I have to share with you something which occurred to me yesterday. Generally, I do 15 minutes in the sauna each day and it's about 200 degrees. Yesterday, it was 218. Before I sauna, I lift weights for 50 minutes or so. While I lift, I listen to the Bible and to help keep me focused I take my old Ryrie Study Bible from 1995 which I keep with my water on a ledge. When I get a drink, I find the spot I'm listening to. So, I'm a little peculiar in that way.
There is an older gentleman, a retired truck driver, that I've talked to some over the past couple of years whose granddaughter died 2 months ago. He told me in the sauna a few weeks ago. I gave him my condolences but I didn't have the liberty to ask him more about it at the time. Yesterday, after 15 minutes, he came in to the sauna and I was supposed to ask him about her. I didn't hesitate, though my body wanted out of that small, hot box.
Well, he opened up wide. Told me the whole story. She was 13 and had a very curable cancer but a condition on top of it that was fatal. She was in and out of UVA hospital and in the final months wanted to live with this gentleman and his ex-wife (a little odd, I know.) She was a "church girl", to use his words and the staff at the hospital was amazed at her faith as she would go through treatments. She passed, as I said, and at her celebration of life service there were 800 attendees with standing room only. Her faith had touched many people and several lives were changed by her faith and the grace of God so evident in her life. Among the attendees were 8 doctors and 13 nurses.
He related how hard her mother is taking this and how she is struggling and how it is not fair in the least that a parent should ever have their child pass before them. Then he told me of being in her hospital room as she died. At this point, he looked me dead in the eye and said, "I would not have believed this unless I had seen it with my own eyes," and he related to me that moments before she died, her body changed. All the inflammation, discoloration and all the visible effects of diseases that had wracked the young body went away and then a smile came across her face and her body died.
Well, the Holy Spirit in me reacted like unborn John the Baptist at the entrance of the mother of his Lord in to the house of Elizabeth! I related how I've heard this hospital scene he described repeated and how she was seeing Jesus for the first time and how it was because another mother had to loose her child, the fruit of which he had seen with his own eyes. If Mary had not lost her child, he would have truly lost his granddaughter and he had seen the evidence with his own eyes that she was not really dead. She is with her Lord. And he had seen that Jesus isn't dead either, for if he was, there would have been no change in that little girl's body. Nor would lives have been changed through her struggle, nor would she have had the faith she did.
I shared with him about a mother and a father who lost their precious girl earlier this year. A precious life who had a similar, very powerful testimony, and how lives had been changed. I shared with him several evidences many of us experienced this year that she is still alive too. Powerful evidences. And how, as her body was expiring, she too had seen Jesus, sat straight up, put her arms out and smiled. Then her body fell back dead, but she was alive and hurting no more. Quite the opposite! He confessed he believed all this was true. I also told him of others who have physically expired in the same sort of fashion and how some family members in the room, after witnessing such events, have been converted and become believers in Jesus Christ as well.
I told him we would be praying as a family for his daughter and he said he would pray for the parents of the girl we know. And then, though not a church goer at all, he bowed his head and began to pray in the name of Jesus Christ to our heavenly father! By this point, sweat is still draining off me, I have the door open several inches cause I'm thoroughly, physically drained. During all this time, which was 30 minutes on top of the 15 I initially spent in the sauna, several people have witnessed what was going on between us. And the grandfather continued to interceded for the parents of the girl I know and closes with thanking Jesus.
With that, he raised his head and told me how much I meant to him and how much better he felt and he wished me a Merry Christmas and I lumbered back to the locker room, physically exhausted but spiritually excited. Lord willing, his granddaughter gave her life that he would be able to keep his eternally.
There is an older gentleman, a retired truck driver, that I've talked to some over the past couple of years whose granddaughter died 2 months ago. He told me in the sauna a few weeks ago. I gave him my condolences but I didn't have the liberty to ask him more about it at the time. Yesterday, after 15 minutes, he came in to the sauna and I was supposed to ask him about her. I didn't hesitate, though my body wanted out of that small, hot box.
Well, he opened up wide. Told me the whole story. She was 13 and had a very curable cancer but a condition on top of it that was fatal. She was in and out of UVA hospital and in the final months wanted to live with this gentleman and his ex-wife (a little odd, I know.) She was a "church girl", to use his words and the staff at the hospital was amazed at her faith as she would go through treatments. She passed, as I said, and at her celebration of life service there were 800 attendees with standing room only. Her faith had touched many people and several lives were changed by her faith and the grace of God so evident in her life. Among the attendees were 8 doctors and 13 nurses.
He related how hard her mother is taking this and how she is struggling and how it is not fair in the least that a parent should ever have their child pass before them. Then he told me of being in her hospital room as she died. At this point, he looked me dead in the eye and said, "I would not have believed this unless I had seen it with my own eyes," and he related to me that moments before she died, her body changed. All the inflammation, discoloration and all the visible effects of diseases that had wracked the young body went away and then a smile came across her face and her body died.
Well, the Holy Spirit in me reacted like unborn John the Baptist at the entrance of the mother of his Lord in to the house of Elizabeth! I related how I've heard this hospital scene he described repeated and how she was seeing Jesus for the first time and how it was because another mother had to loose her child, the fruit of which he had seen with his own eyes. If Mary had not lost her child, he would have truly lost his granddaughter and he had seen the evidence with his own eyes that she was not really dead. She is with her Lord. And he had seen that Jesus isn't dead either, for if he was, there would have been no change in that little girl's body. Nor would lives have been changed through her struggle, nor would she have had the faith she did.
I shared with him about a mother and a father who lost their precious girl earlier this year. A precious life who had a similar, very powerful testimony, and how lives had been changed. I shared with him several evidences many of us experienced this year that she is still alive too. Powerful evidences. And how, as her body was expiring, she too had seen Jesus, sat straight up, put her arms out and smiled. Then her body fell back dead, but she was alive and hurting no more. Quite the opposite! He confessed he believed all this was true. I also told him of others who have physically expired in the same sort of fashion and how some family members in the room, after witnessing such events, have been converted and become believers in Jesus Christ as well.
I told him we would be praying as a family for his daughter and he said he would pray for the parents of the girl we know. And then, though not a church goer at all, he bowed his head and began to pray in the name of Jesus Christ to our heavenly father! By this point, sweat is still draining off me, I have the door open several inches cause I'm thoroughly, physically drained. During all this time, which was 30 minutes on top of the 15 I initially spent in the sauna, several people have witnessed what was going on between us. And the grandfather continued to interceded for the parents of the girl I know and closes with thanking Jesus.
With that, he raised his head and told me how much I meant to him and how much better he felt and he wished me a Merry Christmas and I lumbered back to the locker room, physically exhausted but spiritually excited. Lord willing, his granddaughter gave her life that he would be able to keep his eternally.
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