Category Archives: death

November 16, 2013 · 5:17 pm

Water Baptism–A Symbol of the Death of Our Sin Nature

We may not realize it yet, but we are blessed, for we have seen that our old self needs to go.  Many try to redirect or re-channel its activities.  Sometimes we try to clean it up, but He wants it to die.

He said to repent and be baptized in water.  Yes, water baptism is a symbol of something else, yet we should still do it.  But few know what the real baptism is.  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Messiah Yahshua were baptized into His death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Messiah was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Rom. 6:3-4. NIV.

Going down into the water is a symbol of the mortal life we now live in this flesh.  Coming up out of the water is a symbol of the new spirit-being life we shall live which is the immortal life that we are called to.

Water is a symbol of our mortality.  Our first physical birth is an immersion in a bag of water.  We are born of water.  We mortals are about 75% water.  We  begin  in  our  mother’s  womb in water.  During water baptism we are baptized into His death.  To live in this mortal body is to die.  This watery entombment we call a body is really a deathtrap.  It by its very nature has to die.  The Messiah’s earthly body was composed of the same watery stuff that our bodies are.  And He died.  He had to die by reason of the nature of his shell during His earthly tenure.  This watery, flesh and blood body cannot inherit immortality and go into the kingdom of the Eternal One.  To be made of water is to be mortal, to be awaiting death, for water is extremely unstable, subject to every whim of nature’s forces.

To sin is to die.  Mortality is to be able to die.  Therefore, our mortality is to sin. Sinning insures a human of not receiving a new spiritual heavenly body.  But now He has enabled us to live a life where we do not have to sin, if we receive His Spirit.  Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust (desires) of the flesh (this old mortal body). Gal. 5:16. NKJV.

He was made to be sin for us

We, then, when we go under in water, are symbolically being immersed into this watery mortal state of sin with Him.  We “are buried with him by baptism into death.” Rom.6:4. God calls those things that are not,  as though they were.  We are dead already (Yahshua told the disciples, “Let the dead bury their dead”).  He calls it before its actual physical death when we consent to and experience it (in revelation).  The water is the symbol of our earthly mortal bodily state.  This spiritual death of our old self comes now in this revelation before the fruit of death comes to our earthly bodies.

In conjunction with this, few know that the Messiah, the day of His death, actually became sin for us—he who had never sinned.  He was the sacrificial  Lamb who was set to be sacrificed  before the world ever came into existence.  God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. II Cor. 5:21. NIV. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Rev. 13: 8.

The levitical priest, in types and shadows, laid his hands on the sacrificial goat, thereby transferring Israel’s sins upon it.  So did the Father place all of mankind’s sins upon the body of Messiah.  When He died, the body of sin died; our sin died that day.  To whom is the arm of Yahweh revealed?…Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all…It pleased Yahweh to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see His seed. Isa. 53:1,6,10.

We make the Lamb’s soul an offering for our own sins by realizing that it was us in our sinful state hanging on the tree that day.  We must be immersed in this knowledge.  We must believe that our old self—that old monkey on our back, that old demon that we were, that selfish, egotistical, self-absorbed, sorry excuse for a human being—that old thing that we were is now, in God’s eyes dead.  Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin. Rom. 6: 6.

[This is ch. 28 of my book, Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality, which you can find at the top of this page.  Just click “Ebook…”]

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September 28, 2013 · 2:49 pm

Dust to Dust, Ashes to Ashes–A Eulogy

This solemn occasion, in which we gather to bury this loved one, brings the age old question to mind: How do we deal with death?  To be human is to have pondered this inevitable enigma.  The death of someone close to us hurls us into thoughts about our own mortality.  Death is that lonely part of the human journey, the ticket to that solitary ride into the mysterious cosmos and the life beyond.

Death, and how to deal with it, is one of the great themes of literature.  It is the constant concern that motivates thinkers, writers, and philosophers to dive into the depths of the human condition.

We want to know what follows this fragile earthly existence.  What really happens?  Not what this man says nor what that group claims, but what really transpires.  What is the truth concerning that first step beyond this dimension?

Being Christians, we will look to the bestseller of all time, the Holy Bible.  We will look to the ancient Hebrew patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and the Savior Himself for our answers.

What did they say about death?  Not what someone said they said, but what words did they actually write down to explain to us about this experience called death?  Moses reports to us that the LORD (Yahweh in the Hebrew) said to the fallen Adam, “In the sweat of thy face shall you eat bread, till you return unto the ground, for out of it were you taken.  For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3: 19).  Later in Genesis, Abraham said, Look at me.  Here I am about to speak to Yahweh my Creator, and I am only “dust and ashes” (18: 27).  King David says to God, “You have brought me into the dust of death.”

And some say that that is all there is.  We are born; we walk around the earth for a moment in time; we laugh; we cry, and then we cease to be.  But according to the Hebrew authors of the Bible, that is only half of the story.

Yes, our bodies are composed of dust and ashes.  But another very special ingredient must be added.  Take the dust, mix it with water, and add the special spark of the spirit through the miracle of the Master’s touch, and you have the human being–what the apostle Paul called, “the glory of God.”

“There is a spirit in man…”

The prophet Job confirms this when he writes, “There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives man understanding” (32: 18).  Inside this miraculously fashioned body of dust lies a spirit given to us by our Creator through which He enlightens us.  Job goes on and says that God speaks to us “in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then God opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction, that God may withdraw man” from his own purpose, and hide pride from man.”

God reaches out to us as we walk “through this valley of the shadow of death.”  Job later explains how our “soul draws near to the grave.”  Then God says to his messengers, “Deliver them from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.”

God promises to restore us to our youth if we say to our Maker, “I have sinned, and perverted that which is right…then He will deliver us from going to the pit, and his life shall see the light” (Job 33: 15-28).

Hope in the Resurrection

Who will deliver us from the grave?  2,000 years before the Savior walked the streets of Jerusalem, Job wrote, “For I know that my Redeemer lives,  and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth,” and though my body be destroyed, “yet in my flesh shall I see God” (18: 25-26).

The prophet Daniel confirmed this hope of life after our earthly body passes away.  Michael the archangel told him that the resurrection will take place after the great “time of trouble” that will befall the earth in the latter days.  At that time your people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.  And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (12: 1-2).

So, there it is.  In these few passages, we see a resurrection that will lift us up out of the dust of our graves.   The resurrection is our only hope, and that hope hinges on our Redeemer and Savior.  Christ said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
It is now left up to us the living to seek out and find our own way with our Maker.  It is a personal thing.  We all must find the path that leads out of the dust and ashes of death and be reconciled with God.  We can help each other, of course, but we cannot “walk that lonesome valley” for someone else.

And so, now, we commend Scott Kenneth Hancock’s spirit back to the Heavenly Father from whence it came, and in fulfillment of scripture, we place his dust and ashes back into the earth from whence it came.

May God’s grace and mercy help us all on our journey back to the heart of God.  Amen.

[Remembering my Dad with these words spoken over his grave ten years ago.]        Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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June 1, 2013 · 8:05 pm

A Lesson in Wisdom

Who is that one person that you love so much that you would give all your assets and possessions, even your own soul, so that they could live on for ever and never have to taste death, never have to lie there cold and ashen, prepared for burial?

We all have someone, surely, that we would give everything to redeem them from the inevitable decay that awaits them in the belly of the earth.

But we cannot make them live on for ever.  We do not possess the power to save them.  They will die; the graveyards are full of people that someone loved dearly yet could not prevent their demise.

I remember the scene at the graveyard.  Most of the mourners had left.  Hugging the casket of the 20 year old young man was his grandfather, sobbing and moaning, “But I loved him.  My darling boy.  But I loved him!”  And in that instant I knew that he would have given his very own life in exchange for his grandson’s.  But he could not.

We mortal human beings cannot redeem, for any price, someone that we love.  Our riches cannot be brought and given to God as a ransom paid in order to purchase the life of our loved one and thus prevent them from dying.

It is only God Almighty, the Giver of life to our loved one, who will take back that life at a certain time.  We are not in control of life or death.  God is, and He will take our lives back to Himself. And there is nothing we can do to alter this fact.  Rooms full of gold cannot purchase a ticket out of death.

And God has ordained this so, as a lesson for us to learn, a lesson to teach us wisdom and understanding, a lesson for all people in the world, rich and poor and high and low.  The lesson lies in us facing up to this truth: that God is sovereign and in complete control of our scheduled descent into the dusty tomb of the earth.

As we contemplate this, it is God’s hope that we distill drops of sorely needed wisdom, which is the “fear of the LORD (Yahweh).”  Wisdom is being in reverential awe of this God, who is in control, who has given us a short time in these earthly bodies to learn of Him and His love, who will someday soon take the spark of His spirit back, and our fragile shells will fall to the ground, taking nothing with them, no matter how richly arrayed they once were.

Wisdom is being in awe of Him.  And understanding is “to depart from evil.”  He hopes that these thoughts will awaken His people to His saving power, for He is the only power in the universe that can and has trumped death.

And when we realize all this, that He has already paid the price for our resurrection, then this meditation on our weakness and His power over death will have done its job on us.  For the above is the lesson found in Psalm 49.  Read it all again.  It is addressed to you, to all of us.  “Hear this, all peoples; give ear, all inhabitants of the world…my mouth shall speak wisdom.”      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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April 28, 2012 · 2:06 pm

“There’s Nothing in It for You”–It Is All for God, Who Is Love

There was an old saying at the mission that rings true now some 40 years later.  “There’s nothing in it for you.”

I didn’t really understand then just how profound that simple statement was.  But Time is a faithful teacher.  And as I look now in the mirror and see a much more wrinkled image with a head laden with a heavy hoary frost, I take more time to contemplate the increasing fragility of my physical state.  It seems that the reality of my own mortality crowds daily into my thoughts.

In that mirror I also see in my own eyes how the years have neutralized the piss and vinegar that I was so full of back then in my 20’s and 30’s.

As my earthly frame grows weaker, that old saying–how that there’s nothing in this walk with God for you–rings truer.  It is making so much more sense now as I am staring down the time when I just may have to depart this old earthly body before Christ returns to this earth to set up His kingdom.

For, you see, in those younger years I thought that surely I would be alive when the LORD would come back.  Christ did say that “whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11: 26).  And, that “there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Mt. 16: 28).  Those destined not to taste death would have to be the generation of believers alive when He returned to earth.  Anyway, I always thought that I would be one of them.

But now, as the years tick on, and my body creaks with age more every day, I must take this into real consideration–this “falling asleep,” this “shuffling off of this mortal coil.”

And, yet, I now realize that God has this death of the physical body hanging over us for a reason.  We know that He gives life and He takes life.  Our very breath is in His hand.  And it is this impending destiny with dust that helps us understand the futility of living for one’s self.  The self just cannot see us through, for our earthly bodies must betray us, for that is the very nature  of the physical body formed of the dust of this planet.  The house of dirt was made for us by God on purpose not to last.  It is temporary housing.

God fashioned our bodies to be as ephemeral as butterfly wings.  He deliberately formed them to be fragile in hope that we might sense someday our own vanity before death came knocking.  As we see our bodies decay and crumble with age, He hopes that we will see the futility of living for the self.

Our fragility betrays our pretentious egos that always seem to shout, “Hey, everybody, seriously, I really am something!”  But that self-centered imagination breeds the ultimate deception, for “when a man thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6: 3).

And we have all been guilty of that thought; it is in the spiritual genes of old man Adam and his offspring.  Yes, we are initially made that way by the Creator in hopes that we would see the purposelessness of selfish thinking and be humbled so that we could all realize one truth: Every man is created for only one thing, and it is not for self-glorification; it is for God-glorification.

And if we are blessed to be chosen by Him to reveal this truth to, then we are coming much closer to where we need to be in our walk on earth before our Creator.

There’s nothing in it for you.  For everything in the vastness of the universe and here on earth is for God and His pleasure.  This is the great sticking point with natural-minded man, who earnestly believes that he is the center of the cosmos.  Secular humanism is the new many-headed false god.  “Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me.”  Especially our self.

“For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11: 36).  Breaking it down, all things are of Him; they came from Him, and through His creative power all things (including us) exist.  And in the end, all things are created by Him for His pleasure and glory.

For instance, Him delivering us from utter degradation and destruction, and us returning and thanking Him and telling others about His saving love and power–He loves that and gets glory out of it.

“All things were created by Him, and for Him” (Col. 1: 16).  But God does not become a pompous little jerk like natural man when he gets power.  No.  God is LOVE.  He created us so that He could bring us to a place spiritually, where His essence and nature (which is Love) could be multiplied–eventually to fill the whole universe with LOVE!  Our gratitude toward Him for our deliverance from sin is the fertile soil where the seed of Love can grow.

And God-in-human-form is our example and showed us the way.  Jesus (Yahshua) tasted death for us all so that we would not be banished to the dusty tombs of oblivion.  “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory” (Hebr. 2: 9-10).

That’s the plan.  It is all for Him, so that He may glorify those who realize that it is all for Him.  He will share Himself and all His glory with the overcomers, even to the point of sharing His throne with them (Rev. 3: 21).

It is all for the Creator.  When we turn that page in the book of our minds, then joy and serenity will overtake us, for we will have embraced the heart of God with arms of humility, born of His true nature, Love.

{For more on this subject, check out this article:  https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/gods-endgame-where-this-life-on-earth-is-leading-us/ }

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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January 15, 2012 · 3:22 am

“You Gotta Die Before You Live”–New Song on the Cross Experience of Christ

People talk about the cross of Christ a lot in some churches, but few teach the central truth about what that experience does in a human life.  Our old sinful self, our old heart, must die with Christ, “who was made to be sin for us.”  We identify and repent of our sinful ways by surrendering to this death on the cross.  Then we “are buried with Him” in an immersion of that old self into His death {water baptism being the type and symbol}.

Then, by believing that Christ literally rose from the dead the third day, we too can be raised from the spiritually dead, and we are then “raised to walk in a newness of life.”

HalleluYah!  This is real biblical way to repent–“by faith in the operation of God that raised up Christ.” This is what this song is about.  I wrote it back in 1975; it speaks of the  great paradox–life out of death–just like a seed buried in the ground.  This is a great mystery “kept secret from the foundations of the world,” and I am blessed to have been given it to share with the world–in a song.”  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

You can see the video and hear the song that contains these revelations here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeDb5WdFHS0

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October 16, 2011 · 9:21 pm

Borderline Personality Disorder–Reaching Out to the Depressed–Christ and the Man-Who-Lived-in-the-Tombs-and-Cut-Himself

The other day I happened onto a blog by a person who says she has BPD–“borderline personality disorder and other mental illnesses as well.”  As I read her post entitled “I Am Worthless, Pointless, and Hopeless,” I saw how her condition was destroying her.  She confessed that she was contemplating suicide and showed photos of her cutting herself with a razor blade and yearning to end her emotional misery through taking her own life.

I immediately thought of the time that Christ encountered “a man with an unclean spirit, who was dwelling in the tombs.”  He was “always, night and day…in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.”  Christ went on to cast the unclean spirit out of the man, who later was found “sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind.”  The man even wanted to go with Him.  But Christ told him to “tell them how great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you” (Mark 5: 1-19).

And so I was moved to write this comment to her post: 

My darling girl,

There is another way to end all the pain and misery besides offing the physical body.  The death of the old self, the old ego, the old nature that we were born with, that old blue monkey crouched on our shoulder, screaming in our ear to do bad things to ourselves and others–yes, that selfish old adamic nature must die–not the body, mind you–the old heart inside of us, the old spirit that we have always been–that must die. 

I searched for 5 years desperately seeking solace and was led to the pits of nothingness.  Then, miraculously, while I tripped out on “sillysideburns” one day, it came to me: The old self had to die, not the body…I studied all the philosophies and world religions and did not find out how it is done.  

But then,  a wise man, seeing my plight, told me, “You need to die with Christ on the cross.  Just let all the bad inside of you go, by revelation, up on that cross, and let your old selfish self die.  When He died, you died.  When He was buried, you were buried, and when you truly believe that He arose from the dead, then you will arise from the dead, too.  And you will  walk in a newness of life.  You can read all about it in Romans 6 in your Bible.”

“Why doesn’t the churches teach this?  Because I know they don’t.”

The wise man replied, “Most of them don’t have the truth about real deliverance from sin, which like a serpent, coils around our inner being and has us enslaved. But this truth whereof I speak will deliver you, once and for all.  You are enslaved for now.  Follow my words and you’ll be free from the bondage you are suffering.”

And so, after reading all the books from the East and the West with no surcease from the emotional pain I was experiencing, I did it.  And a complete change happened in my life.  The drink, the smoke (of all kinds), the obsession with music, the womanizing, the cursing, the depression, et al, left.  And it has never come back in all these 40 years. 

I hear your cry, little one.  Read more here on my blog, ImmortalityRoad.wordpress.com
You are not alone…  Wayneman

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August 27, 2011 · 5:55 pm

“The LORD Has Called Me from the Womb”–On My Cancelled Appointment with Death*

I almost died in a car wreck the other day.  I was on the four lane topping a hill, when I looked for just a half-second at the radio.  And as I crested the rise, something had me look up, and there the pickup truck was, moving slowly in front of me.  I swerved to the left  just in time to miss it.

The end of the trailer was the heighth of my windshield.  A decapitation would have been the way I went out of this world.

I immediately knew that a higher power wanted me to live some more days on earth.  I thanked God right there for quickening in me the impulse to look up.  I could not see the truck and trailer, but He did.  I got this sensation that God really was watching over me.

A couple of days later, I opened the Good Book, and it literally fell open to Isaiah 46: 3.  I started reading: “ “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth.  Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

Wow!  I looked in the mirror at my gray hair, and thought, He has always had His hand on me.  I flashed on some of the close calls with death–the Viet Nam War days of hell, when the mortars stopped their ungodly loud footsteps just before they fell on me–the times in my youth when I drove drunk all over the road and somehow did not kill myself or anyone else. 

And then I realized that He has held on to me since I was conceived!  He not only knew me, but has protected me and lifted me up since my conception in my mother’s womb!  He has carried me since my birth into this cruel old world.  And, yes, even to my old age, gray hair and all, He is still sustaining me.  For He created me and He promised in this passage of scripture that He would carry me.  “I will sustain you, and I will rescue you.”  He really has all my life.

Then I looked again and saw that this passage is written to many other people, not just to me.  He is saying this  to the whole House of Jacob and all who remain of the House of Israel.  I know through my studies that the House of Jacob/Israel consisted of all twelve tribes.  And that ten of those tribes were lost after they were carried away captive around 700 B. C.    And I know that the Savior Himself  700 years later said that He was sent to these “lost sheep of the House of Israel.”  The apostle James writes his letter “to the twelve tribes scattered abroad.”  I also know that the other two tribes were Judah and Benjamin, who were the Kingdom of Judah, and that they were not lost. 

The point is that God knows us from our beginnings.  He knows us personally, and He has sustained and helped us our entire lives–for a purpose–His eternal purpose.  Now we must fully believe this His love for us, and we must seek out just what purpose He has for us. 

His kingdom is literally coming to earth.  Christ is the King of kings.  He is “bringing many sons unto glory.”  Of course, He will look after them from their conception.  He has a plan for them.   KWH

*Isaiah 49: 1

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October 7, 2009 · 12:58 pm

Receiving Immortality and Overcoming Death, Our “Last Enemy”

The saddest, darkest, and most hopeless day is to believe that when we and our loved ones die, then that’s it; there’s no tomorrow.  Death is our “last enemy.”  And Death stalks us, and our minds scurry away from it.  Our mortal condition haunts us and causes us to at times run and hide from having to think about Death.

But God has made a promise–that all those who believe in the Savior will be rewarded in receiving immortality.  This is our hope (1).    Our day of adoption into this immortal realm is when we receive our immortal spiritual bodies in the future on a certain date (2).

Many of His followers will have to face the fact that their earthly bodies will expire before that glorious date comes (3).  The encouraging part is that He has given a portion of His Spirit to them.  They carry His Spirit within their mortal bodies.  And with it, they not only “put to death” old deeds of the flesh, but also bear spiritual gifts to the unenlightened–to help them enter into the truth.

For His promise to us is that even if we die this earthly death before that certain date in the future, He will grant unto us a new immortal body and with it everlasting life.  So whether we die or whether we live on till He come back, we are assured in our hearts, when we believe that He will do what He said He will do in granting us immortality.

He grants unto us His mortal believers His Spirit, which is a down payment, a kind of spiritual earnest “money,” if you will, until that day (4).   We then wield the Spirit as a sword, cutting off every thought of minds that come against the truth.  Every grudge, every insincere gesture, every fear do we deal a death blow.  In so doing, we shall have an abundant door provided unto us to enter His Kingdom of the Immortals (5).       Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. Romans 8: 23-24
  2. Romans 8: 15
  3. II Cor. 5: 1-4; 4: 7
  4. II Cor. 1: 22
  5. II Peter 1: 11

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September 12, 2009 · 11:56 am

In Search of the Ultimate Hero

Much has been said lately about heroes.  And rightfully so.  The rescue workers rushing headlong into the burning towers to save the thousands trapped there come to mind. 

And then we think about our soldiers and marines who “gave the last full measure of devotion” on a faraway battlefield.   Yesterday I attended the memorial service of Pfc. Jonathan Yanney, who was killed in Afghanistan August 18, 2009, by a roadside bomb.  Jon gave up his life for a cause greater than himself and will always be remembered here in our little town as a hero.  And I will remember him, for I taught him in high school and enjoyed his presence, smile, and integrity.  He was my friend.

And so we all are looking for a hero–someone who would lay down their life for us.  That is what touches our hard and, at times, cynical hearts.  We are wired that way–to be touched when we realize that someone was so selfless as to put others before themselves–someone to face the peril of fires and the danger posed by those with dark designs. 

And so it was yesterday that my heart was touched, remembering the 20 year old soldier, who sat in my class just three years ago, and laughed at my antics as I coaxed him and his classmates into learning the lesson of the day. 

And as I sat there in the service, trying to dam up the warm salt water that fell from my eyes, I learned the lesson of the day.  I thought of Christ and realized that He is the ultimate hero.  For He showed us what love really is. 

He had said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (1).  And in order to express God’s nature, which is Love, He would have to “lay down his life” for His crowning creation, Mankind.  That would show them who and what God is. 

But God, the Immortal One, was just that–immortal, and could not die.  So in His infinite wisdom, He anointed a special human being that would house Him fully and would become the sacrificial Lamb of God and mankind’s anointed King of kings. 

This man was the Anointed One, the One appointed by the Father to do a very heroic act.  He would be referred to as Christ–Christos in the Greek, meaning the anointed one. 

Yes, Christ is our Hero.  He showed what love is by laying down His life willingly for us.  It is His selfless sacrifice for others that still touches man’s heart, that still shakes the flimsy foundations of our lives, that still speaks to us 2,000 years later. 

Christ is our Great Hero, for all the prophets testify about Him, that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name (2).  All because He loved us and laid down His life for His friends.     KWH

  1. John 15: 13
  2. Acts 10: 43

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January 30, 2009 · 12:36 pm

A Broken Heart and Spirit–The Sacrifices of God

The death of someone close to us brings a broken heart and a broken spirit.  There are no braggarts at a funeral–no loud boasters in the “house of mourning.”

I thought of this at Lindsay Stout’s funeral. She was my student, just beginning her senior year.  She died in a one car crash about three years ago now.  I remember that she was just  lying there in front of the church, pale and joyless.

Her mother wanted me to speak that day.  “You were her favorite teacher.  She talked about you all the time.”  But it was difficult to look at Lindsay that morning.

I was broken when I rose to speak.  I told them how blessed I was to have spent some 800 hours with her in the classroom.  Three years of Spanish, two years of English.  I read her last essay that she had written and a poem that I received in a dream about her the night before.  In the poem I re-assured them that we would all see her again at the resurrection.

Death Brings Brokenness and Humility

We were all broken that day.  Death has a way of doing that.  It brings  humility, compassion, and mercy to the heart.

How does death do this?  The Spirit of God uses the dead body to speak to us of our own mortality and the futility of this earthly existence.   In this environment, we are humbled, for we know that we cannot say to our own bodies, “Live on forever,” and they obey us.

It is at this very moment of humbleness that God can enter and be close to those who are brokenhearted.   It is just a shame that it takes the death of someone close to us to get “close to God.”

The scripture says, “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psm 34: 18).  God is near them.  He can approach us when our stiff pride is wilted.  The reason that it “is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth” is because hearts in mourning are broken hearts, and God is near to them.  The invisible Spirit of God is palpable to those with a broken heart.

The Point

Do we have to literally have someone close to us die in order to get a broken heart and thus be close to God?  No, for He has provided a better way for this to happen.  We can carry around in our hearts “the dying of the Lord Jesus” and let His physical death break our hearts and spirits.  This is how we “show forth His death till He come.”

Paul wrote that “we are delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life also of Him might be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4: 11).  We think on the Savior willingly giving up his earthly life for us and allow His death to break us, preparing a place for Him to enter.  “Death works in us” [bringing God’s presence], but life in you [His presence in us gives His life unto others around us]” (v. 12).

“The Sacrifices of God…Broken Spirit, Contrite Heart”

This brokenness (through Christ’s death) becomes the only sacrifice  that God will accept.  It is only our broken heart that shows Him our sincerity.  A broken spirit is the only sacrifice we can make to Him that He will receive.

Everything else that we could offer Him, He already owns–money, houses, cattle.  For “the earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof.”  What He wants is our broken heart because He wants to be able to come down and dwell in us and be with us more fully.  But first, somebody has got to get broken to provide the environment for His visit.

Yes, our bodies are the potential temple of the Spirit.  But He will only come to dwell in us if we are humble and broken.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

For more check out my books by clicking the link “Yahweh Is the Savior” in the Blogroll in the right column, or going here:  http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/

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