I was eight years old when my grandmother passed. I recall my
mother announcing her death to us and the fear that gripped my heart while I
walked down the stairs, till I entered the vehicle that drove us home that
night. In that same fear, I stared in disbelief
when my mother asked me to drop some of my grandmother’s clothes in the
wardrobe. I took the clothes with shaky hands and ran like my life depended on
it through the hallway, threw the clothes and ran fast - at least fast enough
for the ghost not to jump out of the clothes and grab me.
Someone had just passed, many of my family members were mourning but me? I was
looking out for the ghost in every cloth hanging in the dark.
I was a child - I thought as a child and understood as a
My heart had not grown to understand the finality of death,
and the response of love to death.
When we speak of death, it can either be the Lord calling one
home - in the case of a saint or the enemy stealing a life. The latter is our
focus today and we will explore an interesting perspective on this matter from
First is the Law of first mention, the first example of
physical death in the Bible is the patriarch Abel who was murdered by his
brother - Cain. We could have easily assumed that this murder was a mistake
because what degree of wickedness must a man possess to actually kill his
brother? But scripture does not give
room for assumptions in this narrative, because from the conversation between
Cain and God, we see the true reason Cain killed his brother.
Simple answer, it was a lack of love - to not see the need to
be your brother’s keeper is to deny love. To allow your brother or “potential
brother” to die when you could have done something within your power to prevent
it, is to simply say that you hate that person.
1 Corinthian 13 gives a more detailed perspective on this in
its description of love and I will highlight just 3 attributes of love
according to this scripture;
● Love does not think evil
If we can keep our hearts pure in love by yielding to
kindness, resisting the temptations of envy, and training our minds to only
think good, then we become truly reliable agents of the expression of God’s
power on earth, licensing us to be able to receive the dead back to life.
If the graveyard will vomit any life to you, you must show up
in undefiled garments of love.
Do we not see this in the life and ministry of our perfect
Yet again, the law of the first mention comes in, the first
person Jesus raised from the dead was the only child of a Widow at Nain.
In Luke 7: 11-15, we see this story but specifically 13, it
says when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her.
The miracle of resurrection we witness in this text was born
from the compassion of Jesus. In the same vein, when we see Jesus calling forth
Lazarus, we see love at work as well, love that even made him weep. In the
story of Jarius’s daughter, we see a father who loved his daughter so much to
find the one who loved his daughter even more, and that was how she came back
The reason the enemy can steal lives of those around us and go
scot free is because someone’s love walk is weak and dying.
The supernatural expressions we seek are locked up in the
depths of love. The power we want to see on display will not be released until
love reigns in our bodies.
Think of the greatest resurrection story, Jesus! It was all
because of His Love for us, because He desires that everyone of us pass from
If we have received such incredible depths of love, how then
is it that we are comfortable with graveyards being built all around us and we
Why are there so many walking dead experiencing silence from
the ones who carry the life-giving spirit?
