For the benefit of Aunt Lois’s friends who were not able to attend her memorial service, I want to post this tribute which will consist of: [1] the order of service; [2] my Gospel message and accounts of her last days and hours; [3] a re-posting of her obituary:
LOIS E. VAUGHN | 7/20/1938 – 7/9/2024
Memorial Service
16 July 2024 | 11:30am
Milward Funeral Directors / Southland
https://www.milwardfuneral.com/obituaries/Lois-E-Vaughn?obId=32331925
Officiants
Speakers: Pastor Dave Parks | Pastor Steve Wainright | Danny Middleton
Accompanist: Lydia Wainright
11:15am | Musical Preludes
11:30am | Service
– Pastor Dave | Welcome & Prayer
– Pastor Steve | Obituary / Scripture / Pastoral comments
– “It is Well with My Soul” | Congregational singing led by Pastor Steve and Lydia
– Danny Middleton | Personal Tribute
– Pastor Dave | Tribute & Gospel Message
– “Great is Thy Faithfulness” | Congregational singing led by Pastor Steve and Lydia
– Directors dismiss the service
Pallbearers:
- Benjamin Parks
- Danny Middleton
- Ross Moosnick
- Larry Moore
- Ryan Finch
- Jeff Blackburn
††††††††††
Welcome…
Thank you for being here with us today for this memorial service.
Anyone who knew Aunt Lois knows that she made copious volumes of notes — about everything and kept detailed, meticulous records — about everything.
Here’s the service she requested.
We will memorialize her and express our personal love for her – giving Glory to God in everything for all the investments of her love she made in all our lives.
And, also, most of all, she gave me special instructions to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and give testimony to her personal faith in Christ:
- Christ is who made her who she is – during her lifetime and especially now;
- Christ was her hope in life and in death;
- and Christ motivated her to do what she did.
As she said to me: “Somebody will be there who needs to hear & believe the Gospel…”
Three of us will be speaking today. For anyone who may not know who we are:
- I am Dave Parks, her nephew via marriage to her niece, Debbie – and former pastor…
- Pastor Steve Wainright is her current pastor of New Life Baptist Church…
- “DannyBoy” Middleton [“Danny, I hope that’s OK – Aunt Lois never referred to you by any other name than ‘DannyBoy.’”] Danny is her much-beloved 1st cousin on her mother’s side. He was born just a few months after their first son who died in infancy – and so he has always been in their family as their ‘other son.’ Danny grew up with them in their family … and has been their life-long friend and family member. To John, Lois, and Buzzy, Danny was their ‘ever-present help in time of trouble’ — and the good times also; and their constant companion to them all in life and death. “Danny, we thank you for always being there for them for anything and everything they needed…”
Let’s pray and commit this service to the Glory of God…
“O God, our Savior and Redeemer: 74 years ago, Aunt Lois committed her faith and the salvation of her soul to Jesus Christ. You saved her and have kept her for Yourself. You have called her to be with You. And so now, we commit her to you, and we commit this service to the Glory of Your Grace. May we make much of Jesus. And receive our worship and praise through His merits, we pray. Amen”
[My memorial message…]
We have said before that Lois charged us to ‘preach the Gospel’ here in her memorial service. So we will.
So, here’s the Gospel truth: being with God in Heaven is not your ‘default destiny’ just because you were born and died as a human being. Rather, it is by placing your full faith, trust, and confidence in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Redeemer from your sins!
John 1.12: “But to all who did receive Him [Jesus Christ], who believed in His Name, He [God] gave the right to become children of God.”
THAT was Lois’s only profession of her faith and her Hope of Heaven.
All of us bear witness that Lois was a ‘good woman.’ By that, we mean that her life was characterized by acts of love, generosity, and goodness to us all – and to everyone. But when we talk about her ‘goodness,’ we are using earthly and human standards of measurements and comparisons.
But she did not ‘earn’ the Grace and favor of God by her goodnesses.
Lois’s profession faith in Jesus Christ was a Gospel confession; and God declares in His Word, in Romans 3.10-12, that
“As it written [quoting from numerous Old Testament references],
‘There is none righteous, no, not one;
there is none who understands;
there is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
they have together become unprofitable;
there is none who does good, no, not one.’”
So what gives? Who is contradicting whom? We all say Lois was a ‘good woman,’ and God says, “there is none who does good, no, not one.”
Here’s what we must understand: when God talks about ‘good,’ He’s referring to His own ‘goodness,’ which He also calls ‘righteous,’ or ‘righteousness.’ So when God talks about ‘good,’ He’s talking about…
- ‘good enough to be accepted by Me …
- good enough to receive My Grace …
- good enough to be with Me in My Heaven …
- good enough to receive My free and sovereign gift of eternal life, forgiveness and salvation from the guilt and condemnation of your sins.’
And the only ‘goodness’ that God will accept is His own perfect, impeccable, pure, and sinless righteousness.
And, that is the Gospel! God freely, by His Grace, gives us the gift of His own God-righteousness in Jesus Christ when we believe upon Him and receive Him by faith!
The Gospel of Grace in Jesus Christ is that in our born, human nature, “There is none righteous, no, not one … there is none who does good, no, not one.” We are all born into our human race as sinners against the Holy, Righteous, and Just character of God. We are human-born estranged from the Grace of God, and separated from the Eternal Life of God.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God” [Romans 3.23]
BUT, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” [in the words of the familiar John 3.16].
God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be incarnated into our world…
- to take upon Himself our human nature
- and live the only Perfect, Sinless human life that has ever been lived
- to be the only human being God-Man who has ever perfectly obeyed God and kept the righteous Law requirements God had imposed upon us to keep — all of which we have broken, incurring the guilt and condemnation of our sins from God’s Holy Justice.
And then, after living His perfectly obedient and sinless life, Jesus Christ went to the Cross and died as our Substitute – bearing the blame, guilt, and and condemnation of our sins upon Himself. Christ was punished for the sins we have committed.
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” [Romans 5.8].
…then God raised Him from the dead as an evidence that our sin-debt had been paid in full!
And when we confess and repent from our sins, and trust that Christ is our Redeemer, God fully and forever, not only forgives us of the sins Christ died for, but He also credits [or imputes to us] the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ!
“For our sake He [God] made Him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” [2 Corinthians 5.21].
THAT is the Gospel that Lois believed, received, and lived her life trusting in and living out.
BUT, live it out she did! She not only lived her life “by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” as Paul says in Galatians 2.20, but she died believing and trusting in Jesus Christ as her Righteousness, Savior, and Redeemer!
That’s why she could say and sing, ‘It is well with my soul.’ We just sang the song together. As the third verse of that song confesses: “My sin – O, the bliss of this glorious thought – my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the Cross, and I bear it no more: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!”
And Lois died in that same faith! She died believing and trusting in the faithfulness of God to all of His saving promises to her in the Gospel!
God loved her to the end of her life last Tuesday … and showed His love through so many amazing Providences. As you all know, Lois suffered with crippling arthritis over these last few years of her life – even becoming homebound here about three years ago. She went nowhere, except to her numerous medical appointments.
And then, over these past two months especially, she became so weak she couldn’t even get herself up out of her recliner or navigate herself in her home. There were two week-long hospitalizations – one in early June, and this last one in early July. It became evident that she couldn’t return home alone. And so she finally consented – of her own initiative and will – to go to a nursing home.
And the Lord Providentially arranged an availability in Sayre Christian Village where her husband, Bobby, has been living for the past year!
However, she lived only about five hours after her transfer. Her decline in health and strength … the ‘perfect storm’ of all her other medical issues … and the physical and emotional stress of the ambulance transfer from the hospital to Sayre – all converged on her weak body to be more than she could survive.
But the Lord didn’t call her home before she and Bobby had a final, sweet, face-to-face reunion at her bedside shortly after her arrival at Sayre. They hadn’t seen one another face-to-face for almost a year! We so bless and thank God for this one last sweet mercy!
After their reunion, I had to go back to the hospital to pick up some of her personal effects the ambulance service couldn’t transport. Before I left, I told her I wanted to pray with her. In my prayer, I quoted the lines from Zephaniah 3.17 [it is printed on the inside front cover of her service card]:
“The LORD your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”
I have prayed this prayer for years over those for whom I don’t know what else I can pray: I prayed that God would give her a sense of His Presence … that He would quiet her anxieties with a sense of His love … that she could sense and hear in her soul God’s ‘lullabies’ of His peace and His pleasure with her.
I also prayed the words of Psalm 127.2, “For He gives His beloved sleep.”
‘Lord, please give your beloved sleep – please give her some rest.’
She had just told me, weeping and moaning: “Dave, I’m ready to give it up. I can’t do this any longer. I can’t rest. My body and pain won’t let me rest. My mind won’t let me rest.”
So I prayed to God that He would give her sleep and rest — He did!
As I was leaving her for that last time to go back to the hospital to get her belongings, she was crying and moaning in her pain, whispering and singing [with her eyes closed]:
“Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed Thy hand hath provided – great is Thy faithfulness to me … new mercies I see! new mercies I see!”
I’ll always wonder what new mercies she may have already been seeing…!
Less than two hours later, the resident Nurse Practitioner visited her room to conduct her intake assessment. Lois was already ‘absent from her body – present with her Lord.’
“And I heard a voice from Heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!’” [Revelation 14.13].
We will conclude our service by singing together another one of Aunt Lois’s favorite hymns: “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” This was her confession of her faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and this was the anthem of victory that was on her lips as she departed this life and met her faithful Savior face-to-face. We’ll sing together as our prayer of praise and faith also…
††††††††††
Here again is the link to her published obituary:
https://www.milwardfuneral.com/obituaries/Lois-E-Vaughn?obId=32331925
~Dave Parks 