Hope is a powerful thing. Hope for a better life gives
people a reason to keep trying. Hope for the future gives people a reason to
live. And hope for an eternity with God gives grieving people the strength to
put one foot in front of the other. 1 Corinthians 13 says that after all the
temporary things of earth pass away, hope, along with faith and love, will
remain. Hope is one of the greatest gifts that God gives us, and without it we
are lost.
I’m young, but I’ve seen quite a few people that I love
reach the point where they believe that they are without hope. I’ve seen wonderful people who have infinite
potential believe the lie that there is no reason to go on, and I know that that
kind of hopelessness is a brilliant deception by the enemy. I’ve learned that depression is very real, and that it can afflict anyone. In the short life
that I have lived so far, the greatest trick that I have seen Satan play is to
make people who love God, and have all the reasons in the world to have great
hope, believe that they have none.
This is one of the hardest blogs that I have ever written,
because recently a dear friend of mine from high school was deceived into
believing the lie that he had no hope and no reason to continue living. If only
for a moment, he believed the enemy, and he took his own life. Until now, I
haven’t wanted to write this blog, and I haven’t had the words to articulate
this message, but I think that it needs to be said.
Andrew was a wonderful person, as anyone who knew him will
quickly tell you. He was a loving brother and son, a loyal friend, and a strong
pillar of God’s truth and love to everyone around him. He was one of the most
brilliantly intelligent and overwhelmingly talented people that I have ever had
the blessing of knowing. He was a great student, an effective leader, a
powerful athlete, and a gifted musician and worship leader. But the thing that
I most loved and admired about Andrew was his innate ability to bring people
together. People wanted to be wherever Andrew was because he brought with him a
joy and presence that drew people in. He was real, and people knew it simply be
being around him. Through Andrew’s love and joy, they felt God’s love for them.
He truly was a reflection of the image of God to people around him, which is
the greatest thing I think you could say about a person.
Andrew’s death does not define him or overshadow the life of
faith and love that he lived. I am positive that he is in heaven right now
using the creativity that he was so known for to praise the God that he loved
so much. His death is not what I will choose to remember about him, but it does
raise a few important questions for those who knew and loved him. The one I
keep coming back to is this: How could someone who was so loved and who had so
much to live for believe that he had no hope? I think that the answer is
simple: We have a powerful enemy. Even though Andrew was an amazing person who
lived a life of faith, he was still a human, and he was not above being
deceived by a powerful enemy. For a moment, Satan convinced him that he was
without hope, and it makes me all too aware that if Satan could fool Andrew, he
could fool any of us. Satan wants us to think of him as weak and not take him
seriously, because that is how he sneaks his plans into our lives, but he is
not weak. We have a powerful enemy, but the good news is that we have an even
more powerful God. At Andrew’s memorial service Aaron Keyes sang the following
words:
What the enemy means for evil,
you turn it for our good.
You turn it for our good
and for your glory.
You are sovereign over us.
As he sang those words and declared God’s sovereignty over a
situation that seemed hopeless, he took the power right out from under Satan.
Even though Satan thinks that he earned a great victory the day he deceived
Andrew, God is using even this situation to further his glory and advance his
Kingdom. Just as Andrew brought people together in his life, he brought them
together in his death. More than 1,500 people packed into and spilled outside
of Andrew’s memorial service, and what they heard were praises to the God who
brings hope to the hopeless. They heard about the life Andrew lived and the
love of the God who he lived it for. Most importantly, they heard about the
eternal hope that God freely gives to each one of us if we simply choose to
accept it. As I sat and listened, I couldn’t help but think, “The jokes on you,
Satan. You think you’ve won by lying to someone as wonderful as Andrew, but
even this is something that God will use for his glory. Even this brings people
to him. You lose again.”
The message I want to offer with this blog is hope: for the
people who loved and lost Andrew, and for anyone else who might be feeling like
they have none. For Andrew’s family and friends, I remind you of the eternal
hope we have of seeing Andrew again and spending forever with him praising God.
You know that an eternal worship service/dance party/Jesus rave has Andrew
written all over it. He can spend forever dancing, even if he splits his pants,
and we can spend forever laughing at his hilarity. And I remind you of the hope
that Andrew’s life, and even his death, have brought to countless people. He
honored God with his life, and God glorified himself in his death. Sin has lost
its power, death has lost its sting, because from the grave he’s risen
victoriously.
And for anyone reading this who feels like you have come to
the place where you believe that you have no hope and no reason to live, I
promise you are wrong. No matter how dark things seem, or what you have done
that you think is so horrible, I promise you that you always, always, always have hope. No matter how
convincing Satan’s lies seem, God will always win in the end. There is always
someone you can talk to, and there is always a reason to keep going.
In the end, my words are incapable of offering adequate hope
to either those who miss Andrew or those who feel hopeless themselves, so
instead I leave you with some of God’s most hopeful words that were read at the end of Andrew’s
memorial service.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor
demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39
