It was an incredible privilege to be asked to speak today at the funeral of my friend, mentor, boss, and ‘spiritual dad’ because I first heard the gospel through him – as so many I met today did. I couldn’t do it better than him of course, so I used a lot of material from his fantastic book “LIVE LIVE YOU MEAN IT”, inviting people to hear him speak, one more time. I saw five people stand to pray following the invitation I gave to live for Jesus like Eric did. Glory to God.
“Nobody lives forever. A wise person builds a legacy to be taken forward by others.
You are unique, there has never been anyone like you on the face of the earth. There will never be again you are a work of art, you have the capacity to access the power that made and sustains all things. The difference between people who do and don’t fulfill their God-given potential is intentional living – living like you mean it!
I’m a lucky man. I was brought up by parents who loved me and believed in me, who believed in God and prayed for me every day – they believed their prayers made a difference, I share that belief.
The church where I grew up in was like many churches. We believed in and preached the generosity and forgiveness of a loving God. But we practiced a life bound by rules and regulations.
There came a day when the whole encrusted facade of religiosity cracked – and rage poured out of me at God. I’d had enough – I was going to tell him the truth about the anger and frustration I felt. I’d had enough of his church!
I was told it was full of the spirit of life, but it felt to me like a tomb. Our services were not celebrations of a risen Saviour but funeral services for a poor, noble, dead Jesus – with God remote and uncaring, having no power to transform.
Legalism commanded I’d be righteous. I just knew I couldn’t do it – so I poured out my rage in words – swear words, curses all the four- letter words I could think of. There seemed no end to it. Next day I woke up the same! It went on for another day at least.
There came a point when I was exhausted and stopped, and became conscious of a very quiet voice deep within saying, “Is that all?”
It felt almost quizzical, I gathered my strength and replied, “No there’s more!” I gave him the rest – finishing, “You can send me to hell if you like, at least now you know how I feel.”
Again the quiet voice spoke, “Have you finished?”
I was too tired to say anything but Yes.
I have never forgotten the next words they rang within me so clearly, “Shall we get on with it then?”
I couldn’t believe it – this angry God I’d pictured as being hungry to condemn me turned out to be eager for a relationship with me, in which honesty was not a sin to be punished.
Christianity then is not a system of making myself good enough for God. Jesus followers are humans who have learned to live in the unjustified approval of a Father who loves them for who they are, not how well they perform.
“I have to confess… that even at my age… with long years of experience, I struggle with the issue of time keeping…”
Confession is truly therapeutic – so why wait?
Confess your failures, your sins, everything to God immediately – stating it in blunt and clear terms – whatever you have done. Once I give the shameful bits, the regrets and the guilt to God, he can set me free at last from the chains that held me prisoner – it is Jesus who makes this possible.
As a boy, the little back street chapel I attended took us to Harringay Arena to hear a wild young American preacher. I stood in that building with about 10,000 people. Billy Graham was different from every preacher I had ever heard – he preached as though he meant what he said and said what he meant – there was passion and authority I had never seen before- it touched me to the core. As I sat there, I knew that above all else that was what I wanted to do – and I felt God was saying to me, at the age of 12, “That is what I want you to do.”
But the response from inside me was, “I could never do that, people that come from my kind of background never get to do stuff like that.”
At the age of 29, my life was a mess, and my marriage was in trouble – driving in my car, my eyes were streaming with tears – as God said to me again, “The call you received 17 years ago is still there – I want you to be a proclaimer of my Kingdom”.
I could not believe it. The very thought that God would want somebody who made such a mess of things was shocking. It still shocks me today!
I had absorbed the conventional religious understanding that to serve God I had to be good enough, and I knew I was not good enough – but that moment, I came alive – because now I had a reason to live, a purpose bigger than me, a destiny out of this world and a relationship stretching from here to eternity.
God has promised that (if I will allow him to) he will keep working on me every single day of my life – if I have entrusted myself to him then I will not die until he’s finished doing what he has to do. He wants to make me into something that shines out his glory in this life, but he also has in mind an eternal destiny that goes beyond death.
We are being prepared for a life after this one marked by the happiness of God himself – bigger than the whole creation.
That is why the story of the cross, the darkest hour of Jesus – is a story that vitally concerns every human being.
I once introduced a young man to this Jesus and it revolutionized his life. When I went back to visit him at the church he was now attending, he saw me and delightedly shouted to me, from the back of the church, “ ‘ere Eric! This Christianity – it’s bloody marvellous!’ And it is just that!
It is a bloody story – but marvellous!!
People spat, soldiers pushed with spear butts as he staggered through the narrow streets. The flogging he had already endured was more than enough to kill a man. He stumbled down through the city, out of the gates – to Skull Hill.
At the top, they laid the cross on the ground, but laid the man on the cross, and took the Roman nail – probably an 8 inch spike and hammered it through the wrist bones or between the radius and the ulna. Not the hand – it has no structure that would hold the weight of a body.
Always the right first, then pull the left arm out tight – until the arms were almost popping out of the shoulders, then a nail into the left wrist.
At last, he broke his silence saying over and over again, “Father forgive them they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Another nail through the ankles – they lifted the cross high, dropped it into its hole in the ground – he began to die. A long and painful process.
He couldn’t breathe except by a pushing up on his nailed feet, it was agonizing.
It lasted 3 hours – in the darkness the Father came.
But not to rescue his son.
He came to charge him – with the lust, hate violence, envy, pride and greed of this broken world. As he hung on that cross, the Father downloaded the sins, the shame and the suffering of every single human being that ever lived – all the hellish filth and pain of our polluted human souls, until the mighty soul of Jesus was saturated with it all.
Jesus screamed, “My God my God why have you abandoned me?”
No answer.
Such is the nature of hell – where there is no answer from God.
But then – he gave a great cry of triumph – it echoed around the hills, “Completed!”
When they translated it into Greek, they used the word tetelestai, it means the final account has been paid!
Surely all heaven erupted at that moment!
Angels cheering to the highest heaven.
Then he whispered “Father – I’ve done the job. I’m coming home.”
He entered hell, not as victim but as conqueror then burst out leaving a hole torn in the roof, so no one need ever be captive who wants to be truly free!
This is the story of the cross, as best I can tell it.
A cosmic adventure greater than anything this world has ever known. This is why my life is devoted utterly to Jesus he is the ultimate hero. I will follow him anywhere in life or in death. And I know that I shall see him when I die because he died my death first – he got there before me so the first thing I shall see at the moment of my death will be his face. Then begins the adventure of eternity!
One way or another one day you will be leaving. Nothing you can do will stop the onward march of time and each moment takes us nearer the point when we will no longer be part of life here. Since there’s nothing we can do to stop that process it would be wise to give at least some thought to preparing for the event when it occurs.
Ask yourself, how do I want to be remembered? A crucial part of preparing for the end of my life has to be a determination that when I leave there’ll be no loose ends – nothing I’ve held onto that I should have given away.
How do I want to be remembered? As the kind of person who gives value to others, helping people who feel worthless understand that in fact they have immense intrinsic worth – I do not want to be remembered as someone who acts like a total prat.
Preparing for my departure means first, no unfinished business, no one who has offended me unforgiven – no apology I should have given unissued.
No ‘I did it my way” bravado for me – I have done many stupid things in my life but I’m not going to be that stupid!
Walking into the reality of the heavenly realm, if I have accepted his offer of relationship I enter as a friend – so I have to believe that death is good.
Though the process may be frightening, to me it’s not evil – but a positive good.
If I make the journey with Jesus, it’s a transition into a life infinitely superior to my existence here – so not only is there no point in kidding myself that I’m not going to die, I’m actually robbing myself of seeing it as part of the adventure!
If I can pass this on to people around me, maybe they will take what I’ve given and run with it – and if at the moment of my death Jesus will be waiting for me with arms wide open and the most brilliant smile on his face – then the best is yet to be – in the way CS Lewis described in the Chronicles of Narnia that “all their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before”.
The astonishing thing about God is that he never gives up on us.
It’s vital that you understand that your destiny runs from here into the glory of eternity, and it’s never too late to get back on that pathway.
If God wrote a destiny for you before you were born then he has not rescinded it! He will never let go of that dream – because he will never stop loving you.
It is possible for you to reject the dream…
But..
the moment we give him a chance to, He will rewrite that dream so as to incorporate our screw ups, our mistakes, even our rebellions – no one else can do that, that is his glory!
But he will not intervene until you ask him to – he will not invade your space. He will not involve himself in relationship with you, unless you open the door to him. No one can take that choice from you.
Right now, you can ask.
I’m aware that many of us have screwed up spectacularly in the past, we may feel we’re disqualified. But we should never give up – because he won’t.
You still have the power to choose, the best first choice to make is to reconnect with your creator to acknowledge I’m in the wrong place and it was my choices that got me here, but I don’t want my own stupidity to be the epitaph for my life – God forgive me and give me grace to start again and this time to walk close to you.