Dead or Alive

Dead or Alive 

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. 

21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." 

Philippians 1:20-21

8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 

9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 

10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

2Corinthians 5

We are bound to think about death. People are born and they die. Death is basic for life. None of us will live in this body forever. It is therefore useless to live in denial of death. 

We know that life in the physical is temporal. We see people die daily, it is our reality. The earth as we know it is doomed. Whether you believe in God as creator or you feel the universe is an happenstance, the earth, the only place discovered so far with life activities, is in existence only for a while... It may be another billion years but we know it's going to become unwelcoming and inhabitable at some point the way it is. Death is inevitable! 

And so it's important that we make the most of the time we have. We would need to discover purpose and to pursue it to fulfilment because we won't always be here to do what we can do now.

But to a child of God, physical death and physical life may not really be different. A child of God is free from the fear of death. A child of God is assured of being with Christ after death. A child of God knows that the present life is precious and for a purpose. Each breath is taken in remembrance and in response to the reason why God gave the grace of this stop-gap called life.

The ultimate essence isn't to eat, drink, get entertained, give birth to other temporal beings, live daily in the fear of death and then drop dead. The ultimate essence is to use this stop-gap to prepare for eternity. I understand you may not believe in that...but then what would the essence of life be? Vanity?

There is life after death. We are created as eternal beings. We may not see God but His footprints in the physical are unmistakable except for denial and deliberate unbelief. 

People have believed in God and in Him creating man in His image and a little lower than angels long before man was able to put certain cells together that he can control digitally in 2019. Which other being would do anything near that? Is it the chimpanzee that's still living in the jungle, hardly knowing its right hand from its left, even with its genome almost same as man's?

We know man is more than his physical make up, that's why we are that far from our closest physical neighbour in everything. 

We are eternal and it does not all end with death. There is an evolution waiting for us, where we would have a glorious body when this physical one would have dissolved, powered by the new creation and the new life that is in Christ Jesus. 

Just as the state of the butterfly in its cocoon doesn't mean the end of its life, so also, physical death isn't the end of man, though not every butterfly will ever make it to its ultimate potential and be able to own a pair of beautiful wings to fly with. So also, not every human being will make it to having the glorious body, because not everyone will submit to the new creation and the life of God which is by faith in Christ Jesus. 

So, to those who have the deposit of the New creation, death is an opportunity to be clothed with the new tabernacle. It is an opportunity to be with Christ. It is an end to a lower life and the beginning of the greater life. 

To these children of God, death is gain. To them, to live is Christ. Every breath is Christ, to believe Him and to spread His truth to others in preparation for the future beyond death. To them Christ is life...both here now and beyond here, later. 

Dead or Alive, the child of God is to glorify God. He has been delivered from the fear of death, free from the harassment of life and the shrouded anxiety of death. 

The child of God lives to make eternal impact and not only to create temporary products that perish. We show the world the power of the age to come here now, we show the love, the light and the life of the coming world for people to believe and be saved. This is our purpose here now for which we live daily. Outside that, we should be on our way home, we won't be needed here anyway. Home is always better.

We make the most of being here, pursuing that vision, developing ourselves to be able to adequately show the love, the light and the life of God on the daily basis in every situation everywhere. A child of God who toys with that by losing focus and forgetting purpose endangers his inheritance. Don't forget, don't lose focus... Get working, night is coming...

Dead or Alive, we glorify Christ and His Father God!