“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.”
1 Thessalonians 4:13 (NIV)
True encouragement starts with true information.
We live in what some call the information age and yet so much of this information is fake.
Some people think Christians should never grieve – that’s FAKE news!
Christians are to grieve, actually our Lord told us that we are blessed when we mourn.
I wonder how a person who has never grieved could receive any encouragement from this passage.
Paul’s concern is that when we grieve – we grieve with hope. He compares us with those who have no hope- and he doesn’t want us to grieve like that.
It is true that most of the people we live beside and work with or go to school with tell us they have hope that their loved one is in heaven. It seems that in our community everyone goes to heaven except for those die-hard atheists who just go into the ground, because there is no such thing as an afterlife - that’s FAKE news! Let's ignore the atheists (there are no atheists in foxholes therefore there are no atheists! - they pretend God doesn’t exist, perhaps we can pretend they don’t exist)
If you are given the opportunity to explore the nature of this false hope that the majority of people in Quinte have about going to heaven, you will find out pretty quickly that they know it is a false hope, or at least it is a hope they don’t understand.
Paul is reminding us that we have a real hope, based on the Word of God, the righteousness and sacrifice of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit within our lives.
True information precedes true encouragement.
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