James Lee in Heaven

Many of you may not know James Lee, but he worked faithfully behind the scenes with me at Harvest and edited all of my blogs and many other writings.

He was a very talented and loving young man who deeply loved the Lord and his family. He knew and worked with my son Christopher at Harvest as well.

While we were in Israel, I heard the news that James had a brain tumor. As I usually communicated with him, I sent him an email. I wrote:

“James,

You are a good and godly man. You faithfully labor behind the scenes and do your work diligently and with excellence. We do not want you to leave us. But God is in control here. Do not abandon hope. There is much we do not know here:

Why did this happen?
What is the purpose of it?

But there is much we do know as well:

God is sovereign and in control.
God loves you.

Heaven is 100% real and guaranteed to you because you have put your faith in Christ. God causes “all things to work together for good…” (Romans 8:28). So now we must fall back on we do know instead of what we don’t know.”

 James wrote me back:

 “I wanted to write and thank you and Cathe for all of your prayers these last few weeks while I’ve been in the hospital. It truly has been a blessing to know how many people have been lifting up my family in prayer, and supporting us in any way possible. I guess we should never, ever be surprised when we see the church rise up, inspired by God, to support their own.
I do not know what the future holds, or how long that future is for me, but I am fully trusting the Lord and He has given me great peace—a peace I could not have imagined going into this. On a slightly different matter, I also want you to know that I am available to edit your blog posts again. I cannot guarantee the split-second response that you’re used to with me (I am still working on regaining all of my typing skills: a side effect of the chemotherapy wafers), but I want to continue to help you proclaim the gospel message to the people, and this is one way that I can do so.
So feel free to send me your entries and I will post them as quickly as I can. It’ll be just like old times again!”

That was James.
Despite the fact that he was receiving treatments for his cancer, he wanted to still use his gift to serve the Lord.

We prayed many times for James, but he was not healed as we had hoped. He was called to heaven on Friday, October 15 at 5:20 in the morning.

I spoke with James only hours before he went to heaven and I told him I loved Him and that heaven was going to be beyond his wildest dreams.

He told me he was ready to go.

In a blog post about my son Christopher’s departure to heaven, called “Missing Christopher,” long before James got cancer, he edited it and then wrote me back saying,  

“Just edited and updated your blog post for today and Facebook post for you… Continuing to pray for your family today…I miss Christopher tremendously too…”
Now, James and Christopher are together again.

James Lee will be missed.

Please pray for his family—his wife Dani and his two children Jimmy and Emma.

I have no question that James has already heard the Lord say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!” (Matthew 25:21 NLT).