If I Die Before I Wake

I was four years old when my grandfather died and I distinctly remember sitting in my mother's lap as she replaced the phone and began to cry. I was of course too young to comprehend the reason for her tears, but in time I must have understood somewhat, for I’ve always traced the beginning of my fear of death to that moment.

 
And my bedtime prayers did not dispel those fears. "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." Take my soul? Before I wake? It's a good prayer and I'm glad I learned it from my mother and sister. I’m sure it was meant to comfort me, but in some way it contributed to a sense that my death was ever at hand.
 
In my fifth grade Bible class the teacher had us memorize Psalm 23, the Shepherd psalm, in the King James version. There the psalmist says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Believers find great comfort in that verse. But I did not. I did not yet know the Shepherd, and all I got from that verse was a disturbing image of walking in a valley with Death casting a dark shadow over me.
 
Understand, I wasn’t always ruminating on these things, and I suspect my family will be surprised to hear I had such thoughts at all. But I was concerned enough to wonder if I'd live to age seven, and then when I did, if I’d live to age nine, and then it was eleven and so on. By no means the only factor in my turning to Christ at age nineteen, the fear of death and, sometimes, the fear of having to face God, certainly played a part.
 
So it was an incredible thing how I immediately found freedom from the fear of death when I became a Christian. And it was not at all an unusual thing. For the Bible says Jesus died that "through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15).

"If our death problem is solved,” says Pastor John Piper, “we are the freest of people."

If you have two minutes, you might enjoy listening to John Piper's excellent remarks on the power of the gospel to take away the fear of death.

Here's the link: The Power of the Gospel and the Fear of Death