Questions:
3.
a.
No. He spent his last breath blessing others. He looked forward to being gathered to his people, pulled his feet up into his bed and died
b.
God is the God of Jacob – He is not the God of the dead but of the living – Jacob is experiencing eternal life
4.
a.
H.
people are destined to die once and after that to face judgment
R.
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Wages of sin are death but the gift of God is eternal life
J5.
Whoever hears word and believes God has eternal life, will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life
J8.
told that you would die in yoru sins, if don’t believe then you will indeed die in your sins
J11.
Whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?
b.
Spiritually ready and confident. I believe there is still work for me to do here and more lives to touch and shepherd
5.
Honored the promise he made to his father. Sought Pharaoh’s blessing.
My Daily Journal:
Death. Until Christ comes again and calls us up to Him in heaven, we are all going to die. Death is a doorway we all must cross through.
For a few years I had the opportunity to work with a motivational speaker who used board breaking in coaching and leading people. The piece of pine represented a barrier to the individual, something that prevented them from “breaking through” to a higher level or better place. One of the key things that he taught, and which I saw to be true, was that the more you focus on the board, the harder it is to break. You don’t try to hit the board, you pick a focus point beyond the board and strike to it. You don’t focus on the barrier, your focus on what things look like beyond the barrier.
The challenge for us is that we tend to focus on the door more than what’s on the other side when it comes to death. Some might say that we don’t know what is on the other side, but I disagree. While the door may be a solid door, Christ has provided a window for us to look through. He tells us that “in My father’s house there are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you.” He tells us that upon death “Today you will be with me in paradise.” We know from Revelation that heaven is a real place, measurable, with walls of jasper and city of pure gold. But, most importantly, we know it is where God is and where we go to be with Him. This was revealed in the martyrdom of Stephen when he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God in heaven. Jesus tells us about God and Heaven over and over again. I am the way… no one comes to the Father but by me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who believes in me shall not perish but have eternal life.
When Christ came back from the dead he showed that death has no hold over us. There need be no uncertainty of what is on the other side of the door of death, Christ has shown us. We, like Jacob need to be willing to trust in Him and put our focus on the beauty of breaking through to the other side, not on the door. When we focus on death, we bang in to something hard and difficult and painful, just like when someone would focus on the board, they would bang into the board. Instead, we must focus on the life after death and break through death in joy and celebration.
The Notes are Good 