A word about the tragedies in YWAM Denver and New Life Church, Colorado

The God of resurrection and life

This past Sunday a tragedy happened in Colorado, USA. Two young YWAM’ers (Youth With A Mission), Tiffany and Philip, and two young churchgoing sisters, Rachael and Stephanie, were murdered by a young man, Matthew Murray.

Murray was attending a Discipleship Training School (DTS) five years ago, but was asked to leave due to health and most likely mental issues that were hindering him from getting everything out of his DTS. Five years later he showed up at YWAM Denver, murdered Tiffany and Philip and wounded two other young men. Then he traveled to New Life Church, murdered the two sisters, injured three others, before he was eventually shot to death by an alert security guard.

A terrible tragedy. And obviously for me as DTS director, who have also had to ask students to not continue their studies with YWAM this hits home with a lot of force. I’ve cried when I’ve read the reports from these tragedies, and I’ve asked God to intervene in mighty ways.

And this is one of the cases where your view of who God is comes out in the open. Either God doesn’t care about us, and this is yet another meaningless tragedy, or he is he who he says he is in the Bible, and we can trust that God will bring life and resurrection out of this terrible event.

I believe and hold on to the latter understanding. God is the God of life and resurrection, and he will always bring life out of death. Jesus had to die to bring life to many. We die to ourselves to get full life in Christ. In the kingdom of God things are turned upside down. Death brings life. Lay down your rights to receive all God has for you. Humble yourself and God will exalt you. Don’t defend yourself and judge others, for God will do both for you. How do you grow? You die to yourself and accept that you have everything in Christ.

Because there is a God of of life and resurrection I’ll never lay down my life and die without being resurrected again. Every time I humble myself, God will exalt me. In situations like the one in Colorado, all we have to cling to are verses such as Psalm 30:5b “weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” and John 12:24 “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds”.

I believe God will bring resurrection, life, freedom and joy through the sacrifices, the kernels of wheats, of Tiffany, Philip, Rachael and Stephanie. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”, the historian Tertulian wrote hundreds of years ago. And it’s still true today. Life will spring forth. Death and darkness shall not have the last word. This may look like a victory for Satan, hopelessness, depression and darkness, but it isn’t. God will bring life. God will bring victory. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be the almighty God of the Bible that I – and many others – have put our lives in the hand of!

May God bring forgiveness and life to Matthew Murray’s parents as well who now after the death of their son are left with the haunting question: “what did we do wrong?”. May the God of all comfort, comfort them and bring hope into their hearts.