** I just added a TON of people to my blog list so if you are just receiving updates, WELCOME! And now to catch you up: I am writing down for myself my own story of faith as a way to remember who God is and what I know of Him for the moments coming over the next year that bring doubt or fear or uncertainty to my life. Here is the link to why.
Now back to the story:
One of my favorite things about God is that He speaks.
To me.
Personally.
He spoke “hold on” when I desperately wanted to die.
He spoke over me that He knew me and all that I would cost to buy back previous to His decision to rescue me… and still He chose to come for me.
He spoke over me, through the book of Hosea, that He knew the desert I lived in… that He could and would speak tenderly in it… that it had purpose and that His desire was to turn me back to Himself, where I was known and loved and cared for.
And then He told me to live outside of the grave… to come out… to be unbound and set free.
The night I learned this my heart felt crushed by rejection that came without even really being known. I sat on my bed finally believing that the Lord loved me and that He was sovereign over all that He let touch me, but I had yet to learn how to trust Him with the thoughts and hearts of other people. I still lived in a grave with all of my dead things… I wanted them hidden and unknown and kept safely in the dark where only God and I knew they existed. My thought was that if rejection stung while all that I was remained hidden, I could not imagine its sting if and when I was actually truly known. I remember exactly where I sat on my bed as I asked God to speak to me, and I still wear the lock and key I put around my neck to serve as a constant reminder of what I learned that night when He answered.
I opened my bible to John 11 by happenstance and begin to read the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead and the Word came to life. This is the story of two women who sent word to Christ that their brother, Jesus’ friend, was sick. They wanted Jesus to come and heal Him. They had seen Him heal many others and their request spoke of their trust in His friendship and belief that He cared.
I had been there. When life fell in shambles down around me, I had called on His name, just as these women did, because I believed that He would answer… And for myself, as with Mary and Martha, Jesus coming looked nothing like what was hoped for.
He waited.
Two days.
And their brother died.
Don’t you know as life faded from his body their eyes searched the road, looking for help from the One who could help… and minute by minute, hour by hour, Jesus did not come.
What I love about Scripture is that often you can peek into earthly circumstances and God’s activity as they work themselves out side by side. Scripture says that when Jesus received word of His friend’s illness He said it would not end in death, but for His glory, which is why He waited. These women did not know His reasons, they only knew He wasn’t coming. I love that these things were written for me, so that I would know He is about His glory when I can’t see where He is and don’t understand what He is doing.
When Jesus finally arrived, Mary and Martha both made similar statements, saying, “Lord, if You had been here my brother would not have died.” Oh, those ifs. There is so much doubt and hurt and questioning in that small little word. I have lived with a hundred different ifs, all rooted in a heart full of unbelief.
I love that Jesus entered into these two sisters’ grief and wept with them. He is the God of comfort. He is also the God of power. The Word says that Jesus approached the tomb, with a stone laid against it, and told them to roll it away. Ever practical Martha protested this stone being moved because Lazarus had been dead four days and there would be a stench. And Jesus’ response? He said, “Did I not tell you if you believed, you would see the glory of the Lord.”
Here is when the Word begin to speak over me what I needed to know about myself: I had my tomb with its stone safely housing the stench of my sin and shame, and Jesus was standing at the grave of my life calling the dead man that I was to Himself and to life… all while I worried, as Martha did, about death’s smell… what those gathered around would think and experience.
When the stone that sealed Lazarus’ grave closed was rolled away, Jesus called for the dead man to come out and he did… with his feet and hands and face bound by the clothes of death. Jesus spoke to the crowd gathered, the very crowed that Martha wanted to spare the stench of death, telling them, “Unbind him. Set him free.” Being made alive comes by the Word of Christ, but often it is the church and community that have the joy of helping to remove grave clothes from those made alive again.
This is beautiful. Jesus calls dead men out of their graves… without thought to protective stones or the crowd gathered or death’s stench. I love that death’s grave clothes cannot hold one in the grave, and that the very people we often fear smelling our “death” are instrumental to Christ’s command to be unbound and freed.
John 11 taught me to live free and unafraid of the things that would be called out of the tombs in my life… to trust Jesus with the crowd, who did smell death… as they watched a dead man walking away from his grave, made alive by the power of Christ’s word. And many believed.
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting? – 1 Corinthians 15:55
