Death of a Friend and Christ as Gain

So last post I left you with tales of my crazy adventures of downtown Detroit. Also, as I recall I was sitting under a huge tent anticipating my friend Jordan's concert. Needless to say, the concert did not disappoint. Jordan and his wife, Jessa, put on a top notch concert. Also, the pastor of the church was a guy I had met when we attended TLC together. I didn't know him really then, but I recognized the name and he had pictures from the week with Brad Pausley, Jon Burkhart, and Colin Smith (Not the prof, a kid from highschool.). 

Sunday was an interesting day. The day rolled along great, church was outstanding, lunch was out of this world, Sunday evening was epic because we watched Louis Giglio's "How Great is our God" talk with the middle schoolers, and then the college age small group was combined guys and girls which was kinda cool because I'm still getting to know the college age/young adults. I say it was only kinda cool because I think often times whenever guys and girls are in the same discussion group the level of openness and honesty takes a back step because of the desire to impress the other gender. 

At the end of the discussion time I stepped outside to respond to a voicemail only to have my friend tell me that a friend of ours, Janet Bauernschmitt, had died in a car accident that day. Talk about a total shocker. Janet was 24 and we had worked at Lake Ann together and went to a Passion Conference together. She was just one of those people who, in my mind, wasn't supposed to die yet. Maybe you know what I'm talking about. Like, I know Christ has

conquered the grave and death has no sting, but sometimes you're just not ready for someone to die.

I was talking to a good friend today and we were talking about being o.k. with death- getting to a place in life where we consider dying and being with Christ to be gain. And not just gain in the sense of "better than what we've got right now," but gain as in "better than anything we could hope for." It all comes down to our greatest fear (I learned of this idea from Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll). For example, if my greatest fear is being single for the rest of my life, then my functional heaven is marriage and my functional savior is a girl. If my greatest fear is being poor, then wealth is my functional heaven and my functional savior is whatever way I find of getting money. Only if my greatest fear is being separated from God will my heaven be the heaven of the Bible and my Savior be Jesus. So death can only be properly seen as total gain when I really see and believe Jesus to be my Savior.

On paper it makes sense and is easy to write about but to live in such a way that I don't have functional hells, heavens, and saviors is difficult. This thought became a reality today because the fact that Janet is in heaven with Jesus only serves as a comfort if I see Christ as being gain. Janet never married, never had kids, never did a lot of things that serve as our functional saviors. And my own idolatrous heart has wrestled with this idea and continues to wrestle with it. To see Jesus as Savior makes Heaven gain. Let me know what you think. 

Also, here is a pic of me some friends, Janet is in the front middle.