Message for Yvonne Wall Howard's Service

Message for Yvonne Howard’s service, 2 November 2019.

We are here to worship God and celebrate the life of Yvonne Howard.  Worship and celebrate.  You can do both at the same time.

If there are folks here than you don’t see every week or month or even year, spend time with them and share your memories.  Share what you experienced because there are some who will only know Yvonne by those memories.

Yvonne was a lady that spent most of her life in western Oklahoma.  I don’t know if she ever went to a place where the wind didn’t blow 360 days a year.  But she had a full life in this part of the country where life still has meaning and there are many ways to contribute to your family and your community.

We don’t get to choose our circumstances.  Stuff happens.  Life is good then it’s tough, then sometimes it is just really tough, but for those of us who know Christ, we know that the pain and struggle and hurt will not compare to what is in store for us.

Eye has not seen.  Ear has not heard , and no human mind can conceive what the Lord God has in store for us.

God’s Spirit that lives within believers gives us a glimpse of what awaits us, but it is still more than we can imagine.

The apostle Paul wrote that he considered our pres

ent suffering to be of little significance to what God has in store for us.

But life has hardship and struggle and pain.  We get that.  We are not stoic and just let it roll off as if it does not affect us.  It does but we have the promise of life eternal with a God who not only created us but who loves us more than we can conceive.

What can I say about someone who I did not really know?  I will use a brief analogy.

I have brothers whom I have never met and many that pass away daily.  I am talking about my Marine brothers and sisters.  I never met most of them, but I knew them.  We went through the same indoctrination, chewed much of the same ground, served together in different times and places and even generations, fought those who opposed our nation and our way of life.  I knew them.

They were my brothers and sisters.  I knew them but never met most of them.  And when I get notices online that they have passed, a simple Semper Fidelis is how I say goodbye.  I knew them but never met them.

So when a fellow believer passes, I can say with certainty, I knew her.  We serve the same mighty God.  We believe on the name of Christ Jesus.  We want to be known by our love and in so doing, people know that we are Christ’s disciples.

So what can I say about Yvonne?  She worked out her salvation as she thought best to bring glory to God.  She did her best to walk in the truth, and when she wasn’t everything that she thought God wanted her to be, she knew that he was and is faithful and just to forgive.

She knew God to be a God of love and mercy and faithfulness.  She is now in his presence.

I like to put Paul’s words which he gave in the first person to use in Yvonne’s life.

She ran the good race.

She fought the good fight.

She kept the faith.

And there is now in store for her a crown of righteousness which the good Lord has broken out of storage and given to her.

Yvonne is now seeing what eye and not seen and ear has not heard and no human mind can conceive.

She is just fine.  She is fully healed.  She is in the presence of the Lord.

So today is for those of you gathered here.  Nothing that I say or do here will impact Yvonne.   If I mispronounced somebody’s name when I read the obituary, it does not detract from the glory that she knows at this moment.

Today is a reminder that for those who seek the Lord and know Jesus Christ, there is in store for you a crown of righteousness.

Rest assured God has fulfilled all of his promises to Yvonne and will fulfill them with us if we will seek him.

And know this, God grants you a peace that goes beyond anything that you can understand.  We all want to understand what happened.  Why not five years from now?  Why not two years ago?

We like to rationalize and make everything fit into our rationale.  It’s seldom an exact fit.  Our minds have dissonance.

But God says, even though you can’t figure this out now, you can still have peace.  You can receive the peace that goes beyond our human understanding.

The world knows only sorrow and mourning and hurt and sadness when a loved one dies.  God grants us peace that we can’t figure out.

God guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  He protects our hearts and minds from doubt and worry and anxiety.  We can know peace and not know the why of everything. 

Today is for you.

My charge to you is to celebrate the life of Yvonne Howard and receive the peace of God that transcends all understanding.

Celebrate her life and receive his peace.

Amen!

Message for Don Foust's Memorial Service

The Service for Don Foust was Thursday, 7 March 2019 at 2 pm at the OKCremation & Funeral Home located at 2415 N. Walnut Ave OKC 73105.

What follows is the message from Reverend Thomas R. Spence.

This is from Paul’s second letter to Timothy—it is the beginning of the 4^th chapter.  Paul knows that he is drawing near to the end of his life but wants to impart not only knowledge but assurance.

Hear God’s word.

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:  Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.  For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.  But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Is there anyone who didn’t love Don?

I will tell you right now, nobody will ask that at my funeral.  Don had a way to get along with everyone and do as much good as he could wherever he was.  There was a little bit of John Wesley that must have rubbed off on Don during his time with the Methodist Church.

Sometimes Don helped people when he should have been taking care of himself, but that’s just the way he was wired.  He helped.  That’s not just what he did, but who he was.

He loved his neighbor.

This afternoon,   I plan to assist you in finding assurance, comfort, peace, celebration, and hope.

I don’t need to do anything for Don.  He is just fine. He is better than fine.  He is with his Lord, which just happens to be where June is as well.

Rest assured, Don doesn’t need to hear anything that I have to say today.  This is for you.

And be comforted in the fact that Don ran the good race, fought the good fight, and kept the faith.  If you knew Don, you knew that he was the Lord’s faithful disciple. 

I did not look forward to the day that we lost Don, but I looked forward to this message.  Don was faithful to his Lord.  He loved the Lord with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength.  He loved his neighbor as much as he loved himself, often more.  Preaching Don’s service was always going to be easy.

Losing a friend is tough.  Proclaiming him to be God’s faithful servant is easy.

Take comfort in the fact that Don has received his crown of righteousness.

Now, receive the Lord’s peace.  It is peace that he gives us when our own hearts and minds are stressed and frazzled.  It is peace that goes beyond what we can understand.  It is peace that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Receive the Lord’s peace.

Next, we need to celebrate the life of Don Foust.  Many tears have been shed and will be shed, but we are called to celebration because Don’s tears have been wiped away by God himself.

He is restored, redeemed, and in right standing with God.  That calls for a celebration.

He has no pain.  He has no worries.  He doesn’t have to worry about who will cut his grass this year or even have to figure out how to pronounce those names in the Sunday school lesson.  In fact, he likely knows a few of those folks personally now.

Because Don is home now, we can celebrate. 

But we also celebrate his life.  I’ve only known Don for just over a decade but I can’t think of Don without thinking of Chewy Tuesdays.  Unless you live in Burns Flat, that name doesn’t mean anything.

It was a crazy name for a ministry designed to show God’s love by feeding hungry people.  It started with a lot of food and very few people and looked like it might be one of those “Well, we gave it try” ministries.

But people got their heads together and come up with a different way to tackle this ministry.  The meals would be simple—a hotdog, or ham and cheese, or PB&J, something to go on the side, and fruit.  Fruit was a big thing.  Why?

Because most of the hungry people that we fed were kids who were out of school for the summer and their parents either couldn’t afford or chose not to buy fruit.

Not a problem.  We bought fruit.  People donated fruit or money.  Kids always got fruit.

Don was all over this ministry.  He and June for a time would get the paper bags ready.  No ordinary bag would do.  The bag had to have stickers and say GOD LOVES YOU on both sides. 

This bag stuff was not logistics.  It was love.

Don would go door-to-door and sign up kids.  We delivered to some elderly shut-ins and other adults, but kids were the focus.

Don would give a testimony a couple times a year about the ministry.  Sometimes he would write it out, sometimes not.  If he didn’t, it would take 10 minutes to get through it, if he could even finish.

I knew that if he ever started talking about the kids running to see him, he was going to get choked up.  For you see, when Don or anyone else who was a part of this ministry pulled up to a house for delivery, the children ran to meet him and greet him and love him.

Kids know love when they see it.  It’s not that they were getting the fanciest meal in town, just the best meal in town delivered with love.

I don’t want to just talk about this ministry because Don was involved in many things, but if you will bear with me a bit longer, I want to tell you about a donation that Don picked up.

Someone had commented on a Facebook post that announced this ministry that they wanted to give something.  This happens.  People give $20 if you come to get it or some oranges that are about to go bad or something that usually means more work for the person receiving the donation that good the donation will do.

So, Don went to the house and told them he had come in response to the note on Facebook.  He walked away with a $1,000 check.  That year had been a little tougher than others as far as staying within budget but Don came back from this meeting smiling and saying, “We are going to have fruit.”

When you live in a world where giving and generosity and faithfulness to God are the exceptions much of the time, being involved in a simple act of generosity goes a very long way.

Don loved his Sunday school class and they loved him.  Probably one of the toughest things with him being in the OKC area was that he missed his Sunday school class.

Don also missed a lot of phone calls, for these close friends tried to say in touch.

Don also had a long list of phone numbers entered incorrectly into his phone.  My daughter Heather helped him fix some of those.

I don’t know a lot of people who have had a tree crash into their homes.  I don’t mean damage the roof, but come through the roof.  Don did.

Many of my conversations with Don came as I walked by his house and he was sitting in one of the carports taking in all of the repair work.

Don never got to go back and live in that house but that’s ok, he and June got to pick out how it would be put back together.

Don made an impact at the Great Plains Regional Medical Center—that’s the official title for the Elk City Hospital.  He and June worked in the gift shop and were a source of encouragement to many.  Don could quite work this gig alone after June had passed but he touched the lives of many as a volunteer.

Why do I bring these things up?  I thought we were talking about celebration.  That’s right!  And the way you celebrate Don’s life today is to share your stories and memories and things that will soon be forgotten if you don’t share them with each other.

Don’s just fine.  Celebrate his life with your memories that need to continue.

The final area today is hope.  Listen to Paul’s words once again.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Don has his crown of righteousness, but our hope is in the fact that God has one for us as well.

We hurt today, and probably tomorrow, and for some of you there will be an empty feeling in 2 weeks or 2 months or at some distant time.  It will come unannounced.

But we who have the Lord do not despair.  We have hope.

One day, our race will be over and for those who have proclaimed Jesus is Lord and believed the holy scriptures that God raised Jesus from the dead and have followed him by putting his words into practice, we too will say.

I have run the good race, fought the good fight, and kept the faith.  There is in store for me a crown of righteousness.

Don’s body may return to the earth, but memories of him don’t have to.

Here is your assurance—Don is just fine.  He is better off than all of us here.

Here is your comfort—God has wiped away his every tear.

Here is your peace—it is the gift of God and you don’t even have to try to figure it out.  Receive it!

Here is your celebration—Don has received his crown of righteousness.

Here is your hope—There is also in store for you a crown of righteousness because of what the Lord Jesus has done for you.

Amen!