Jeanette's Funeral

Jesus said "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” He also said "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

I have known Jeanette for quite some time, our children went to school together, we attended Church together right here in this building, and a friendship grew between the two families that has been an absolute blessing. The one thing that has been constant throughout our 16 odd years of fellowship, is the fact that Jeanette loved her Lord, she had a relationship with Jesus and it shone through her life. She understood His Saving Grace and that flowed into her relationships with others and she has been both a friend and an example of the Love of Jesus in both my life and the lives of my family.

“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” one of Jeanette’s favourite scriptures, you will find it on the front of the bulletin this afternoon and it’s a testimony to the way she walked through her life.

We are going to look at 1 John 1 this afternoon, I have chosen this particular scripture because portion of it was some of Jeanette’s favourite scripture but also because it really does epitomise her life.

1 John 1 – 2:2

These are the words of the last remaining of the original twelve disciples, John, now an old man and living in Ephesus. He starts out with a reminder that this message, the message that “God is Light”, he had heard directly from the mouth of Jesus, he and the other disciples had been eyewitnesses and had heard it first hand, he is telling us that what he is teaching is not something that he made up, but these are the words of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ Himself. He is saying, hey folks, I was there and these are His words, Jesus said it, not me.

John spent his life testifying to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, he was one of the first to follow Jesus and he has seen the miracles that Jesus did, he was there for the feeding of the 5000, there when Lazarus was raised. He saw the blind see, and the crippled walk, and he was in the garden the night that Jesus was taken and he watched the next day as Jesus died on that harsh Roman cross.

He watched as they entombed Him and was the first of the disciples to reach the tomb on the morning when Mary had said that the body was gone. He saw the empty tomb and the burial cloths. He was there when Jesus appeared in that locked room, they saw the wounds in his hands and feet and side. He was there when Jesus ascended into heaven and was present on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon them, the day 3000 came to know Jesus. John knew with absolute certainty that Jesus is the Son of God and he watched as all the other disciples, including his own brother, were martyred, murdered because of their faith in Jesus and testimony about Him. He was exiled to the Island of Patmos and even that couldn’t quieten him down. John had experienced the light and love of Jesus and all he wanted to do was tell people about it.

David told me of a time while he and Jeanette were at Nazarene Theological College, there was a compulsory practical evangelism assignment to be done and they were taken out to a really poor area in Krugersdorp and were sent from house to house, the idea was to collect people to meet for revival services that were to be held in the evenings.

With some trepidation the students went about the task of going door to door and that evening the venue was buzzing. The service however was anything but what they had expected; the preacher proceeded to give a real Hellfire and brimstone sermon.

In the vehicle on the way back to college David sat open mouthed as his sister, Jeanette, tearfully told the Principal of the college that she would not be doing that again irrespective of the fact that this was a compulsory assignment. When asked why she told the him that what had happened that night was not a reflection of the Jesus that she knew and there ensued a discussion between Jeanette and the principal about the Grace and Love of God which brought about a re-evaluation in the minds of those who were listening. Jeanette knew her Lord Jesus intimately, and was not afraid to take a stand when it came to the Grace and Love of God.