April 2025 Revealing Light Newsletter

A friend recently said, “things need to start slowing down a bit, this will be our 9th funeral in 5 weeks.” Several of us around here may relate. We’ve been praying together, grieving together, supporting each other, visiting with each other, and reflecting on each day God has given to all of us. We grieve when there are changes. Those changes may be a change of plans, an old part of ourselves, a move from a job or a house, or a change in who’s in our lives around us (they may have even moved too). We realize that there are many ways that we mourn throughout our lives, and at some point in time, we start to lift our head to look up and see what’s in front of us up ahead.

The Disciples of Jesus had been mourning the loss & death of Jesus, their rabbi, master, and friend. Jesus had experienced the humanity of life and death, and now the disciples were experiencing the wake of his death as well. They witnessed Jesus mourn the death of His friend Lazarus, and yet they also witnessed Jesus interrupt the “finality” of death when Lazarus awoke from the grave, when the little girl woke up from her “sleep”, and here again, now Jesus interrupts His own “finality” of death. Jesus shows us that though there are seasons of mourning, and that there is also hope after death.
 
The late pastor John Stott wrote…
“Christianity offers life – eternal life, life to the full. But it makes it plain that the road to life is death. ...Life through death is one of the profoundest paradoxes in both the Christian faith and the Christian life. ...In Galatians he [Paul] declared that he had been crucified with Christ (2:20), and that all who belong to Christ have crucified their fallen nature with all its passions and desires (5:24). This is ‘mortification’, that is, putting to death or repudiating our fallen, self-indulgent nature.”

The Apostle Paul wrote about our own death, the death of sin in our lives as we are raised to new life in Jesus Christ (Romans 6:11, 23; 8:13; Gal 2:20; 5:24), who gives us life now and into eternity with God (John 17:3), who we’ve been reconciled to (Romans 5:8-11). When we look at Jesus, we have hope and life, even while we go with our Great Shepherd through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil for we have hope each day through our resurrected savior, Jesus. “Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55)

John 12:23–25
And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Philippians 3:10–11
that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

- Daryl Struemph

Moving furniture can be a big task. There are some pieces of furniture that you really just need some extra help, it's practically impossible to move on our own (without getting seriously hurt). We realize we need help to get the big heavy couch moved through the doorway, to move the heavy dresser up the stairs, or even extra hands to move a piano. There are several things we really can't do on our own, so in order to accomplish the task at hand, we need to not do it alone. But sometimes, realizing we need the help is challenge number one. We are used to trying to be independent, to do things on our own -- I mean, someone tasked us with this anyway, right?

There’s a phrase that goes around sometimes that says, “God will not give you more than you can handle.” I know it usually has some initial roots from 1 Corinthians 10:13 when God “won’t let you be tempted beyond your ability”, but it goes on to say that God “will provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure the temptation.” It reminds me that it’s not by our own strength that we endure but by what God provides us. I’d like to say it like this instead, “God won’t give us more than we can handle, alone.” He doesn't want you to do this alone, He wants us to do it together by His strength. God isn't a boss that just tasks you with something meant for a team but expects you to somehow do it by yourself.

What do you rely on when you are weak, when you are poor in spirit, when you mourn?
I know I don’t have the strength everyday to make it each day. There are many days I pray, “God, give me the strength I need today, I know I won’t be able to make it through today on my own strength, awareness, ability.” By the end of the day, I saw how God provided the strength I needed for that day, to take it one day at a time, to live in the day, with the breath and strength God blessed us with. We often realize how much we need God & His strength when specific seasons of life have become too much for us to bear on our own. We need Him for life each day through any season.

The Apostle Paul actually shared this as well when he wrote his second letter to the Christians in Corinth.
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.”  (2 Corinthians 1:8–10)

The late pastor John Stott shared in his chapter about death for disciples...
“By no means all beleaguered Christians are repeatedly rescued from death as Paul was. Christians are promised neither immunity nor deliverance. Instead, even in the midst of death we can experience life.”

The Apostle Paul went on to say…
"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.” (2 Corinthians 4:10–11)

“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:7–10)

- Daryl Struemph