10 things

Guest Blogger:  Rhonda Daws

                     “10 Things I Love About My Pastor”

 10. He’s the real thing

 9.  He goes shopping with me and really looks for what I like  

 8.  He is a great father to his children

 7.  He mops my wood floors

 6.  He is always learning and reaching for better things

 5.  His JOKES!

 4.  He’s a great pastor always watching out for his church 

 3.  His cute little head 

 2.  His love for God

 1.  He is the best husband a woman could have. There is no doubt about his love for me!

i saw love yesterday

Yesterday evening I had the privilege to ride to the hospital with Robert Frisone and make a visit to see one of the men that I have admired for 14 years, Harold Adams.  I always enjoy being with Robert.  God bless him because he always drops what he is doing when I call at the last minute to help me or accompany me. 

We visited Harold Adams, a man who I owe so much to.  He was one of the people who kept this church going in it’s earliest years.  His Son helped the church buy the house that would be converted to a church over 35 years ago.  I remember the day I came and interviewed with the church to see if they would like me to be their pastor.  Several men were in the room that day and I never will forget what Harold said to me.  He said, “Our calling is about two things, loving people and seeing souls saved!”

If you had the privilege to have this great, humble man shake your hand or pray for you, you can just feel the love.  I guess that is what I have admired about him over the last 14 years and that is the love this man has expressed to every person who has come in his path.

Last evening he told me his problem was that his heart was racing and I said, “Well that is because your wife, Carolyn walked in the room.”  To which he replied, “My heart races for her all the time, I miss her when she is not in the room with me.”  This is from a man who is 82 years young.  He was at the VA hospital because he wanted to save money incase she needed medicine they would have it.  It was love, just love.

Harold Adams reminds me with his life that love is more than a word or feeling, it is a action expressed to someone else.  His favorite book of the Bible is I John.  He calls it “Little John.”

1 John 4:11-12 (NIV)   Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

I like this little poem I read some time ago about love and it says this:

“A bell is not a bell until you ring it; and a song is not a song until you sing it;
and love is not love until you give it away.”

what happens when we die?

This week I will have attended two funerals, so you can understand I have had questions of many people about death.  Some are the silent questioners who just listen very closely as you talk with someone else who is brave enough to ask the question that they wanted to ask.  The question I got this week was one I think a lot of people have.  It was this:  “When we die do we go to heaven or do we go into a state of sleep?” 

 

Here is what the Bible says about that question and it is really clear in 2 Corinthians 5:8 (KJV)   We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

 

So when we leave the body we are present with the Lord.  In other words we go to heaven the moment we take our last breath here.

 

The next question is not as clear, it is this.  “When we die if our bodies stay here and we go to heaven what do we look like?”  We do know the Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NIV)   For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

 

We know that our bodies that we have now will come back together and meet with our eternal spirit even if someone has been cremated and had their ashes spread all over the ocean.

 

What does our spirit look like without our bodies?  Here is a thought….. you will be viewed from the inside out.  The best way I can explain this to you is the example of hearing someone on the radio for long time. You get a picture of what they look like in your mind based solely on the spirit that they present over the airwaves.  Even though you have never seen them, you have a picture in your mind of what they look like based on their spirit or personality.  Have you ever seen someone after hearing them talk for weeks and when you see them, they looked nothing like you thought they would?  You saw them from the spirit they portrayed.  That is what will make heaven great. You will see everyone for who they really are, from the inside and the out.

 

Just a thought.