Heavenly Father, I praise You for helping me to learn to appreciate people and times in my life. I praise You for those saints I have known who have improved my life. I praise You for the testimonies of people who lived, served, and loved You above all. Help me today to take command of my morning and shake the evil from it. Also, put a hedge of protection around and over my family today and protect them from evil.
Holy Spirit, I recently was able to watch the celebration of Life service of David Seymour. He was a classmate of my wife and a person I got to know in 2002 at a mission trip to Broken Bow, Oklahoma. All through the service, I was able to listen about a life of a man that loved his family, loved Jesus, and loved people. He grew up a child of a missionary and would become a husband, father, and pastor for many years and also did a stint as a missionary. Recently, he was the pastor in Houston over the missions of his church. He passed away suddenly while he was with his wife and a team from his church in Costa Rica. Many people sent in emails, texts, Instagram’s, etc, and many spoke at his service. All of them talked about how much he loved God, his family, and people. They talked about how he would meet anyone anywhere and show them Christ’s love by serving them. He contributed to the changing of many lives. I did not know him for long, but through Facebook and my wife, I kept track of him and his family. I hope and pray that when I leave this earth, I will be known as one who served You with all I am and showed love. One verse that was brought up and showed the nature of this great spiritual man is 1 Corinthians 13:13—And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. David was the epitome of demonstrating love; he had faith, and he had hope, but he was full of love.
So today I can only praise God that David has heard You say Welcome, my child, my good and faithful servant. May all of us learn from a man who never lost the excitement or the wonder of life around him and would meet anyone where they were, no matter who they were. He truly loved the least of these. Please comfort his family and help
them grieve. Help them to search themselves and then carry on his legacy by serving You with that love that David demonstrated to and in front of them. Let him join the great cloud of witnesses to cheer on those who pick up the mantle and follow after him. In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.