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He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.

1 Thessalonians 5:24

God never calls us to do anything without faithfully keeping His Word and enabling us to do it. We are not always faithful to do what God tells us, but He remains faithful and stands by His Word to fulfill what He has promised (Isa. 46:11). When the children of Israel reached the Red Sea, they might have concluded that God had abandoned His promise to them. The sea was barring their advance, and the murderous Egyptian army was racing to overtake them! Yet God proved then, as He has ever since, that He is absolutely faithful to every word He speaks to His children. 

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But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.

1 Thessalonians 4:13

In Jesus’ day, a funeral was a time for an impassioned demonstration of grief. It was a sign of respect for the deceased to wail loudly at a funeral. A person grieving the loss of a loved one had no power to change what had happened. There was probably no time in human experience when people felt more helpless or vulnerable than at a funeral. Jesus, too, wept at the funeral of a close friend, but His sorrow did not come from a lack of hope (John 11:35). Jesus knew that soon Lazarus would be alive again. He also knew that at His second coming, Lazarus and all of Jesus’ followers would be resurrected from death to spend eternity with Him in heaven. 

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Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

Exodus 3:6

God always speaks to you in the context of what He has done in the lives of those who have gone before you. When God encountered Moses, He did not give him an assignment independent of what He had done through those who had preceded him. God had made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob hundreds of years earlier, and He was now going to involve Moses in His ongoing activity to fulfill the covenant He had made with Moses’ forefathers. 

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“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

Matthew 16:25

Christians are commanded to lose their lives. This means they ought to deliberately release their lives to God and His kingdom. One of the greatest hindrances to your being on mission with God will be your view of what constitutes your “legitimate rights”—that is, those things that you feel you have a right to experience and enjoy. It’s not difficult to turn over to Christ those things that are not a sacrifice or that you would prefer to do without anyway. 

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Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.

Philippians 3:13

The world will tell you that the dominating influence in your life is your past. If you came from a difficult home, that will determine the direction of your life. If your culture was treated unfairly, that will dictate the condition of your life today. If you were hurt or abused or if your youth was spent in rebellion, the remainder of your life will be spent struggling with your past. Christians, on the other hand, live in freedom because Christ has overcome our past.

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