I saw a young believer weep today, remembering a lost friend.  His pain was audible, visible and understandable, but his joy was absent.  The ever-present joy of knowing that he and his friend will live their true life in eternity, together, with no more tears.  I wanted to remind him of hope, a concept that along with joy is one of our strongest weapons against despair or thoughts of loss and defeat.  That indescribable joy knowing that his friend is with the Lord, safe, out of pain and free from the destructive, corrosive influences of sin, sickness and death.  I doubt any of my friends that have passed on would have me worry one bit about them.  I would imagine that they would counsel me the opposite, to rejoice for them in their triumph, delight in the peace, find comfort in the knowledge that they have gone to be with one who loves them more that I ever could.  This life, after all is just dress rehearsal for the real eternal romance between a Groom and His bride.

Fear should be an alert mechanism to tell us of impending difficulty or danger, not a crippling device threatening to steal our joy and paralyze our actions.  We were not designed to be afraid and we have been continuously told to be of “good courage and know that the Lord is our God.”  We are the ambassadors of hope to a world that has been battered by and immoral onslaught of secular relativism.  If we lose our joy by ceding this opportunity and authority then those who look to us for a vision of the Righteous Savior will find only more of the same.  The secret to this loss of hope is the enemy’s successful campaign to alienate us from God’s Word.  We as Christians are Biblically illiterate.  We don’t know that Light, Truth, Righteousness, Faith and Love prevail, not only in the end, but throughout God’s Prophetic future.

Satan, the Lord Jesus rebuke him would have us concentrate and magnify our fear of martyrdom, our selfish desire for abundant worldly existence and by mischaracterization of the yoke by which Christ calls us to good works.  Evidence of this is when that same weeping believer asked me how I get through the labor of bible study.  My only answer to him was that it is the greatest joy of my life to spend time with the Lord in study, prayer and fellowship.  These are the riches of this life and they belong only to believers.  Remember the enemy had fellowship with God and gave it all up for a pocketful of self-service.  Will you mimic this insanity or delight in the fact that you have a one to one relationship with the creator of the universe, the Lord Jesus.  My hope is in Jesus and that same hope is the fuel for my faith in things that must come to pass.  I look to the future and encourage those who cannot see past today.  Won’t you share your heart of hope and enthusiasm with someone who doesn’t have a solid understanding or relationship with Christ.  It will make you stronger.   Amen.