John 11:17 When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. 18 Bethany was only a few miles down the road from Jerusalem, 19 and many of the people had come to console Martha and Mary in their loss. 20 When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” 23 Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 “Yes,” Martha said, “he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.” 25 Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. 26 Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she told him. “I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come into the world from God.” 28 Then she returned to Mary. She called Mary aside from the mourners and told her, “The Teacher is here and wants to see you.” 29 So Mary immediately went to him.
With all of the "religious fog" we now have in America, we can lose sight of the fact that God came to us and gave us forgiveness for all our sins and also gave us a guaranteed home in paradise. This place called Heaven is so easily missed because of the enormous volume of truth that is involved in all it took to make it happen. The hope we have is not an "empty" hope but a hope with the reality of salvation through Jesus Christ and the reality of His grace that forgives all our sins past, present, and future. With human reasoning it is hard to grasp the immensity of the love of God for us His children. Maybe this will help. Paul wrote this to the church in Ephesus in Ephesians 3:14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
The love of God is too immense to totally understand, but when we pray to the Father we begin to be able to focus on just how awesome that love is. We have unlimited resources to make our inner strength grow strong, and that strength is seen in the outer forces we have to deal with as believers. Jesus is right here with us, as Paul wrote in verse 17, and He has made a home in our hearts, and you realize that the more you trust Him. If anyone ever asks what it means to ask Jesus into your heart, well, there you go right there in the above verses. To be complete is to understand the love of God and grow in that love, which means you really see His grace from a spiritual perspective. With Christ, you are forgiven.
In the above verses in John 11, Martha is looking at Jesus from a human point of view, and she has missed what was happening in the circumstance of the death of Lazarus. There is a bigger picture here and Jesus is the one who is seeing and making this picture and it is going to take someone with a heavenly perspective to see it and Martha failed in that instance. In reality, Martha is trying to tell the Son of God how to do his "business" because of her humanistic understanding of what had happened. Jesus cuts to the chase and says this in verse 23 Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again. Can Jesus say it plainly any more than that? Nope! Martha missed the meaning of this direct statement by Jesus and referred to the hope of the future. Then Jesus goes on in these verses by saying 25 Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. 26 Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?”
Let me pose this question to you: Do you believe in the above scripture? Then you are telling me you believe Jesus can do what He wants to do? So do I. This truth cuts through any religious fog immediately because it is not filtered through human reasoning, as Martha did. The cutting part is, "Jesus is a very present and on-time God." What are you dealing with in your world, and how can Jesus minister and show God's love to you? Take Him at His Word, and you will see clarity of purpose in the midst of this situation. If you are experiencing some doubts in your life, let Him affirm your faith and hope through the truth of His Word. If you have lost someone who made a huge impact on your life, let Jesus fill that spot, and He will do more than fill it. He will fulfill it and you. God's love is an active and growing realization we have through this intimate relationship with God Almighty, and He gives us the presence of Jesus in the midst of our situation, and Jesus gives us perfect clarity and purpose.
Sure, Lazarus went ahead and died, but the resurrecting power of Jesus nullified that death, and the resurrecting power of Jesus still nullifies the deaths of loved ones, but just not in our timing. He does it in His timing, and we must look at it in a very spiritual way to be able to trust that timing in our everyday lives. Remember, Jesus is coming again, and there is a time coming when we will see those resurrected by His power and spend eternity in Heaven with them. God's love is a reality, and the hope He gives us is a no-nonsense hope.
Tap into that hope, and your time on this earth will gain more and more power to handle anything thrown your way. Our God Still Reigns!! He raised Lazarus and there are plenty more resurrections that will be taking place in the future because He HOLDS the future in His hands.
Today's Message,
David Warren
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