I want everyone I've ever known, everyone who has ever been an acquaintance, friend, or enemy to come. Everyone who is Christian and everyone who is non-Christian, and anyone else who wants to come, come.
I want everyone to celebrate at my funeral. I will be with God! They better be celebrating! I know I sure will be. I'll be in so much indescribable joy - it'll be fantastic. And I'll be waiting for you, brothers and sisters in Christ - to worship God together!
I want the gospel preached. Not just some prosperity gospel, or a gospel that is reduced, but a gospel that tells the whole truth - the cursings and the blessings - I want to go with a bang! Even after I'm dead! May my death be a time of gathering the many people I've met throughout my life - from Korea, to Las Vegas, to California - so that they may hear the gospel. Man, this is one of the main reasons I can't wait till my funeral. To everyone I've failed to share the gospel with, please be there. Hear it, and I hope my life lived it. I want it preached in English, and then in Korean. Hear it family, please hear it. There are big circumstances that keep me from speaking to you.
At my funeral, I do NOT want people to remember me as someone who lived a "good life." I do not want to hear people say - "He's in heaven for sure! He did so many great deeds when he was here on earth." I want them to know that deeds do not get them to heaven. I want people to know that without God no one is good or righteous. That without God, no one is capable of living a good righteous life, especially me.
I do NOT want people to remember me as someone who had a "good heart." I want people to know that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). I want them to know that I once had a very sick heart - a heart that was made of stone, that did not seek after God, but after my own selfish ambitions and pleasures. But, the Holy Spirit worked in me and pointed me straight to Jesus Christ and helped me understand that the Lord and Savior Christ died for my sins, and renewed my heart from stone to flesh. And that without Christ as their Lord and Savior, they cannot have a good heart. They are not a new creation. Their hearts condemn them to hell. Not in a message of hatred, not in a message of the pride, but in a message of love that pleads with them and urges them to Christ.
I DO want people to weep and mourn my death. But after the preaching of the gospel, I want them to mourn and weep in repentence, in the knowledge of their own sin, and in the knowledge of the story of salvation given to them by the grace of God. I want them to weep and cry out more than they cried about my death.
Everyone wants to be remembered. I do too. But I want Christ remembered more.
I've only been to one funeral, and it was a little baby girl's funeral. I don't know if babies go to heaven after death or not... and I may never know until the day I die, but here's what I know. I know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28). I remember visiting the family's parents at the UCLA Pediatrics ICU every chance I got. I remember thinking every week, 'I'm going to go there and encourage them today!' But nay, every time I went, I was the one encouraged; I was the one blown away by their faith. For the 4-5 weeks they were in the ICU and their baby was dying, they took the time to go around to the children, and the parents of other possibly dying children, and preached the gospel to them. They not only preached it to them, they lived it - by prayer, by comforting, by everything. And they lived the gospel to me. At her funeral, they had the gospel shared, and I loved hearing it. Christian - everytime you hear the gospel again, don't you love it all the more? Don't you want to cling onto God and weep at the love and grace showered upon you as you realize even yet how sinful you still are? NonChristian - every time you hear the gospel again, does it bring you slowly closer to realizing your own sins and trespasses against God? Do you not feel God tugging at your heart?
Whom have I in heaven but You?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:25-26
