M-G: 11.16.13 // We’re Not Ready Yet

After the funeral had ended, I placed my right arm gently around his shoulders and drew him in close to me and softly spoke to him, “You are the last of the bunch. Are you ready for heaven?” Looking down at the ground, he said, “I’m not ready, yet.” He is 84...!

He didn’t kick up any fuss because I asked him such a probing question, and the conversation quickly turned as someone approached us. It gave to me a thread of hope, but at his age and my experiences with others, his answer was like dousing water on a fire. Statistically, the “odds” were stacked against him. But with God, all things are possible, yes?

He had wept as he looked down at the lifeless body of his brother lying in state. I’m sure he loved his brother though they were spiritual worlds apart as light and darkness, but I can’t help but think that he caught a glimpse of his own future; he had to have seen his brother’s face become his own as he gazed upon his face. Perhaps he wept for his brother and himself. It had to have been a poignant and powerful moment for him; it was there I saw the body language of a heart beginning to thaw.

I feared that the further he walked away from the casket, the colder his heart would become spiritually, equalizing to its former self. So quickly was the temperature dropping in his soul that his brother wasn’t even buried yet when he said, “I’m not ready, yet.” Any melted ice had refrozen by the time we reached the grave site. I had said one other thing to him, “The past is past, but the power of choice is in the present, and you are given that power right now by God to choose Christ.”

He stood still and silent like an icicle. I was looking into the eyes of a dead man standing. His tears were no longer dripping from a thawing heart for it already had dipped below freezing, resisting any overtures of the Holy Spirit. I didn’t press any further. He was the same person I knew before, an amiable fellow, but without the Holy Spirit living within him (Jude 1:19; 1 Cor 2:14). My heart was grieved as I backed away to take a photo with his niece.

Other than condolences during the funeral, I had no intention of talking with him after the service had concluded; I was dealing with a different spiritual issue in my own life and heavily in thought about my future. I was too distracted being wrapped up in my own challenges to deal with someone's spiritual problem. Looking back, it happened spontaneously with a stamp of Divine purpose all over it. I am so thankful I took a risk and approached him on the subject. 

What promise of tomorrow does any of us have? We are all bound to die once (Heb 9:27), and who is going to argue that point? The contention is what happens after death. From an evangelical point of view, there are only two destinies: heaven or hell. If you’re not ready to choose heaven yet, then something else needs to be considered. Is it worth the loss of heaven in order to keep hanging on to whatever it is as to why you are not ready yet only to lose your grip on it anyway at death?

I wanted to look him squarely in the eyes and emphatically cry out to him, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2b)! Paul was passionate in the text because this offer will eventually come to an end (Jn 9:4). “Don’t you get it? You’re 84, and you are not ready yet!? Do you not know if you die in your sins you will go to a very awful place?” That’s what I wanted to say, but this is a spiritual battle. I cannot physically make a blind man see anything or use persuasive logic that would turn the tide (Zech 4:6). We proclaim the truth in obedience and leave the results up to the Holy Spirit. 

He heard the Gospel; he got a glimpse of inevitability at the open casket; he received an offer; and he walked away when his eyes could have been forever opened to the truth right then right there, free from sin and on his way to glory! Instead, he left the graveyard, “I’m not ready, yet.”   

Jesus couldn’t have been any clearer, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn 14:6). “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (Jn 8:24). “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (Jas 4:14). And then what? Judgment (Heb 9:27).

Our job as ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor 5:20) is to represent and promote the interests of the kingdom to the best of our ability (in the power of the Holy Spirit) for His glory (Lk 19:10, Christlikeness; Acts 1:8). There are so many people in need of someone caring enough to take a risk by going outside their comfort zone and proclaim the good news to them; it’s called love, the agape kind (Jn 3:16). How can we not? We know right well where “I’m not ready, yet” leads to! How can we simply be unmoved in this life and say nothing to anyone of the judgment to come (cf. Lk 13:34, Christlikeness)? Oh, I see! We’re not ready, yet! <><