being partakers of their evil deeds.

The more we dabble on the fringes of sin, the more likely we are to slide all the way in. We will always be faced with the possibility of sin, but we need not linger near places of its greater probability. As the proverb says:

“He who would not fall down should not walk in slippery places.”