Good Monday Morning, My Dear Friends,
As you can imagine, I perform a lot of funerals. M.L. Ford calls me whenever there is a death and the family has no pastor or no church relationship, and part of the funeral is always the visitation. I’ve been to hundreds of them. When the time comes, you will someday have a visitation, and your family members — nieces and nephews, kids and grandchildren — will go through your pictures, all your medals and certificates, your awards, and your whole life is going to be laid out on an eight-foot table.
People are going to come by, and they’re going to greet those folks in your family and shake their hands. And here’s my question: what are they going to say about you? Will your grandchildren still remember, thirty years later, the things they said about you, and what you did, and who you were? It’s my hope that, on that day at your visitation, folks are going to come up and take the hands of your family members and say, “You know what? She was a real Christian. She really walked the walk, as well as talking the talk.”
“You know, he was a guy who had such integrity. You could tell he loved God. I mean, he was in church every time the doors were open, and you could tell by the way he cared for people how much he loved God, and how much he loved people.” “She was the kind of person; you had no doubt where she was going. Because you knew her love for Christ. And every time I was with her, I felt built up, I felt encouraged by her faith.”
“You know, when Dad passed away, there was no question in my mind. Because he had walked the walk every day of his life.” That’s what I would hope they would say about you. And that is what they can say about you, when you trust in Jesus, you believe in his resurrection, and you follow his mission for your life.
So, do we at Imagine Church really believe this? Do we really believe in the resurrection? Do we really believe this happened? Let me give you, our answer. We not only believe it, but we are also counting on it.
And you can count on it, too.
May we live as people of the resurrection, and follow Christ all of our days,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
