|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Hope does not disappoint (Romans 5:5, NASB).
Greg Laurie is the 71-year-old pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California. He’s also a well-known evangelist. If you watched the movie The Jesus Revolution, you learned the roots of Laurie’s faith at the beginning of the Jesus Movement in the early 1970s.
In 2008, Laurie lost his 33-year-old son in an automobile accident. Recently, in a podcast, he shared three thoughts on losing his son and the hope that he found in Jesus and Heaven.
First: We go to Heaven
Greg Laurie said. . .
As a Christian, I believe I’ll see my son again because he believed in Jesus. He won’t be in Heaven because I’m his dad. He’ll be in Heaven because he put his faith in Christ and he had that relationship. He’s a part of my future as well. So that gives me hope.
Second: Grief helps us focus on Heaven
“. . .The depth of your grief is proportionate to the magnitude of your love,” Laurie said. “So, you might say, ‘Well, how could God constitute a world made such that a child could die?’ And then you think, ‘Well, if you have a child, and the child dies, and you grieve, the grief is an indication of the magnitude of the loss.’ So, the fact that you grieve, that’s a testament to the value of life, even though it’s truncated.”
Laurie then added, “I believe in Heaven, and I believe in it more than I’ve ever believed . . . I’ve always been a student of Heaven as a Christian, and the Bible speaks so much of Heaven, but when my son went to be there, I wanted to know more about it. . .”
Third: We should live for Heaven
Greg Laurie continued. . .
Jesus promised the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise” — a word that can be translated as the ‘Royal Garden of a king.’ The Apostle Paul went there, and he came back, and then after that, he said, “I have a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. . .’’
Then, Laurie said. . .
“Ever since that moment in this life, he had homesickness for Heaven. So coming back to my son, I can’t explain it, but I would say this: when he went there, I feel like a part of me went there too. I believe when my son left this world for the next world, and that tragic automobile accident, that he was taken by angels into God’s presence, and I believe that I will go there too.”
Concluding the podcast, Greg Laurie gave a clear presentation of the Gospel. . .
“Ultimately, when everything’s said and done, what’s more important than the afterlife? What’s more important than where we spend it? According to the Bible, I believe there’s a literal Heaven, a literal Hell, and I believe we choose in this life where we will spend the afterlife.
I’m not going to heaven because I’ve lived a good life, because I failed in many ways, but because Christ laid His life down for me on the cross.”
Amen! I’m thankful for Greg Laurie’s insights into the hope that we find in Jesus.