This World Has Nothing for Me

I have recently been struck with the fragility of our lives. Really there is a fine line between this life and eternity and most of us don’t know how close come to taking a wrong step. Not to mention the fact there are so many things out of our control that if we really sit and think about it, we might be terrified of going outside, staying inside, eating, sleeping, staying awake, or breathing. Of course, most of us walk around with our eyes half shut because if we did think about it there would be a lot of fear. Enter God. The Almighty Creator. The Creator and Sustainer. The First and the Last. The Beginning and the End. The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient one. The One we sing about in church on Sunday or holidays, and curse when the Packers lose another close game or when we hit our thumb with a hammer. He is the One of which is said in the Bible, “apart from Me you can do nothing.” I’ve read this passage in John 15 so many times and when I read it I took it to mean that we can’t do anything big without God. We can’t save the world or gain world peace or even become a missionary in some foreign land without God. While that is true, this passage has more of a local meaning to it as well. Not only does it mean that we can’t do those big things, but it also means that we can’t do those every day things without Him. We can’t eat, sleep, stay awake on the road, breathe, go to the bathroom, read a book, watch t.v., play video games, catch a touchdown pass, sing, write, sneeze, play music, listen to music, type on the computer, make a copy with a copy machine, memorize notes, speak, hear, have sex, light a cigarette, go to Wal-mart, win the lottery, go to church, put up with people, love, thank, obey, on, and on, and on, ect (I think you get the picture now), without God. Seems kind of weird doesn’t it? All of things you’ve ever done in your whole entire time of existence on this earth has been because God allowed it to be done. Hopefully at this point you have begun to realize that we need God more than we think. The funny thing is that most of us if we are honest live our lives every single day without even thinking about God. We get up and we don’t acknowledge His existence, we eat without giving thanks, we study without recognize the one who have us the mind and capacity to study, we go to sleep without praising the one who allowed us the ability to rest. And then we wake up the next day and we do it all again, day in and day out, week after week, month after month. We leave to God those big things when we finally realize after trying forever, and being so stressed that we can’t deal with it anyway, that this job is way too big for me to handle. Then we give to God and say here you go God I’d like you to do this for me and I’d like it down now. If God does we utter a quick maybe utter a non-heart felt thanks and then go about our business until the next time we get stressed. Or, if He doesn’t do it right away we get mad and complain about how God doesn’t listen, doesn’t care, or even doesn’t exist, when we know in our heart of hearts that non of those statements are true. I don’t say this to give anyone a guilt trip, I merely say this out frustration in my own life as well as conviction from the Holy Spirit of God. And I can only assume that it might possibly be true in others lives as well.
Sort of the catalyst for this writing and thought process was going to the funeral of a 14 year old child recently. Upon hearing the news of the person’s death my heart dropped. This kid was literally full of life. Sure he didn’t smile all the time, and he wasn’t perfect and he did things wrong, but this guy was full of life. Every time I saw I tried to say hi because I just enjoyed talking with him. I literally remembered my last although brief interaction with him. I’m sure everyone says this but it seemed like it was yesterday. I got to thinking about the family and began to grieve because I couldn’t imagine how in the world anyone could possibly manage to deal with something like that. I wouldn’t want to go on. I was in disbelief about the whole thing and I was just about ready to go to where the kid was and command him to wake up like Jesus did so many times in the Bible, or lay over him like Elisha did and tell him to get up and walk. Yet God’s plans were different than mine like they usually are. We don’t understand completely what God does for different reasons but mostly because God’s thoughts are higher than ours because He is God.
The funeral was different than I expected. I expected to see people sobbing uncontrollably, aching with pain at the lost, overwhelmed with so much sorry that the only thing to do is lay prostrate on the floor crying without wanting to feel comforted. While there was crying and hugging and somber looks I found that the funeral was a celebration. We sang worship songs that were up beat, clap your hands and shout kind of songs. We laughed and talked about boys being boys, and shooting stuffed animals, and the hilarity of a sister crying because she ran over an animal. We celebrated life. There wasn’t even a goodbye mood. It was more like a “see ya later” mood. At first I was a little uncomfortable with it. But then something dawned on me. God opened my eyes through what the speaker had to say about the whole ordeal. We shouldn’t weep. We should rejoice because the deceased person is more alive now than ever before. He gets to do, and be, and experience more than anyone on this earth in their wildest dreams could possibly imagine. He gets to look into the face of the One who made it all and paid for it all. He gets to be in the presence of the One whom he was made to be with. He is completely whole, new, perfect. He is home. He is exactly where he was meant to be. Exactly where we are all meant to be. Home.
The whole idea of death scared me when I would think about it. I realized I was scared because I felt like I would be missing something here. I felt like I would be stuck somewhere for eternity without ever doing the things that I liked doing. I know that’s a bit selfish but that is how I felt. The reason is that I didn’t have a good understanding of what lies ahead for the eternally secure. I was holding on to this world and the trade off which was a tough one was Jesus. I was saying that this world is better than being with Jesus. In my heart of hearts I knew that that statement was not true. Jesus is awesome!! More awesome than I know. You see, Jesus is the Creator, Sustainer, Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, Ever-present help and hope, Irrefutable light. He is enough for the whole world and He is more than enough for me. He is more than enough for my hopes and dreams, my passions and desires, the holes in my life, the joys and sorrows, the needs, the hurts and pains. He is more than enough for me and I know that He is more than enough for you also. That is why He wants us to “remain in Him”. That is why “apart from Me, you can do nothing” is so true. In life or in death God is there and He will never not be there for those that are eternally secure, who put their trust in Him. That is why we don’t need to worry about death. That is why we don’t need to hold on to this life so much. All we have, want, or need is in and through Him. There is a song called “Rescue” that I just learned recently and there are some words in it that God has used these past few weeks to help me deal with everything in my life, including sins that I’ve been struggling with. The words are “this world has nothing for me ( I will follow You)”. “You are the source of life.” May those words be a revelation and a prayer to us, all of our days here on this earth. And may they be fulfilled on that great day when our last breath comes and we close our eyes here and open them up in eternity. For when we open our eyes in eternity we will be able to see more than we could ever see before, we will be able to understand more than we ever could before, and we will be able experience more than we ever could before in the presence of the Source of Life.