Uncertainties

We May Never Know Until We Get There

I have to talk to you specifically today. If you have ever lost someone — suddenly, too soon, in a way that gave no warning and left no time — and you have laid awake wondering if they made it in, this is for you.

We pray. We stand in the gap. We claim souls in the name of Jesus for family we love and for strangers we will never meet this side of heaven. And still, some die. Some die in sin, or in silence, or in a moment we never got to witness. And the question comes, uninvited, in the middle of the night: Did God reach them? Did He get to them in time?

Here is the truth, and I will not soften it: we don't know. We won't know until we get to heaven ourselves.

But here is what we do know.

"Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." — Luke 23:42-43 KJV

A man dying next to Jesus, guilty by his own admission, out of time by every human measure, was received in his very last breath. Not because he had time to clean up his life. Not because he said all the right words over all the right years. Because in the moment he had left, mercy met him.

That is not a doctrine I am building for you. That is one thief, on one cross, on one afternoon. But it tells us something about the character of the God we serve: He does not stop reaching until the last breath is gone.

"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." — 2 Peter 3:9 KJV

Not willing. That is who He is in the final moment, same as He was in the first.

But God does not owe us the footage. He does not owe us the certainty of what was said in that hospital room when everyone had stepped out, or what passed between Him and that soul in the last seconds before impact, before the flatline, before the silence. That is between them. We were not invited into that room, and we do not get to see the tape.

What we are invited into is the praying.

Not the confirming. Not the guaranteeing. The praying.

So pray for them. Pray for the ones you knew and loved and buried too soon. Pray for the ones you never met — the name in the news, the child in another state, the soul the enemy tried to snatch before anyone was watching. Whether you knew them or not. Whether they were family or a stranger. Pray for souls.

Because your prayer was never wasted just because you did not get to see the ending. Prayer does not require your eyes on the outcome to have done its work in the unseen.

If you are carrying guilt tonight — wondering if you prayed enough, said enough, reached out in time — hear me: that guilt is not from God. He does not need you to have gotten it perfect. He needed you to pray, and you did. Leave the rest with Him. It was never yours to carry.

A Prayer You Can Pray Out Loud

Father, I bring before You every soul I have ever prayed for and every soul I never knew to pray for by name. I don't know what happened in their final moments, and I release the need to know. I trust Your mercy reaches further than my sight does. For the ones I've lost — I release the guilt of not knowing, and I hold on to Your character: that You are not willing that any should perish. Give me a heart that keeps praying for souls, known and unknown, family and stranger, until You call me home too. In Jesus' Name. Amen.