It really surprised her, how intense her emotions were after all that time away from church. But what a wonderful moment, that sudden lifting of the soul, and if only it could’ve lasted forever! It wasn’t to be, though. It wore off after a while, and she left the cathedral, absorbed by whatever came next.   

    And isn’t life like that? It has its inspiring moments – a song on the radio reviving a memory, a hobby you can’t wait to get back to, a worship service that charges the batteries, or a concert that has you dancing in the aisles. A book will do it, too, so can a movie, a favourite TV series, helping someone in need, an early morning walk, watching kids open gifts, listening to a choir, seeing someone take advice – they’re all wonderful sources of inspiration. 

     But they’re all so temporary. Once the concert’s over and the song has finished, the brain automatically clicks back into cold reality mode and it’s back to the business of survival. I’d hate to be dependent on these things for my inspiration, then, because they only last so long.  

     I like what Paul said, therefore, because it was his dream to keep people inspired all the time. “My aim,” he wrote in Colossians 2:2, “is to keep them in good heart,” always feeling encouraged, positive and hopeful. Why? Verse 2, “so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, and grasp God’s secret, which is Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” It wasn’t Paul’s purpose to lift people’s emotions for the moment, it was to get people discovering the treasures hidden in Christ, because once they got a taste of that, there’d be no stopping them.  

     This was the secret to keeping people inspired all the time. It wasn’t trying to create a really moving sermon or a cleverly orchestrated worship service to win the youth, because they only last for a while, and if people become dependent on emotion for inspiration, they’ll need more and more. But if people hear the gospel and experience for themselves that Christ “is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24),” that’s what will keep them inspired forever!

     There is no sense in death, though. Here’s a person who’s lived for 90 years and we’ll compress his lifetime into a 30 minute funeral service, followed by a reception and a gravesite interment, share a few memories and all go home. 

     It’s awful. He’s got nine decades of accumulated wisdom and memories to share, and he’s dead. The stories people tell of him, the great services he performed, and the wonderful legacy he left, will soon be forgotten, too. And for some odd reason, people like to call funerals a “celebration of life!”

     But actually, they’re right. A funeral for a Christian IS a celebration of life, because the man’s not dead! “Whoever lives and believes in me,” Jesus said, “will never die (John 11:26).” Now that’s a whole new twist on death. Death is no longer death when a person believes in Christ. Shocking? Yes. Even Jesus had to ask, “Do you believe this?”  

     Believe what, though? Verse 25, it’s believing that Jesus is the “resurrection and the life,” because anyone who believes that “will live, even though he dies.” In other words, for simply believing that Jesus is the source of our eternity, a Christian receives a life that will carry him right through a physical death. He can die physically but not be dead. 

     We can actually defeat death, then, before we die! Or defeat death while we’re still alive! And the secret? Believing Jesus is our eternal life.

     But why should we believe he’s our eternal life? Because he defeated death himself, for starters. Proof? He came back to life again. So Jesus knows all about defeating death because he’s already done it. For him to say, then, that he’ll do the same for us, carries the weight of his own experience behind it.

     But it’s more than that. When Jesus asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” she answered, “Yes, Lord, (verse 27), I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” And she believed this BEFORE Jesus was resurrected, not after, too.

     So what made her believe even without the evidence of Jesus’ resurrection yet? Simple. It was the Bible, because the Bible had said the likes of Jesus would come along (John 6:14), and that was enough for her.

     But how do I get that across at a funeral? One can only try.

     It all started with 100 Huntley Street and watching the amazing acts of service and giving that people are doing. One man, for instance, deserted by his mother on a street corner at age twelve, now has a worldwide ministry serving thousands upon thousands of children. Another courageous Christian ministry is rescuing girls from prostitution in Cambodia.

     I thought to myself, “But what am I doing to help people? I’m not doing anything close to what these Christians are doing. I feel so guilty, so lacking, so – well, admit it – so inferior.” 

     Then I heard that a friend of mine had published a book. A book, no less. I haven’t done that, either! So, what am I doing with my life instead, when all these other Christians are being so active, productive and useful? And I’m not just feeling guilty, I’m jealous too, because think how great it’s going to be for them in the line-up meeting Jesus one day. All those wonderful things they did in his service they can talk about together. And me? Not a book to my name, not a child rescued.

     It reminded me of Luke 19:15. Jesus is telling the story of a king wanting to know how much his subjects gained with the money he’d given them. My worst fears exactly. It’s line-up time, and Jesus wants to know what I’ve got to show for all my years of being a Christian. What did I do with the gifts he gave me? 

     Well, the first chap comes up and he’s made ten times what the king gave him. And Jesus is pleased, too, verse 17. “Well done,” he says, “Because you have been faithful in a very little…” – hang on, stop tape, what was that? For all those tremendous gains the man made, it was only “a very little?!”

     In the great scheme of things, yes, I suppose it would be. But the man had been faithful. That’s what really pleased Jesus.

     Faithful how, though? Verse 23, he’d been faithful in putting what he’d been given to good use – and not to himself, but to Christ. It wasn’t to make a name for himself, or get himself on TV as a great guy. It was simply to serve Christ in whatever way he could with the abilities he’d been given.

     I don’t have much ability, compared to what some Christians have, but that’s not what matters. It’s not what I do with my abilities, but who am I using my abilities for?

What God does in the book is arrange a meeting with Mack, the Dad, in the shack where the girl was killed, and proceeds to build Mack’s faith by Mack seeing God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in action together. He shares happy meals with them, he walks on water with Jesus, shares mystical experiences with the Holy Spirit, is allowed by God to meet his dead father, see his dead daughter alive and happy, and later, he’s taken by God to the cave where his daughter is buried. And finally, after all this has been done, Mack is convinced he’s loved and God can be trusted.

So it’s a story about faith being restored by seeing miracles, mystical visions, meeting dead relatives and experiencing God in warm, fuzzy terms. It’s a book of fiction, yes, but it made me wonder what a child or a new Christian might think of this touchy-feely version of God. Is this how God operates when tragedy strikes and faith is severely tested? Can we now expect God to do for us what he did for Mack? Will God also provide us with mystical experiences and Disneyish solutions when our faith needs restoring?

Jesus, however, told Thomas in John 20:29, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” It’s a greater blessing being able to trust God without anything visual – real or imaginary – being needed.

And where does such trust come from? From the Holy Spirit putting the love of God into our hearts, Romans 8:15-16, Galatians 4:6 and Colossians 1:8. The Spirit doesn’t need mystical meetings with God or imaginary pictures of God in human terms to build our love for God or our trust in him. The Spirit does it directly, straight to the heart.