Alive Forever, Amen!

Dear Worshipers,

I spoke with Kara Brown just after the close of the service on Sunday and she relayed how much she loved that closing song. I know there were several of you involved who found it to be your favorite in the musical, and others who heard for the first time Sunday who would say the same. I have to admit there is an infectious attraction to something about the song, but I want to assert it is much more that the pulsating rhythm, driving text, and energetic arrangement.

It struck me as we were singing through this in Saturday’s rehearsal. The draw of the piece is the joy of life eternal if proclaims, “He’s alive forever, Amen!” And resultantly, “I’m alive forever, Amen!” We know that Jesus is alive, but when we consider that we are alive forever BECAUSE HE IS, oh, what joy!

It is honestly a little difficult at best for us to grasp eternal life. But we believe. It is a comfort that we will live forever, even though we may die. It is a comfort when all is well, but the true depth of peace that it proclaims is best known when we have to stare death in the face. It is one thing to sing these words, it is another thing altogether to live them.

No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me.
From life’s first cry to final death, Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from His hand.
‘Til He returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.

It is yet another thing to grieve the loss of one who has lived them. One who has lived this truth, “In Christ alone my hope is found.” Though we mourn the loss of one we loved, we are consumed with the overwhelming joy that what he believed in his heart is now realized in his experience. And we do not grieve as those who have no hope [I Thessalonians 4:13], for our hope too is in the Lord.

As certainly as Jesus died, and lived again, so do those who are in Christ. We sang Amen at the close of the Good Friday service, and we sang it all the more heartily at the close of the Easter Sunday Morning service. We assent to the finality of death, but acclaim the eternity of life in Christ. Though we may say amen, so be it, when one we love departs from our presence, we will also say amen as they enter the presence of our Lord.

For those in Christ, like Him, are “Alive Forever, Amen!”

In Christ,

Pastor Scott