Grace Thoughts

Announcer: God loves you. Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connections Church with Pastor Tim Kelly. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelly.

Tim Kelly: For me to live is self, my self-gratification, my self-pursuit, then to die is loss because I pursued my life on earth, I pursued myself all the time. So when I die, I'll realize how wasted the opportunity was that I had on earth. Because this 70 or 80 years we have on earth is an opportunity to know God, yes, but to dictate what our eternity will be like also.

For me to live is ambition, then to die is loss. For me to live is sin, then to die is loss. For me to succeed, then to die is loss. And for me to live is to always be right, to die is loss. But once again, if for me to live is Christ, to die is gain.

This is where Paul was at. He said, I'm ready to be departed. I'm ready to check in my ticket, take the bus, and get out of here. Go home to be with Jesus. Nothing's keeping me here except you guys and the will of God. Because we saw earlier in 1 Corinthians, I believe it was, Paul said, I was ushered into the third heavens and I saw things I can't even put words to. I know where I'm going.

And my Christian experience, my life with you guys, my church life has not really been that all enjoyable all the time. Just try being shipwrecked, being 39 lashes five times. It hurts. So for me to live, I'm here to live for Christ. If I die, that's gain. That's what I've been waiting for. I'm living to die when I can go home to be with Christ.

So what do we gain as a Christian? Well, we gain a better body, obviously. We know that. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, a wonderful portion of scripture. It's a glorified body, it's an immortalized body, it's a resurrected body, nothing that we can even understand this side of heaven. We also gain a better internal life. This life in here is what I'm going after, an internal life.

In other words, I won't be ravaged with fears, insecurities, inordinate passions, addictions, poor self-esteem, loneliness, unmet desires, those things. My internal life for heaven is free. The prison of my brain, the noise in my brain, the addictions that cause me to stumble and fall, the different things in how I think and the scars from my childhood and the abandonment in my youth, the betrayal of friends, the heartache of failure and faults and sin, it all disappears.

For me to live is Christ, but when I die, it's gain. Those things that drive me to do the things that I don't want to do, but I do anyway, they're gone. The first freedom I'll probably feel this side of heaven is freedom on the inside. The passions, the lusts, the insecurities, the fears, the lack of appreciation, all those things that drive us as human beings in one moment, one millisecond of time, they're going to be gone. And I will find absolute fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

This side of heaven, my friends, we're never promised a pain-free life. Those who promise you a pain-free life haven't lived very long or they're lying to you. There are no guarantees that Christians won't lose, that Christians won't get cancer, that Christians won't lose people before their time. There are no guarantees of that.

What we are guaranteed is that this isn't all that there is. That there's a life waiting for us that we have yet to realize. And those untimely goodbyes that we've said to people that we love so desperately will someday be reconciled, never, ever to say goodbye again. There'll be a day when we shed heartache for good.

We gain a better hope. I love this word hope. Without hope, hope deferred makes the heart sick. If you don't have hope, you don't have anything. There's suicide in the world because people lose hope. Hope deferred, again, makes the heart sick. We have a hope that there's more than this life. We have a hope that relationships started here will continue up there. We won't always be separated.

We have a hope that there is no such thing truly as death, that we're born as eternal creatures. We have a hope that there's a home waiting for us where those who we love will be there forever and ever and ever, and Jesus Christ himself will greet us. John 14:1-3, "Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God and trust also in me. There is much more than enough room in my father's home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you so that you will always be with me where I am." That's a promise from Jesus.

Verse 24 and 25, "For your sakes," Paul continues, "it's better that I continue to live. Knowing this, I'm convinced that I will remain alive so I can continue to help all you grow and experience the joy of your faith." Paul is saying, hey, I'm here guys, I'm here until the Lord calls me home. It's not my choice, but I'm here. And while I'm here, I'm here for you guys. I think the Lord has me here to help you guys grow.

He's basically saying, I don't want to be here, but God still has a plan for me. And while I'm here, I'll be faithful to you and ultimately to him until he calls me home. I call this, and it's not actually in this passage, but something I've used many times in the past, the "unto him" life. Everything I do comes under the banner of being unto him, under the audience of one. It keeps me faithful and pure with men because I live my life unto him.

The unto him life doesn't care what other people think because I'm living my life unto him. The unto him husband or the unto him wife just loves their spouse unto God, not because they've earned it or they're worthy of it. I love my wife unto God. She loves me unto God because sometimes I'll be worthy of that love on a human level, sometimes I won't. So if it was conditional, then I'll probably be miserable.

But if she loves me unto God and I love her unto Christ, that whatever a marriage faces, you plow through it because I'm not loving you because you're worthy of my love. I'm loving you because he's worthy of my love and devotion. It's not about you or how you respond to me or how you don't respond to me, what you do for me or what you don't do for me. It's all about him and what he's done for me. And he has asked me to be this to you, whatever that means. And it's going to be different for every situation.

It keeps our relationships with others pure and honest when I live unto him, that umbrella. I can't have deceit between us because I'm living my life unto him. This relationship right here becomes very honest, very transparent because it's unto him. The whole thing's unto him. So I don't, this doesn't manipulate my life or steer my life or anything like that because it's unto him.

An unto him life keeps my private life as pure as my public life. An unto him life transforms our families. An unto him life helps us love unconditionally without becoming weary in the way. The unto him life makes our lives very transparent because I'm not protecting anything. We put up these guards to protect an image, to protect something, but I don't have to protect anything because I live my life unto him.

That means I speak the truth in love on a horizontal level. I lay down my life. I don't esteem myself higher than anyone else. I love you just where you're at and give you the very best I have, not because you've earned it, because I'm living my life unto him. It really takes the guesswork out. It takes the stress out of it. It takes the confusion out of it because I'm living my life unto him. That's easy.

"But that person hurt me." I know. I'm living my life unto him, not that person. "That person let me down." Well, I'm living my life unto him, not that person. He's the Lord of my life. I'm living my life unto him. See how this all ties together? Living my life unto him lets me be vulnerable. You can't have a human relationship without being vulnerable, by the way. It's impossible. You'd have nothing but defense mechanisms up.

But because I live my life unto him, I make myself vulnerable to you. And then real human relationships, I trust you, even give you the ability to betray me or let me down. You can't because I'm living my life unto him, but I make myself vulnerable unto you. It keeps us faithful in the small things, the hidden things, the secret things, because we do it unto him. It eliminates dishonesty in our lives.

I heard an interesting story about Chip Ingram the other day. It was pretty funny. As a young pastor, first pastorate, he was preaching on a Wednesday night and he was talking about how many people came to church that Sunday. And he inflated the numbers by about 15 people. And he's driving home, his wife's quiet, just, you know, giving him the new marriage icy not-responding thing.

And so, "What's wrong?" Finally she says, "You lied." "What do you mean I lied?" "You lied." "I didn't lie, what are you talking about?" "You said we had this many in church, we only had that many in church." "I didn't lie, that was just an exaggeration." So it went back and forth for a little bit and he's thinking, "My God, who did I marry? This is going to be rough if it's going to be like this the whole time. Have I married the Holy Spirit? Who is this woman?"

And so he's telling the whole story. And so he goes, "All right, all right, I lied. I just exaggerated, all right." So the next week, Wednesday, he's driving home from church. She's quiet again. And he's thinking, "Here we go, here we go." He's thinking, "I'm not even going to think about asking her. Now I'm thinking about how I'm going to rebut whatever she's going to say I did."

And she, "Okay, what's wrong?" "You lied again." "I did not." "Yes, you did." And they went back and forth. He goes, "You're right. You know what?" he said, "I was a liar. I wasn't a crazy liar. I was just a Baptist liar. I just, you know, just made up, inflated things because it made me feel better about myself."

If I had 100 people in church compared to 75 people in church, it made me feel better about myself. So I inflated the numbers because I thought by inflating the numbers, the people out there would look at me in a better light than they would if the numbers weren't inflated. As subtle as that is, when we live our lives unto him, it doesn't matter. This doesn't matter.

It keeps us strong in service. It keeps us on the front line. It keeps us going forward. It keeps us focused because nothing on the horizontal, the flashbulbs of life, doesn't distract us because we're living our life simply unto him. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.