Believe it.

DEVOTION

1 CORINTHIANS

BELIEVE IT

1 Cor 15:12-19

12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.  

NIV

So then, we have to know without a shadow of a doubt there is life after this one. We have to know that when we die of this life we will sleep for a while until Jesus comes for us. Well at least that is what it sounds like. We are fairly quick to affirm that when we are absent from the body, we are present with the Lord, or when we are present in the body, we are absent from the Lord, which Paul writes in the second letter to these in Corinth. The point is or rather the question is when do we leave the body and join the presence of the Lord. What we know is that Jesus was in the grave three days before he was resurrected in the form in which he ascended, which appears was a glorified form as he did pass through a locked door to appear to his own. So then the question is how long will we be in the grave before we are resurrected in this same glorified form as Jesus and ascend into the presence of God? We have a tendency to believe the second we die, we step into his presence. We always say at our friends, or family members viewing that they are not there, but with God, and we even hear it at those viewings of unsaved people. But what is the truth here? Of course, just as with our sleep here, we doze off and the next thing we know we are waking in the morning, unaware of the hours of sleep. It may well be the same in death, we may doze off and the next we know we are resurrected into the presence of Almighty God, unaware of the hours, days, years, or whatever we were in the grave,  then again it might only be three days. The point is, we will be resurrected. We have eye witness accounts of the fact Jesus died and was buried and then was resurrected and seen by hundreds of people and finally ascended as witnessed and recorded by others, so we might know what happened it is true. So our faith is justified, it is not futile, and we are not lost in our sins, but have been redeemed from them, and those who were born again before us, are not lost, but have been or will be resurrected. There is far more than the hope of this life, there is the hope of eternal life in the presence of our Lord and Savior. No one should ever pity us, for what we hope for is the true reality, we believe it, we live in this truth, believe it.