John 3:16
I was sitting in my room taking a day for myself while everyone else was out at ministry and God used that verse to reveal something to me that I hadn’t realized in 9 years. There was just something about that verse that grabbed my heart on that lonely day.
I pondered that verse all afternoon and into the night.
‘What God? Why are you telling me this verse over and over, I don’t get it?’
Slowly, after many prayers and countless hours of crying, I started to get what The Lord was trying to tell me.
Love and Eternity.
It was this message that God wanted me to share the next morning at church.
Those two words, from perhaps the most well known verse in the entire Bible, define exactly what our Christian faith is all about.
Jesus died on the cross so that we could spend ETERNITY with our Father because He LOVES us that much.
After so many years of failing to see the meaning behind that single verse God reminded me of something painful yet so beautiful.
None of us belong to this world. We belong to Him.
He wants us for all eternity, not just a few years on earth. That is why He sent His Son to earth. Eternity with The Lord would not be possible if God first didn’t love us enough to send His Son to die on a cross.
It’s not that I had been questioning God’s love for me or that He wanted me forever, it was just that I hadn’t realized the depth of what that truly meant.
But you see, those few sad days in November weren’t just any other days. They are the hardest days of the year for me and always will be. They are the anniversary of the death of one of my best friends. A terrible reminder of the loss so many people suffered on that awful day in 2005.
When we lose someone we love it is the earths loss, we feel the pain and hurt, but ultimately it is Heaven’s eternal gain. We do not belong to this world.
It took me nine years to realize that it was through death that God reminded me how much He loved me.
And that was the message I preached the next morning at church in a rural village outside of Nizamabad on the nine year anniversary of my best friends death.
Jesus’ life was based off of one question: How much do you love God’s children?
He gave that answer 2,000 years ago when He opened His arms out wide on a cross and said, ‘this much.’
He did this so that we have the opportunity to spend eternity with our Father. Because He loves us that much.
I didn’t realize until later that most of the kids that were there that day were orphans, who also knew all too well the pain felt through death.
God used Kasey’s death to remind me of life.
The love that Jesus gave brings peace and comfort to my heart knowing that Kasey is in Heaven with The Lord for all eternity. And I have the hope and faith that one day I will be reunited with Kasey and I too will spend eternity with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The truth is, we can all be reunited in Heaven if we believe in the truth of John 3:16, that God loved us so much He sent His son to die on a cross so we could be with Him forever.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He sent His only son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”
