Because I preach, I don’t get to watch the end of too many sporting events on Sunday afternoons. I don’t get to see all of the football game, or the final holes of a golf tournament, so I videotape them. Then, later that evening, I watch the end of the game, or the tournament. That way I know if my team, or favorite player won. If my team lost the game, I don’t even watch it! If the golfer I’m rooting for fades and drops off the leader board, I won’t even rewind the tape! But if they won, I get my popcorn and soda pop and watch it from beginning to end!
That may not sound like very much fun to you (my wife thinks I’m silly!) But I love knowing how it all ends. No matter how bad things might look, I know the outcome! The fumbles, the penalties, the miscues... No matter what happens, I know the outcome!
So it is for the faithful. We know the outcome of life, don’t we?! Even when I make a mistake, or even if others are fumbling all around me, I can ask, “But what does it matter as long as God is in control?!” Isn’t that why Paul can say, “It’s OK, as long as Jesus is preached?” We need a VCR faith.
What we really need is to tune in for some spiritual discernment! We need to look at life the way our God does.
When an athlete is so focused and can seem to do nothing wrong, every shot scores, every pass connects, every pitch is a strike, or every iron shot rattles the pin, we say they’re in the “zone.” Paul’s in a spiritual zone when he says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
We can’t miss when life is all about Christ and our death would be even a greater gain. This kind of faith happens when all of life’s meaning for us comes from Jesus.
This perspective reminds me of when a Bible class teacher proposed a letter-writing project to her group of first graders. Each child was asked to write to a friend. A Six-year-old boy named Lance produced the following letter in his childish print: “Dear Jesus, I like to go to Bible School. I like to play with the kids. I am a good boy. P.S. Tell the angels hello.”
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We can’t miss when life is all about Christ.
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For the faithful, armed with spiritual discernment, life is lived like that. Jesus is so real He’s the friend we’d write to, the friend who sees us through each day. And the angels are right there with Him, so we might as well say “Hi” to them as well!
My friend Wanda was too young to be so sick. Her daughter was in Junior High, her son was in college. Yet there she was, after having a migraine headache interrupt their family vacation, talking with a specialist who shared the horrible news. “You have cancer.”
It was no typical headache. Wanda had a tumor attached to her brain. No radiation treatment, nor any other kind of medical application would be enough. Ten weeks to the day after her diagnosis I preached her funeral. She showed great faith, even faith like our Bible heroes, in her last days.
Just before she died I was there as her family gathered around her. We knew she had just hours, days at the most. One of her sisters, a young woman herself, tearfully asked Wanda to do the most unusual thing. “When you die, give me a sign. Rustle the wind chimes on my porch, whisper my name, gently tap me on my cheek. I just have to know you’re alright. Please give me a sign.”
Wanda lovingly reached her hand out to her sister and boldly answered, “When you have faith like mine, you don’t need a sign. God will make all things clear to us, in His time.” At the funeral I turned to the family and reminded them of Wanda’s strong faith. “Her complete trust in the Lord is your sign.”
That is what Paul is saying to us in this verse. To live is all about Jesus and to die is all about Him too. In fact, to die is gain for us. It is the zone we live in as people of faith. It’s as if we know the outcome because we do!
A VCR faith means we see life the way God sees it and live in His zone. That’s all the sign we need!
A VCR Faith: Living in God’s Zone