Speaker 1 2:59

[inaudible]

Speaker 2 5:27

Good morning. Hey, my name is Larry. I'm the pastor here and , uh , today is not a normal day. We've never done a service like this before, where we get to honor. Um, so, so many of those loved ones that we've lost over the last 18 months. Uh , this has been an unprecedented time of grief and loss because we haven't gotten to remember or celebrate the way that we're used to, or with family and friends and spaces like this. And so we decided that this is a must for us to recognize the over 40 people that we're going to be recognizing today. Um , some of you may see some of my dear friends with tags on 'em if they have a tag on that's , just to let you know that they're one of the families here that are celebrating, remembering, and reading altogether. And so , um, that gives you , you an opportunity to as well. If you want to say a little for them, or do you want to speak a word of encouragement or give them a , an eye that just says, Hey, I see you. I love you. You're known , um , that's a powerful opportunity. We also are giving all of the families , um , a gift. Um, they've all received , um, a tote with a special card, a journal , um, a devotional to be able to do a candle and a weighted blanket , um , to bring some sort of comfort and healing and some information about grief share , um , which is a small group that gathers together that will give you some more information about that a little bit later, but I want to encourage you today because we don't just remember and reflect, but we also celebrate, we celebrate the lives that have marked us and that have loved us so well. And today we celebrate together and we remember our loved ones in John 14, one through seven Jesus's word says this. It says, don't let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me, my father's house has many rooms if that were not. So would I have told you that I'm going to go there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and I will take you to be with me that you may also be where I am. You know, the way to the place where I'm going. Thomas, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, we don't know where you're going. So how can we know the way? And Jesus answered. I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father, except through me. If you read , you really know me, you will know my father as well from now on, you do know him and you have seen him. So friends, don't let your hearts be troubled. I want to take some time and encourage you today. When I was young, I got to go on my first trip. It was the eighth grade like that you do to Washington DC. Yeah , and as I kind of traveled around Washington DC with a big group, our group came upon this interesting site. It was a wall bigger than anything that I'd ever seen, that kind of tiered in different ways. And on this wall, as it grew larger and larger and larger, and I got closer, I discovered that they were filled with names. As I and took in this scene. I got a glimpse of a mom with a little boy and he had his finger. And he was you seeing a name on the wall? This little boy was tracing this name. I could see the mom with tears streaming down. Her face in one, had a piece of paper and they were scratching it with a cran so they could capture the name on their paper. Another fam family was putting them flowers down. This was the Vietnam war Memorial. And these names were loved ones. They lost. They came to this site where their names were to remember, because remembering those names matter, and it is important today. We want to remember these names today. We're going to , I see faces. We're going to see names throughout the service together and you'll see faces and names, those faces, and those names of loved ones. You've lost. You're seeing people who are deeply and dearly loved today is our commitment to those faces into those names, not being forgotten on our watch. We remember that there's this passage in first Thessalonians, Paul writes this brothers and sisters. We don't want you to, it'd be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope for. We believe that Jesus died and rose again. And so we believe that God will bring with Jesus. Those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will certainly not precede. Those who have fallen asleep for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command and the voice of the arch angel with the trumpet call of God and the dead of Christ will rise first. After that, those who are still alive and are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another. With these words, as we think of loved ones lost today, I can't help, but go to this city. To this moment, to these people, Paul had come to preach the gospel in this city. They responded amazingly overwhelmingly. In fact, they accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior. And Paul's parting words was Jesus has coming back one day. He's going to gather us all up home and he's going to take us up to glory. And so then Paul goes on, he leaves and goes to his next missionary journey and his next site . And he hears that there's this crisis back where he had been, because this group of people had accepted Jesus. They were ready for Jesus to come back. And so they would literally spend their days looking in the sky, waiting like he's going to come back now as the way they understood it, they would look and he still hadn't come yet. And what happened was is their loved ones started to die. And so they panicked because their loved ones had died and Jesus hadn't come back yet. What does that mean for their ones ? So Paul wrote back and he says, this is paraphrased. You guys need to chill out. You need to calm down. You are panicking for no reason. I don't want you to be ignorant about the ones whose loved ones that we've lost. He says, this is what you need to understand. He says we grieve, but we don't grieve as though there is no hope because I've always had a plan beyond this world. There's always been hope in this world. So Paul says, don't be bummed out right now or worried about them. As a matter of fact, how sweet of a deal they got, this is what's going to happen. The Lord himself. When he comes back, he's not even gonna mess with us first. He's going to go right to them. They get first, the dead will rise in Christ and we'll be first psoriasis. We who are alive will remain to be caught up in the twinkling of an eye and we'll be gathering together. We all gathered together and we celebrate through all of eternity. So cry , go ahead. I think you said, Hey, cry . You should. That's right, but don't cry as though there is no hope. That is a lie. We are going to live and we are living to live again. This is not the end. Don't put a period here on your loved ones. Paul said, put a comma because Jesus is going to be gathering them together again. When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing, when we all see Jesus, we're all going to sing. And shout victory. Paul said that. He says, I'm doing something new. That's beyond this world. So grieve, but hope because I'm doing something beyond. Now, Paul's saying, if anyone asks you where I'm going, tell them that I'm going to be with the Lord. Paul encourages them. But I want to be clear that we get this message, right? He says, we grieve unlike the world, but we do grieve. We do grieve. We must grieve. One of the biggest trends [inaudible] of our culture sometimes is honestly, for the sake of others, we actually fast-forward the grieving process. Oftentimes we struggle to be honest, to sit in our loss and grief because we're told Hey, to see the move through it and get through this quickly. I mean, some of you, when you heard what the topic was today, you were like, let me watch somebody else on YouTube. I'm not trying to sit in this grieving state who wants to do that, but I can tell you that friends it's necessary. It's necessary. God designed us to go through the necessary seasons of grief to properly and intentionally lament the loss of those that we love. It's one of the most natural things that we do. So one of the most challenging things you can do to yourself is to try to rush through or, or skip over it. And let's be honest. A lot of times, followers of Jesus get a bad rap because they assume just because we speak in terms of hope that we have this baked in denial. And that's just not, that's just not what Paul calls us to do. That's not what , what it is to follow Jesus. A lot of people think that followers of Jesus are saying, well, just trust the Lord. And then they think that those are just these statements that we say, I want to say, no, no, no, no, no. It's a beautiful thing about following Jesus. That's not about denial of the reality of pain. It's an acknowledgement of the reality of the power and the glory of your God. People who love Jesus and grief is not a time to deny your pain. It is to look at the heavenly father and acknowledge that he went through this pain himself and therefore he has it, right? He says, I've been there. It's not a time to deny the reality of pain or the anger of someone's bitterness or just the brokenness that we feel when we lose someone. No he's saying grieve, but we just grieve differently. Grief. The very essence of grief is that I've hit a wall. I've hit rock bottom. I've come to the end of myself. I can't believe that this has happened to me and I'm devastated and I cannot control it. Let me say it again. Did, did you have control of this? Did you allow it? I'm frustrated with your timing. I'm frustrated with your choices. I'm frustrated with how you roll. I've got them frustrated. We've got to have a conversation. God, this kind and loving soul that you're supposed to be the friends, even when we throw the biggest critiques and the biggest questions and the biggest doubts, he still says, here's my hand because I'm right here to walk with you through this season. I'll never leave you on there , forsake you. And when you grieve, we don't get to grieve like the world does our tears. Don't go down some deep dark alley . Some vain , every tear we cry is captured and bottled up by our heavenly father. You have not cried a tear that he did not he's with you. He's got you. He's walking with you. You hit your lowest moment. The difference between us and the world is that when we hit our lowest moment, that it's not a time marked by hopelessness. It's not a time marked with despair. It's a time marked with prayer. What are we going to say? My Lord, God, take my hand.

Speaker 1 17:52

I can't take another step. I can't even figure out how to hold my head up. I keep, keep walking in this, in this fear and this frustration, God, I need you right now, Lord God, would you please take my hand in the beautiful thing friends about God is with

Speaker 2 18:18

Our doubts, with our fears, with our broken heart.

Speaker 1 18:21

He says, here's my hand. My child. Let me walk with you through this valley. Let me take you step by step moment by moment. So we get to grieve and say, Lord, I need you take my hand. [inaudible] oh God, [inaudible] feel free to stand with us. If you would like [inaudible]

Speaker 2 22:10

Oh God . So what was the foundation of our hope? What is the foundation of our hope? You're going to have a seat it's that God does not take lightly. Either our sin or our death. And as followers of Jesus, we are odd by the implications of second Corinthians 5 21 that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. So that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus died to put away our sins from us. We are precious to him and he was raised to show that God does not take our death lightly. Either Psalm 1 16, 15 says this, his loved ones are very precious to him and he does not lightly let them die. The awareness of our finiteness and the brevity and the frailty of our lives. It haunts us every generation. Since Adam has been anxious, we are through fear of death. Subject to a life long in life is tenuous. It's fragile. It's unpredictable. It often takes sudden turns that find us unprepared to believers. There seems to be this randomness unbelievers. There seems to be this randomness about life wearing a fortune or misfortune, depending on nothing more meaningful than the flip of a coin or the toss of some dice. And there are those who have good runs of, but at some point ones luck must run out. Even believers whose faith is strong. Look asking at the events of life they're aware of God's presence and his power. They know his creative activity for them. The crucial question is this, does God care about what happens to us? Does he forget our personal needs? Our fears, our once our needs for his presence, the difficulty we have in understanding God's ways can be no more forthrightly spoken than when I had a conversation. When a young teenager who reasoned, I don't think God is fair. He lets us die, but he doesn't die himself. It's because this man's young. Man's two main premises where Ms. Guided that he came to the wrong conclusion about God's fairness. God does not desire our death. Neither does he sit by idly while we die.

Speaker 1 25:03

You're going to sing amazing grace. Again. If you want to stand with us, you're more than welcome or you can stay seated easy . And grace, how sweet the sound [inaudible] sing when we [inaudible] sing amazing grace together. One more time. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] see , wrap up. You guys can take a seat.

Speaker 2 28:12

I believe that one of the most remarkable things, perhaps the most overlooked features of Jesus's vocabulary was the casual way that he described death. His as well as others, when he told the 12, his disciples of Lazarus, his beloved friends , death, he spoke in such casual terms that they misunderstood him entirely. Understandably. So he said, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going there to wake him up. Now why wake a napping friend up? They wonder, especially one who is recovering from an illness. Well, Jesus was referring to Lazarus his death , but his words left them with the impression that Lazarus literally fell asleep later when preparing his disciples for his imminent death, he spoke in such casual terms that they thought that he was merely leaving the city in the same conversation. He said that my father's house has many rooms. I'm going to go there and prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'm going to come back and take you to be with me. No wonder they were confused. Jesus reduced death to the complexity of running next door for a cup of sugar. His followers did the same. Paul writing to believers in Thessaloniki said, but we don't want to be uninformed brethren about those who are asleep so that you will know longer grieve as the rest who have no hope referencing those who had seen Jesus after his resurrection, Paul Rose , then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time. Most of whom were still alive though. Some had fallen asleep. So why refer to death as sleep? Because people who fall asleep, wake up. Many of our friends, we are remembering today, fell asleep. And that's what Jesus taught. And Paul affirmed. When we go to bed at night, we don't say goodbye. We say good night , because we're going to see you in the morning. And friends. Paul is saying that they are asleep in Christ. And if you use the wrong word, you're going to get the wrong theology and you'll get the wrong result. It's not a goodbye, daddy. It's not a goodbye to your mom, your husband, your grandfather. It's not goodbye to your daughter, your mother, the uncle or auntie and a friend. It's not goodbye. It's just get night . The implication that this isn't the end. Don't put a period where God put a comma. This is not the end. And so we grieve. We encourage one another and we say, good night and rest. And we ask that the peace of God be with you. May he give you strength to her endure? We don't take comfort in this depiction merely because Jesus said it. And Paul affirmed it. We believe this because Jesus predicted his own departure was arrested, crucified and buried. And then just as he promised, he woke up, his followers, took to the streets with a message that death had met its match. The rabbi from Nazareth was the resurrection and the life rolled into one. And then Paul taking his cue from Jesus, left us with one more insight to be absent from the body is to be home with the Lord. Our loved ones woke up in their new home with the Lord, but they will be missed more than words can express. Would you stand?

Speaker 1 32:15

We're going to sing about that. Good grace that God gives us this morning. [inaudible] Jesus. Jeez . [inaudible] [inaudible] jeez , [inaudible] a special, special time. It's been, we have a special story you want to share with you guys, if you would have a seat for a second and check out the screens.

Speaker 3 38:26

Hi, my name is Bob lad. I'm a facilitator with the grief share program here at north gate. Uh, there's four of us that do this , uh, two , two facilitators each session. We do it twice a year in the spring time. And then the fall group shares a program for people that are , uh, just for various reasons. I've lost a loved one and their life. And , uh , it's what it entails is we have a 13 week program here at north gate and it's a , we meet two hours a week, once a week and we discuss and share our personal things that are going on in our life and where we need help. I was married for 43 years and my wife passed away probably , uh , about five years ago. So I've had tremendous help, but I believe in this program very much and I've seen it work in my life. And it also works in many new friends that I've made through this experience. I have some, a couple of friends that are going to share their testimonies today. A great things that have happened in their life as a result of taking this group .

Speaker 4 39:31

Hi , uh , my name is Delia Smith. This is a picture of my husband. Um, his name is Charlie Smith. This is one of my favorite pictures of him is from our wedding. My husband passed away and on July 8th, 2019, he passed away unexpectedly in his sleep. I wasn't prepared for it. It was just a complete shock. I was just devastated. Um, I felt so alone. I felt so scared. People would tell me that I was so strong that I was doing okay. That it would get better with time, but I didn't believe any of that. Somebody told me about Northgate . They said, you know, they have a grief support group there. I , um, had just hit rock bottom. I was so tired mentally, emotionally, physically. I just could not keep going. I didn't have the strength to keep going. So I called Northgate . I asked , um, are you still offering that grief support group? And uh, they said, yes. Um, they immediately contacted me and uh, connected me with Bob. I started attending on week eight after that was over. I went onto the next session with Bob and then I went through another session with Patty and Becky. I, yeah, I needed a lot of help, but week by week, God was there and he helped me get through it. The facilitators were amazing. They are so compassionate having that community of people that understood going through the same thing that I was going through that really understood was just so comforting and so healing. So now that I've gone through three sessions of grief share, I tell you that I'm just a completely different person than I was before I joined. God has healed so much of my pain. I have made new friends that I still keep in touch to this day. One thing I do want to say is if, if you are going through something like this, if you have lost someone, I invite you to please reach out to north it , reach out to the grief share group. It's not something that you could do alone. I know I tried and I wasn't getting anywhere. So please reach out, make that first step and God will do the rest.

Speaker 2 42:15

All right, my friends , you can stand with me just as we're getting ready to go before I give you a blessing as we go, I want to think you guys are coming to this service. If you are family, we have a gift for you. I know a handful of you guys didn't pick that up, but as you leave today, we would really love for you to take that with you. And to have that also, if you know, somebody who could use grief shares is great for any of you to share with anyone. Sometimes what we need to know is just somebody else in the boat that can say like me too, or I get it. I understand. Um, and so it's a powerful opportunity for you to share that we also are going to have later on this year , uh, surviving the holidays, which is just a one-off because we know that holidays are just new experiences are new difficult experiences. And so we want to have that resource for you and continue to be here for you and your family and your friends in this community. Um , next week we are going to two services, nine and 11. So we'd love for you guys to be a part of that. And I 11 yeah, you get to sleep in a little bit. So yeah, nine 11. We have our in-person services at both nine and 11 and our online services at both nine and 11, just at those times, they're all live either virtually or in the room. And we have kids services through fifth grade at all of the services that we're doing as well. So we'd love for you to join us there. We're kicking off a new journey and series called Matthew volume one . We're going to take a journey through the book of Matthew and we'd love to have you guys in your families for that. So let me send you off for the blessing. We have this posture of giving up and receiving. And today I just want to bless you with one of my favorite scriptures. It's Romans 1215, and it's so powerful to me. It says weep or mourn with those who mourn and celebrate with those who celebrate in, may you be blessed with the opportunity to live in the width. May you be with another person and their mourning and their celebration for what God is doing in them and through you. So be blessed with that friends. Thank you so much for coming today and we'll see you next week. Love you .

Speaker 1 45:16

[inaudible] .