Getting Ready For Our Final Goodbye (Part 1)

*Ed Young is the long-time pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston. He is also a long-time friend of Cliff Barrows. When Cliff’s wife died several years ago, Ed was asked to preach the funeral along with Billy Graham.

*Dr. Young told of something that unexpectedly happened at the funeral. In the middle of his remarks about Mrs. Barrows, the aging Billy Graham paused to make an apology to all of those who were a part of his evangelistic team. As he looked out over the many families and the various generations represented, Billy began to cry. He then tearfully stated, “I want to take this moment to apologize to the families of all the members of my team and to apologize to my own children. We stayed away from home too long - many times months at a time in crusades and trips around the world. That was a critical mistake I made as a father and as an evangelist. I want to ask for my family to forgive me, and for the families of all the team members who traveled with me to forgive me.” (4)

*Even the best among us need to learn to make the right choices with our time, and it’s a hard thing to do, especially during the busy holiday season.

3. The best way to get ready for our final goodbye is to put the right priorities on our time. -- And determine to live with holy devotion.

*We need the kind of devotion Paul talked about in vs. 17-19, where Luke tells us that: “From Miletus (Paul) sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. And when they had come to him, he said to them: ‘You know, from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews. . .’”

*Paul was totally devoted to Jesus Christ. This means a life of consistent service. As Paul told them, “You know, from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I ALWAYS lived among you, SERVING THE LORD.”

*It was a life of consistent service, but also a life of humility. Paul said that he was “serving the Lord with ALL HUMILITY.”

-Many years ago, F.B. Meyer said, “I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves one above the other and that the taller we grew in Christian character the more easily we could reach them. I now find that God’s gifts are on shelves one beneath the other and that it is not a question of growing taller -- But of stooping lower.” (5)

*Humility is a huge part of our devotion to the Lord. As we see in Eph 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

*John Stevenson once said, “You cannot boast in your salvation. You cannot even boast in your faith. Boasting in your faith would be like boasting in the fact that you reached out to take a check from somebody. Suppose you have a tremendous debt but someone offers to pay it for you, writes out a check for you for $500,000, and you reach out and take it from him. How absurd it would be if you then went around saying to everybody, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that I had what it took to reach out and grab that check?’ The wonderful thing would not be that you had received the gift, but that it was given in the first place.” (6)