“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2)
What a great verse – I’ve used it for three weeks running because it teems with truth. The last two weeks have focused exclusively on the truth that heaven is a real place, and in some respects, this week’s message continues to point out that truth. But this week is more about the messenger who speaks truth – Jesus!
This is a very personal story because it is about my brother. No, I’m not going to hang my family’s laundry out for all of you to see. Instead, this week’s column is about the fear of dying, told through an experience that my brother had. In his early sixties, his health has deteriorated over the years. Crippled by arthritis and disabled by emphysema, most days are at best a struggle for him. In fact, breathing has become so difficult that he is permanently tethered to an oxygen tank just to keep him alive.
Like many of us, he is afraid of dying. It’s not that he doesn’t know Jesus. His salvation is sure. It’s more about the reality that he knows he is in the winter of his life even though his desire to live burns as brightly as the sun on a July day. During a recent hospital visit after he was removed from a respirator, his doctor told him that he did not think he would come off if it were used again to help him breathe. “You need to think about what you want us to do if we have to put you back on it,” his doctor told him.
“What’s there to think about,” my brother told me. “I want to live!”
After witnessing what the fear of dying was doing to him, my sister wisely declared to him, “The Lord will not take you until he gives you some dying grace. If you’re afraid of dying, he’s not ready to take you.”
It wasn’t very much later, as my brother lay dying on his death bed that the Lord himself decided to pay him a visit. “I didn’t dream this up,” my brother confided in me. “I saw him and I heard his voice. I didn’t see his face, but I could tell it was him by his clothing.”
“We got off that ventilator, didn’t we, Jesus said to him. “I think it’s time for us to go.”
But my brother was not ready to go and asked Jesus let him stay awhile longer. “I’d like to see my wife again,” he told him.
I’ll arrange that,” Jesus told him. “You still have a choice. If you want to stay, you can.”
My brother confided in me that as he watched Jesus walk away, he came within a hair of saying, “I’ll go now.” But just before he spoke, the Lord turned around to him and said, “Be at peace. We will see each other again.”
My sister was right. The Lord will provide dying grace when it’s needed. My brother asked me to tell this story because he wants you to know that Jesus is as real as much as heaven is a place. And his real fear is not as much about where he will go when he dies, but where you will go when you die. Just four verses after Jesus promised us that heaven is a real place, he provided us with the roadmap for getting there. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:60)
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