The Hope of His Coming: A Sermon by Andrew Spradlin

Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church Sermon Podcast.

We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,

builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.

Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible

and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.

So welcome and enjoy the message.

If you have your Bible, please go ahead and open it with me to 1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians 4 · chapter mention

chapter 4 in a message I'm calling The Hope of His Coming.

One of the dominant themes of 1 Thessalonians is the second coming of Jesus.

In fact, all five chapters speak of his coming.

which is the word parousia in Greek.

It means to come alongside of, to arrive and be present.

Paul ends chapter four and begins chapter five

by speaking of the Lord's coming, his parousia.

Today's passage is one of my favorite passages

in all of the Bible.

It speaks of the death of believers,

the future resurrection of our bodies

and the return of our Lord.

Now to set the context, you've got to remember that the Apostle Paul, Silas, and a young

man named Timothy had traveled to a city called Thessalonica.

And according to Acts chapter 17, as they shared the gospel with them, many of the God-fearing

Acts 17 · chapter mention

Greeks believed and some of the prominent women leaders also believed.

But eventually they were kicked out of the city by the Jews and the city officials and

Little church had formed, though, but they weren't able to be with these new believers for very long.

And so they're away.

And a number of months later, the Apostle Paul sends Timothy back to the church to find out how they were doing.

And Timothy now returns back to Paul and he has this glowing report about their work of faith, about their labor of love.

But he also brought back something that was troubling.

the Thessalonians about the return of Christ. They thought, they were convinced that Jesus was

going to come back in their own lifetime. But now some of their loved ones in the church had begun

to die. And so they were deeply grieving their loss, thinking that those who died were somehow

going to miss out on Christ's return. They were going to miss out on his kingdom's reign upon the

And so Paul writes to encourage them and to comfort them by informing them.

He says in verse number 13, he says,

but I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep.

Now, fallen asleep clearly is a euphemism for death.

You see, God wants us to be informed about what happens to Christians after they die.

He says, I don't want you to be ignorant about it.

Now, there's a saying in our culture that ignorance is bliss.

Well, not when it comes to death.

When it comes to death, ignorance is an absolute nightmare.

Most people have a fear of dying

because they have a fear of the unknown.

What's gonna happen to me when I die?

Where am I gonna go?

Am I gonna just cease existing?

I don't wanna cease existing.

And so many people fear death greatly because of ignorance.

And Paul says, I don't want you, brothers, to be ignorant about what happens to Christians after they die.

And then he goes on to write about the return of our Lord, the return of Jesus.

So obviously, God also doesn't want us to be ignorant about God's plan regarding future events.

Now, there's two extremes out there when it comes to a Christian's approach to end time events.

Some people are just obsessed by it.

I mean, they've got one Bible in one hand and they've got the newspaper in the other.

And they're reading every current event into prophecy and they're connecting the dots.

They seem to be speculating obsessively about it.

The other extreme though are Christians who never think

about the second coming of Jesus.

They are content to remain ignorant.

And I don't think God wants us to be in either camp.

See, prophecy in the Bible wasn't given

so that we could know every detail

that's going to happen in the future.

It was given though to give us hope.

It was given to help us be prepared.

And in order to have hope,

in order to watch and be prepared, we must be informed.

So I want to read again verse 13.

He says, but I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.

And he's going to go on to talk about the return of Christ.

Now, the Thessalonians, they were grieving their loved ones who had died.

And Paul says, that's okay.

It's okay to grieve.

But I want to help you grieve today.

with hope. You see, as Christians, we grieve very differently than the rest of the world

around us, or we should, because we grieve with a sense of hope. Now, I personally know

the pain of losing a loved one, but I cannot imagine the pain of losing a loved one with no hope.

You know, that's how most of the world faces death, with no hope.

You see, if a person dies without knowing Jesus as their Savior and their Lord,

without receiving Him, that's absolutely tragic.

Why? Because there's no hope for that person.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father except through me.

So if a person never opens their heart to Jesus,

if a person rejects Jesus and what He did on the cross for them,

then they die without hope, and that's a terrible thing.

But for you and I, those of us who know Jesus personally as our Savior and our Lord,

there's a great sense of hope, isn't there?

And Paul's going to tell us that that hope is actually anchored in the fact that someday Jesus is coming back for us.

Now, just because we grieve differently doesn't mean we don't grieve.

Because we do grieve, don't we?

Sometimes we grieve intensely, but our grief is not connected to despair.

It's connected to love, isn't it?

I mean, when Jesus' friend Lazarus died, the Bible says Jesus wept.

Jesus wept.

Now, Jesus, he knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet he wept.

Why?

Love.

Love.

I think he was mourning the terrible consequences of sin that had struck his friend Lazarus, whom he loved,

and the separation that took place, even temporarily, was painful.

And so when one of our loved ones dies who knows Jesus, we grieve, we sorrow, because the separation is real.

But we grieve very differently than others, because the separation is not final.

Paul uses the euphemism here of sleep.

He calls it sleep.

You see, for the believer,

dying is sort of like falling asleep.

Now, how's that the case?

Well, when we fall asleep, it's temporary, isn't it?

We fall asleep only later to wake up.

Well, when our bodies die, it also is temporary.

Eventually our bodies are gonna wake up again.

And that's actually what this passage is about.

Now, the euphemism sleep also helps us understand that when our Christian loved ones die,

they're not actually ultimately dead.

They're still alive in the presence of God

as their body sleeps.

The Bible says to be absent from the body

is to be present with the Lord.

Now, Jesus was actually the very first person

to use this euphemism of sleep in regards to death

when he referred to his friend Lazarus, who had died.

We see that in John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

Verse number 11, it says, and after he said that to them, Jesus says to his disciples, he says,

our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.

Then his disciples said, Lord, if he sleeps, he'll get well.

However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought he was speaking about taking rest in sleep.

So Jesus said that his dead friend was actually sleeping.

Now we know that Jesus eventually made his way to Bethany,

which is just a couple of miles outside of Jerusalem.

And when he arrived, Martha,

Lazarus's sister comes running out to meet him.

And she said, if you had just been here,

our brother would still be alive.

You see, Martha had seen the other miracles.

She knew what Jesus could have done.

And so she's blaming him kind of, she's upset.

And she's saying, if you'd just been here,

Lazarus would still be among us.

And in the midst of that correspondence, that relationship, Jesus said to her in verse 25,

He said, I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.

And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

He says, do you believe this?

Jesus basically was saying in this chapter, he said, Lazarus is sleeping.

Why?

Because for those who believe in me, death is very temporary.

They're going to wake up.

And though they die, they're actually alive.

They never die.

So Paul is picking up on this teaching of our Lord.

And he's saying, I know death is awful.

I know we grieve it.

I know it's a terrible thing.

But it's not the end.

It's actually more like falling asleep than dying.

Now, I don't know anyone who's afraid of falling asleep.

In fact, I look forward to a good afternoon nap today, later.

As a little kid, I remember falling asleep in the car from time to time,

and my dad would grab me, and he would sometimes carry me to my bed, right?

And occasionally, as he's carrying me to my bed, I would wake up while he was carrying me.

Folks, that's what it's like,

gonna be like for you and I as believers.

One moment we fall asleep in this world,

the next moment we wake up in the arms of Jesus.

The Bible says to be absent from the body

is to be present with the Lord.

So what exactly happens when we die?

Well, when we die, our spirit becomes absent from our body.

It departs, we are separated, it's separated from our body.

You see, death fundamentally is separation.

When we are spiritually dead, that means that our spirit is separated from the spirit of God because of our sin.

Physical death is when our spirit is separated from our body.

And for the believer, the moment our spirit is absent from the body, the moment it departs and is separated from our body is the moment that is in the presence of Jesus.

See, we're not just flesh and bones like our culture says we are.

We're not just material or corporal.

We are spiritual beings.

My sister Charity was hit by a car and she was killed.

My brother Matthew asked, you know, where is Charity at?

And my parents explained to him that she was in heaven.

And he was having a hard time getting his mind around that, as any of us do when we lose a loved one.

But certainly as a little five-year-old, he was having a hard time comprehending it.

He had just been with her.

Her body is still here.

And so my dad was trying to explain it, so he reached into the fridge, and he grabbed a Dr. Pepper.

And he said, son, what is this in my hand?

And he said, it's a Dr. Pepper, daddy.

And he opened the Dr. Pepper, and he poured it down the sink.

And he said, Matt, what?

What is it?

He said, it's a Dr. Pepper, Daddy.

And he said, no, look, there's nothing inside.

It's empty, it's just the can.

You see, God created us as spiritual beings.

And when the body dies, and our body is important,

by the way, that's what this chapter is about in many ways.

But when you're a believer, your spirit, when you die,

your spirit goes to be with the Lord and your can,

Your shell, your body is left behind.

And that fact allows all of us as believers in Christ to grieve very differently than the rest of the world.

You see, the person who dies without knowing Jesus, we grieve for them, don't we?

There's no hope. It's like a hopeless situation. It's a terrible, terrible thought. But when the

believer dies, we don't grieve for them. We grieve for us, don't we? The grief is very different.

We grieve because we miss them. We want to be with them. We don't want to be separated from them.

When I first walked into the living room where my dad's dead body lay,

I immediately began grieving and rejoicing simultaneously.

It's hard to explain those two intense emotions,

both at the same time, I was crying with a smile on my face.

I said, dad's not here.

That's not dad.

Dad is not here.

He is now in the presence of Jesus.

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Now, Paul explains more about where our hope is grounded

in verse number 14.

He says, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God.

And the dead in Christ will rise first.

And we...

who are alive and remain,

shall be caught up together with them in the clouds

to meet the Lord in the air.

And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore, comfort one another with these words.

Paul ends this chapter to these people

who are grieving the loss of their loved ones,

and he ends it by commanding them,

he says, comfort one another with these words.

Well, what words?

The words that death is not final because Jesus is coming for us.

You see, Jesus is coming back for his church.

Amen?

Why in the world, in the midst of pain and suffering,

in this darkness of this world, the midst of death,

how could we have a sense of rejoicing and a sense of hope in that?

Well, because Jesus is coming back to fix everything.

Now, our passage today speaks of the rapture of believers.

In verse number 17, this word caught up means to snatch up by force.

It was translated as raptura in Latin,

and that's where we get our English word from that Latin word, rapture,

which is referring to this caught up, the snatching up of believers

who are alive on the earth when Jesus returns.

Now, there's a whole lot of debate among the Christian world about when the rapture is going to take place.

Is it going to take place before the Great Tribulation?

Is it going to take place after the Great Tribulation?

Is it going to take place in the middle of the Great Tribulation?

reading the text clearly the timing of the rapture is not Paul's focus because he doesn't address the

timing so since it's not the focus and the point of the passage I'm not going to get into the weeds

of the timing today but Lord willing next Sunday morning when we look at chapter 5 and I unpack the

the day of the Lord I plan to briefly share what I think about the timing of the rapture but here's

Jesus is coming back again.

the point I want to make today? I want to make the point of the text.

Parousia.

And when he arrives, when he comes,

he's going to gather all of his people to himself.

Those who've died have gone to be with him in heaven.

It says right here, he's going to bring with him

those who sleep in Christ,

implying they're with him now, right?

Those of us who are alive on the earth at that time will be snatched up to be with the Lord.

Now, remember the Thessalonians, they were very concerned about their fellow believers who had already died.

They were grieving they're going to somehow miss out on the return of Christ.

And Paul says here, and I think it's the main point.

He says, no, you're not going to miss out.

In fact, they're going to rise first.

They're not missing out at all.

And here's what we learned,

the body of every single believer in Christ

will be raised from the dead.

You say, are dead, they're gonna be raised?

Yes, that's what the Bible teaches.

Now in verse number 14,

it talks about when Jesus returns,

he's gonna bring with those who sleep in Christ

and God is going to raise their body

from the dead, from dust.

From ashes.

They're going to be resurrected.

They're going to be reconstituted and put back together.

And their spirit is going to come with the Lord and it's going to be rejoined to their bodies.

They're going to be given a resurrected body like Jesus was.

And for those of us who might still be on the earth at the time when that happens,

we also will be given resurrected glorified bodies.

Now, remember, you may not have noticed it, but we read it a moment ago.

In verse number 14, Paul grounds our future resurrection in the resurrection of Jesus.

He says in verse number 14, he says,

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.

Now, Paul also grounds our future resurrection in the resurrection of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15.

I'd encourage you to read the whole chapter.

We only can read a couple of verses.

Verse 51 says,

"...Behold, I tell you a great mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet,

for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible."

and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption,

and this moral must put on immortality.

The Lord is going to return with a shout.

The voice of an archangel, the trumpet of God,

is going to sound, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Those of us who are alive on the earth will also be raised,

and we'll all be given incorruptible.

Incorruptible means no more pain, no more aging, no more.

No more sickness, no more suffering, incorruptible, immortal.

That means we're never going to die again.

We're going to be given these wonderful bodies.

What a glorious day that will be when Jesus comes to rescue his church from his impending judgment.

Now, if we back up to John chapter 11 again.

John 11 · chapter mention

When Jesus approaches the tomb of his friend Lazarus,

he asks for the stone to be rolled away from the tomb.

And Martha said, Lord, we can't do that.

It's already been four days.

There's already a stench.

In other words, let us not go through the pain of that.

Let us remember our brother as he was.

We shouldn't have to smell his dead body.

And I sympathize with that.

Seeing your loved one's dead body is hard enough.

I don't want to smell it.

Jesus insisted that they roll the stone away.

And when it was removed, Jesus raised his voice and he shouted with a loud voice.

He says, Lazarus, come forth.

And Lazarus walked out of the grave.

One old preacher said, if Jesus hadn't called him by name, every grave would have opened and every corpse would have come forth.

Someday, every grave containing a believer will be opened and every corpse will come forth.

Because when Jesus returns, what does our passage say?

He's going to raise his voice, isn't he?

He's going to shout, and the dead in Christ shall rise.

And I don't know if it's going to be general,

brothers and sisters, come forth,

or maybe he'll call us by name.

I don't know.

Brenda, come forth.

Donald, come forth.

Charity, come forth.

Roger, come forth.

I don't know how it's going to happen,

but with the shout, the voice of an archangel,

the trumpet of God, the dead in Christ shall rise.

It's going to be a glorious day.

You know, for many people, cemeteries are dreadful places.

I understand that.

It's a hard memory.

It's a dreadful place in many ways.

But my dad used to occasionally refer to cemeteries as resurrection ground.

And I think that's a great way for us as believers to think about it.

Because Jesus isn't going to leave us in the grave.

He's coming for us.

I heard about a pastor whose wife had just died and he was mourning her loss.

But he was scheduled to do a baptism that coming Sunday.

He was supposed to baptize a little girl who was in the church.

And he was grieving.

He really didn't feel up to it.

So he confided in a friend about how he was feeling.

And the friend said, well, you know, you don't have to do that baptism.

She'll understand.

But after he thought about it for a while,

I said, no, I said I would baptize her.

I should baptize her, it'll mean a lot to her.

And so Sunday came around and before the baptism,

the pastor could overhear the little girl

in the next room talking with her friend

who came to watch the baptism.

And her friend asked her, you know,

what's gonna happen when you're baptized?

So the little girl explained about how her pastor

was gonna lower her.

under the water, symbolizing the death of Jesus.

And then that her pastor was going to raise her up out of the water,

symbolizing the resurrection of Jesus.

And the little girl said, well, what if your pastor leaves you down under the water?

The little girl said, oh, my pastor loves me.

He would never leave me down under.

Jesus loves us.

He would never leave us down under.

Our very bodies that we know so well,

and that's what we grieve so much when a loved one dies,

they're going to be raised from the dead when he comes with a shout,

he's coming for us.

Now, in verse number 17, I love how it says,

we who are alive and remain on the earth at that time will be caught up together with them to meet them in the clouds.

That word, together with them, that's language of reunion.

You see, the coming of Jesus is going to result in the greatest family reunion in history.

Sometimes people will ask, they say, Pastor, are we going to recognize each other in heaven?

Of course.

We're not going to know less in heaven.

We're going to know more in heaven.

One of the euphemisms in the Old Testament, when a believer, Old Testament saint died,

it would say, so-and-so was gathered to their people.

This week, I thought a lot about some of my people I'm going to be gathered with.

I'm going to once again be gathered with my grandparents, who I love so much.

I'm going to be gathered with my sister Charity, who died when I was just a baby.

I'm going to be gathered with my dad again.

I'm going to be with so many in our church family who I love so much.

I'm going to get to meet a lot of people I've always wanted to meet,

but never had the opportunity.

Men and women of great faith throughout the centuries.

I'm going to get to meet my mother-in-law, Brenda,

who I never got a chance to meet.

We're going to be gathered together in this wonderful,

the greatest family reunion in history, the reunion of the church family.

When we do that, we're all going to have these resurrected bodies.

Now, it's hard for us to get our mind around that.

I'd encourage you, read 1 Corinthians 15 if you want to learn about these bodies

because they're going to be similar to our current bodies but different.

They're going to be better.

They're going to be immortal.

There's going to be a sense of continuity.

Remember, they could recognize that Jesus, who he was, but he also walked through walls.

So there was continuity, yet there was discontinuity.

I think we're going to be able to recognize each other, but maybe barely.

Pastor Andrew, is that really you?

You look so much better than you did on earth.

I'm sort of counting on that.

But as great and wonderful as that reunion with loved ones will be,

It will pale in comparison to meeting Jesus.

Because that actually is the point here.

He says we're going to be caught up together with them in the clouds.

Why?

To meet the Lord in the air.

And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Now this word to meet was used of a throng of people who would gather to see the king arrive.

Parousia.

He has come.

Jesus is going to come.

And we're going to meet him in the air.

You see, someday we're going to see Jesus face to face.

Face to face.

What a day that will be when my Jesus I shall see.

I shall look upon his face, the one who saved me by his grace.

And when he takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land,

what a day, glorious day, that will be.

Fannie Crosby was just a tremendous hymn writer who was blind.

She could not see.

There was an accident when she was just a baby involving a doctor putting some medicine

in her eyes that ended up causing her to go blind.

And she often expressed that if she was given the opportunity to see again,

that she would choose to remain blind.

And her reasoning was that she said, the first face that I want to see when I get to heaven is the face of Jesus.

What an awesome moment that must have been for her.

See, today we walk by faith, don't we?

And that's okay.

I love walking by faith.

It sure beats not walking by faith.

But someday we will walk not by faith, we will walk by sight.

For we shall behold him in all of his glory.

And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

What a wonderful thought to always be in the presence of Jesus.

The psalmist said that in your presence, Lord, is fullness of joy.

And at your right hand are pleasures evermore.

Verse number 18, Paul gives us our command of the passage.

This is our application.

He says, therefore, comfort one another with these words.

See, this passage is not about the timing of the rapture.

After all, we're not on the planning committee.

We're on the welcoming committee.

The point is very clear.

The application is very clear.

Comfort one another with these words.

And that's what I'm trying to do today.

to bring some comfort to our church family who's grieving.

Maybe you've lost a loved one recently more,

who you love more than life itself.

You had no idea how bad it could hurt.

Maybe it wasn't that recent, maybe it was years ago,

maybe it was decades ago, and yet the wound seems so fresh.

You've never properly healed from it.

You've been grieving their loss as a forever loss.

Now, admittedly, that's one of the most challenging things about death, isn't it?

That it's so final.

I mean, there's no rewinding the clock.

There's no going back to fix it.

We should have gone to the doctor sooner.

We should have done this.

We should have done that.

We can't go back.

It's so final.

It's done.

There's no going back.

And so maybe you've been grieving as one without hope.

But I want to encourage you today.

There's hope.

Death is not final for the believer.

And while we cannot rewind the clock to change things in the past,

the clock is ticking forward to the coming of the Lord.

Someday, the Lord's going to return.

Someday, with a shout, the clouds are going to part.

He's going to descend upon the earth, and he's going to shout with the voice of an archangel,

the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ shall rise.

All of us are going to be gathered together in this glorious reunion to meet the Lord in the air.

And I hope and I pray that's comforting to you.

Now, it could be that you're listening to these words,

you're listening to this passage,

and you say, man, that seems,

what you're feeling and expressing,

I've never felt that about death.

That seems like a pipe dream.

You're not able to experience comfort right now.

Why? Because you don't know Jesus.

The comfort comes from Jesus.

The comfort comes from his spirit.

You see, all of us, for all of sin, the Bible says, and fallen short of the glory of God.

And for the wages of sin is death.

Remember, death is separation.

Physical separation, but spiritual separation.

So that we can know about God.

He created everything.

Yeah.

Everything didn't come from nothing.

We can logically connect the dots.

Okay, there is a creator, there is a designer, but I don't know him.

Well, we don't know him because we've been separated from him because of our sin.

But the message of the Bible is that God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son,

that whoever believes in him, that's Jesus, shall not perish, but will have everlasting life.

The Bible says, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and you believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you also will be saved.

So I want to invite you to let these amazing words become personal to you.

In just a moment, we're going to stand to our feet.

There's going to be pastors and other leaders here at the front.

We're going to ask you to give your life to Jesus, both here and at Olive Drive.

In fact, let's just bow together in an attitude of prayer right now.

In a moment, I'm going to pray, and then we're going to sing.

We're going to stand up, and there's going to be pastors and leaders.

We're going to ask you to come and give your life to Jesus.

Say, I want to be forgiven.

I want this life.

I want everlasting life.

You know, God says in His Word that He's placed eternity into the hearts of people.

That's one of the reasons we fear death.

We don't want to cease to exist.

There's a connection to life.

God gave us that.

It's part of being made in His image.

He's eternal.

We're created to be everlasting beings,

but sin causes death.

And the good news of the Bible is that God loves us so much that He paid the penalty of sin and death.

Why? So that we could be given life.

This great exchange.

Our sin for His righteousness.

I want to invite you to experience it today.

There's nothing like experiencing the love and the grace of God in your life.

If you don't have a personal relationship with him, in just a moment when we stand,

I'm going to ask you that you not wait, that you just step out and you come forward,

both here and at Olive Drive.

You walk down one of these aisles, you walk down one of these staircases,

you take one of these leaders by the hand and you say,

I want to trust Jesus as my Savior today.

God met me here.

Maybe you came not expecting anything today, really,

but God has met you where you're at.

And He's seeking you out.

I want to invite you to yield to Him, to say yes to Him, to invite Him into your life.

Maybe say, I want to be baptized like others today.

Other baptisms throughout our morning.

We had 10 at 9.30 from kids who rode, ride our bus.

to church every Sunday.

Giving their life to Jesus, went public.

Maybe you want to go public with your faith through baptism.

Being baptized isn't what saves you.

Coming to church isn't what saves you.

Doing good isn't what saves you.

What saves you is Jesus.

Grace.

I want to invite you to experience that.

Maybe say, I want to be baptized.

Maybe I want to, maybe you want to join the church,

become an official part of our church family.

Let us know.

We'd love to visit with you about that.

Or maybe you just want to come to these steps and pray.

My prayer is that God would bring us comfort today in Him.

Let's pray.

Father,

thank you so much, Lord,

for coming the first time.

Amen.

not to gather us up, not to judge the world, but you came the first time to lay down your

life for us.

You who are infinite became an infant.

You took on human flesh of a little baby and you lived a perfect life that we have all

failed to live and then you died, the innocent for the guilty.

So that we can live.

Thank you for these wonderful promises in your word that someday we shall rise as you rose.

Please comfort everyone who needs it.

Lord, throughout the morning I've seen faces.

of people who've recently, very recently, lost people that they love so much.

Spouses, siblings, parents.

And Lord, when we lose someone that close to us, sometimes it's like we've lost our purpose.

We've lost our...

setting and our footing, and it feels like we've almost lost our identity, our purpose. And I pray,

Lord, for those people and for all of us that we would recognize that we're all still here on earth

because you have a plan for us. We still have incredible purpose in your kingdom. And so I pray,

Lord, that you would help all of us not find our identity in anyone else but you.

Would you comfort the brokenhearted?

Would you be near to them?

And would you draw people to yourself?

Please open their eyes, open their hearts, we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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