It Won't Be Like This Forever

"It won't be like this forever." Some of the words spoken by our Chaplin during yesterdays sermon here at the Base. At first it didn't seem like much but this has stuck with me throughout yesterday and again this morning.

I will step back to the beginning of the service. As I sat near the front in my usual seat our new Chaplin sat down next to me as the Worship Team goyt ready to start. I noticed last week that she seems to get a little nervous before the sermons, just a look on her face and her manerisms change a bit. With this I turned to her and asked if she was preaching today as the Chaplins rotate the Sundays. She confirmed that she was so asked if she was ready. "Well" she said, " I am using a few more slides today then I usually do so I am a little nervous about it. I am not sure how it will go. Also, I am trying to connect to more people and I want the message to be good." All of this with a Mississippi accent in her voice (just to piant a better picture).

Now I remembered spomething that Frank had told me a while back and I thought to encourage her with it. "Ma'am, don't worry about the message, just trust that the Spirit will work through you. That your words will be what they should be today. Trust that and it will be fine. Also, even if it is just one person that gets something, then you have done what you need to do." You see, Frank had told me that when I was trying to get my testimony just right when I wrote it. When I finally just gave it to the Lord the words flowed, just like with the Blog. She responded with confirmation, that she had never thought of it like that and she thanked me.

During the message she spoke of a woman that she had known a very long time ago. A Christian woman. She had visited this woman as a young Pastor when the woman had cancer and was dieing. She said that what struck her was that the woman who had been very beutiful, now stood before her with no hair, but without the slightest inclination that it mattered. The Chaplin said looking back, that it bothered her more then this woman. Anyway, in discussing this, the woman indicated that as a young woman she was raised in an abusive home. As a teenager, she one day was going to commit suicide. As she raised the knife, she said she heard a very distict and clear voice say "It won't be like this forever."

The woman realized in that moment that the Lord had spoken to her. She stopped the attempt to kill herself and until this cancer began to take her life, lived in the hope that was revealed to her that day as a teenager. See that was what this was, the Lord affirming in her heart that as bad as it seemed then, that it would not last forever. That even though it may seem as a never ending struggle, it is only temporary. I am sure that at the hour of her inevitable death from the cancer, she realized that the words that had stregthened her then would be vividly realized in heaven.

During the sermon these words made me cry. I thought about how many years I lived without hope, when I had no end in sight for any of the struggles that I had. When the weight of every percieved problem drug me down until I had nowhere else to go. I remember the night that I told Catherine that I would blow my head off and how that felt like the best solution for me, an end, because I had no hope.

I then thought of my life now with Jesus Christ. How I now see the extent of His love, the grace and forgivness. I see the healing that has occurred in my life, my families life and in others. I see how in the same sense, the words "it won't be like this forever" truly matter. That I have eternal hope that no metter what happens here, now, no matter how bad things get, this hope will carry me through. It is what Jesus taught so many times. It is what Paul preached to the young believers. It is what God spoke to the firend of the Chaplins, hope in Him. Hope in this eternal glory that awaits us after this. Hope in the freedom that comes from Jesus Christ.

Now I sat, with my head down and realized that the words that I had spoken to the Chaplin, that even if one person got something from the sermon it was good, that was at least me. More then that, that phrase, those words I now carry again in this blog and have relayed them to some others. Those words mattered for me in that moment and the Spirit spoke. "It won't be like this forever." No matter what you have in your life, the struggles, trials, burdons, whatever it may be, then you can overcome it if you just don't lose this hope. The Hope that is in Jesus Christ, what He has done for us all, and the promises he has shown us from the father in heaven through His resurected body.

Have faith and have hope.

Lord Jesus, above all else may my hope be in you. Your death, burial and resurrection, more then anything else are confirmation of our Heavenly fathers promises and love for us. He has given us a way out of our death, our worldly persecution from satan, to life. We only must hope in Him and have faith in the work that He has finished and the grace that comes from that faith. Amen.