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This post has been written by Dave Wilson. Following on from my last post, I have some more thoughts from the story of the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11: 1 - 43 NASB), and would like to share these with you.
God's Call and Our Response "Come forth, Lazarus". With these words, probably the greatest miracle of His earthly ministry was accomplished. One writer said if Jesus hadn't qualified his call, then all the dead of all the ages would have come forth from their graves, but only Lazarus was called, and so he alone came out of the grave. We often think of that call coming to us in our sin in saving power, but there are many other occasions when we can hear that call if we listen for it. The voice of Jesus calls us out of our fear, our defeat, our despondency, our tiredness, our laziness and many more. Sometimes we may just have settled down in a place of comfort, and that voice calls us out to a new place, or a new ministry. I am reminded of the words of a song: In the dark and all alone, growing comfortable Are you too scared to move and walk out of this tomb? Buried underneath, the lies that you believed Safe and sound, stuck in the ground Too lost to be found You're just asleep and it's time to leave Come on and rise up, take a breath, you're alive now Can't you hear the voice of Jesus calling us Out from the grave like Lazarus You're brand new, the power of death couldn't hold you Can't you hear the voice of Jesus calling us Out from the grave like Lazarus Rise up, rise up, rise up Out from the grave like Lazarus No matter what situation we are in, the voice of Jesus is always calling us " Come further up, Come further in" as C.S Lewis put it. Our Communal response After being raised Lazarus was still wrapped in his burial clothes. I always imagine him a bit like the classic Mummy from the Scooby Do cartoons of my childhood, shuffling forward with his hands out and moaning. Jesus says to the the people around "Unbind him, and let him go free". I find it interesting that this did not happen when Jesus himself was raised, so it makes me believe there was some significance to it. One possible area of significance for us lies in our response to God moving in another individual's life. Jesus himself said that a prophet was without honour in his own country, and I think that in many ways we can be responsible for not allowing new ministries or new growth to flourish either generally or as they might impact directly on our own lives. I'll give some examples. I remember being in a discussion with a very good friend about an incident involving a third friend, and it slowly dawned on both of us that we were seeing the third person through the lens of who and what they had been many years before, as they were so familiar to us, but God had been changing them and it was very unfair of us to not recognise that. Another example I can give is when a relatively young person said in a sermon at Camp something which I believed to be completely wrong (that's still my opinion!) but I found that I had closed off to their ministry as every time that they spoke, I just thought to myself "That's the person who said that thing". My attitude to them had to change. In a multi-generational church like ours that are many opportunities to take offence. There's an old Scots saying, " Ah kent his father" which is aimed at bringing down people who we believe think too highly of themselves, but it's important that we don't carry this attitude into the spiritual life of the church. "I knew them when they were just young", or "that's just So and So's child". It gets even more invidious when we bring children into it "I remember when they did something to upset my children", "Oh, they were no wee saints, let me tell you!". We are also guilty of imagining slights "she walked past me once 10 years ago and ignored me" and guilt by association "that's the husband/children of the woman who walked past me 10 years ago" and what's potentially even worse, we spread our discontent to other people around us. If you don't recognise some of these thoughts (and there are many more!) then you're a better person than me. What we see Jesus do in the Lazarus Story is tell the people round about to "Unbind him and let him go free" and I believe that instruction still stands today as far as our approach to people coming into new areas of spiritual life, be that personal growth or new ministries and callings. We need to be supportive and reject the thoughts and feelings and almost automatic responses that would bind them in our lives and make us less receptive. This equally applies in our own lives of course. Nobody knows our inward faults and failings better than us and as a result we sometimes do not believe that God can move in us or through us, and we sometimes have to take action to loose those old graveclothes that are still tied around us, so that we can move freely in the new stream of life that God has brought us into. "Unbind him, and let him go free". Let that be our attitude going forward, and look to build up the Church rather than resist God's moving. This post has been written by Dave Wilson.
I have been thinking a lot about the story of the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11: 1 - 43 NASB), and would like to share some thoughts with you.
The plan is to cover the first two in this post, then the next two in another post. God's timing and answer to prayer We tend to think in very black and white terms (or in modern terms, binary terms). We pray to God, and expect a response either positively or negatively, because we do not see the bigger picture, and here we see Jesus behaving in what outwardly seems to be a very strange way. Instead of rushing to Bethany at the first word of Lazarus taking ill, he waits for a few days and then turns up. By the time he arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days. What He knew, and the others didn't, was that they were about to see their deepest prayers answered. They wanted Lazarus to continue living with them and he was about to be restored in a way they did not expect or even imagine. Jesus had been involved in two previous resurrections, in both cases just after death, but this was different. After four days in the tomb, Lazarus was not exactly going to be in his prime. As the KJV says "By this time he stinketh!". Jesus didn't come when Mary or Martha wanted, or heal him as they wanted, but instead came at a time that was right for him and wrought a miracle that brought much more glory to God. God's answer to our prayer can sometimes not be a "Yes" or a "No", but a "Not Yet" and his response can be something that meets our deepest need, but in a totally different way to that which we imagined or asked for. God's Compassion "Jesus wept". The answer to many a Bible quiz, and the shortest verse in the Bible. Sometimes people believe that Jesus wept because he had lost his friend, but logically that does not make sense, as He knew that Lazarus was going to be raised. In fact, reading carefully, you begin to realise that the reason for His weeping was that he was touched with compassion for his friends in their mourning and loss, and in fact was moved to the point of tears as a result. Whenever we find ourselves in a place of distress, we can take comfort in knowing that Jesus draws alongside us and is deeply touched with compassion for us. |
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