The Pastor’s Heart 1/29/2021

Three times since last week’s “Pastor’s Heart.”  Three times I stood with families that had encountered the enemy.  The enemy the Bible calls death.  And three times Heaven entered into my comments.  Heaven’s reality.  Heaven’s hope.  And how to know one is going there.  As I stood and spoke at the third funeral, the graveside for my wife’s uncle, I got more emotional than I thought I would.  I was standing beside a casket of a godly man who served the Lord and taught and preached His word for decades.  A man to whom the Bible was so real with its stories, personalities, and doctrines.  As I spoke, it hit me.  At that very moment, he had not only met his Savior, but he now had the opportunity to meet and talk to all those about whom he had taught for all those many years.  And my heart was in awe of Heaven once again.  Hebrews 12:1 calls that group the “great cloud of witnesses.”  Those who lived and faithfully served by faith and showed that, with a firm trust in God, it’s possible to live for God’s glory no matter the circumstances.  Then the writer of Hebrews challenges us.  Those who live here still, facing the battles and temptations of this world.  He says, “Let us run…the race that is set before us.”  Run by laying aside the weights and sin that impede us.  Run with our eyes squarely focused on Christ, and only on Christ.  Run with patience, understanding it’s a marathon and not a sprint.  Run.  Endure.  Don’t faint or quit.  Run and keep running.  They did, and so can I.  And so can you.  Do you know what I just realized?  Even in his passing, my Tina’s Uncle Albert was still teaching, and that’s a testimony for which we all should run!