Do You Believe?

Martha said to Him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:24-26)

I do not claim to see all there is to see in these words of Jesus. But as I meditate on them and ask for insight from Him I see more and more.

At first these phrases seem to be in contradiction with each other which causes some to catch them up in attempts to justify false notions about death and theories about after-life. Therefore it is important to properly perceive what Jesus wanted to convey here in the context of a correct understanding of the biblical view of life and death and eternity. To wrest these words out of that context is to damage and distort the fundamental principles of the gospel.

When Jesus spoke to His disciples earlier about the death of Lazarus, He used the preferred terminology of heaven in reference to what we call death. He said that Lazarus was sleeping, for the death of our body this side of eternity in heaven's perspective is very much like the unconsciousness that we experience when we sleep at night. As far as heaven is concerned no one has really died (except when shortly after this story Jesus died that kind of death at the cross). But when Jesus arrived at Bethany He chose to use human terminology when discussing this issue with Martha so as not to distress and confuse her even more than she was.

But Jesus wanted to use this opportunity with Martha to reveal some vitally important things about life and death and the centrality of His own role in our lives in relation to eternity. Martha thought, as many of us still think today, that the resurrection was just an event in the future when dead people will come to life again at the end of time as we know it. She did not have the advantage of the fuller revelation of these truths as we now have and was not aware of how all of these things were to transpire. But she did have enough knowledge about this subject to understand that there was coming a day when all who had died would be brought back to life to face the judgment.

I find this quite fascinating given that Martha did not have the New Testament writings that give us far more clarity and insight into this subject. On the other hand, Martha and her siblings did have the unique privilege of having Jesus personally tutor them at various times in their own home in a way that very few others ever experienced. Could it be that in their dialogues with Jesus privately that He had shared something about these things that she had taken to heart? Jesus was always eager to unpack the Old Testament scriptures and bring vital truths into new perspective for anyone willing to learn. So it is possible that she may have been taking hold of things she had learned from Jesus directly as He shared with her insights from the Scriptures that even the most studied religious teachers did not understand.

Now Martha found herself in a time of testing that challenged her to apply in real life the things she had been learning over her lifetime about truth. Coming to know truth intellectually is important but unless it sinks in deeply enough to transform the heart it is nearly useless. Truth in the left brain is helpful as a resource, but it is only reference truth, a resource library for comfort, for hope, a discipline to guide the emotions and life when everything seems to be falling apart and challenging our beliefs.

I have observed that there are cycles of learning in life. One can go for some time learning new things and making sense of how truths fit together properly. But then there comes times of testing when all the theories, no matter how accurately they may have been assembled intellectually, are put under pressure during more intense life experiences. It is then that one suddenly finds out just how seriously they really believe the things they have come to know previously. And it is often a shocking experience when one realizes how shallow their beliefs really are when real life puts them under the microscope.

I am actually experiencing something similar right now. Because I have been praying and learning and seeking to be more real for some time, God has shown me areas of weakness and concepts of truth that need to be reinforced in my own character. But when I suddenly find myself in different circumstances with different surroundings I realize how extremely weak I really am and how vulnerable I am to unexpected temptations. It is a real wake-up alert for me to realize that areas of my life I thought were making good progress are actually still very flimsy and in desperate need of strengthening. I am finding that I am much weaker than I thought I was and am in desperate need of more grace and more total dependence on God every second.

Martha too found herself in such a time of crisis as a number of confusing and very painful things all coalesced to confront her beliefs about life, death and how Jesus fit into all of it. Her frustration that Jesus had not answered her request to heal her brother raised serious questions about the real feelings of His heart toward her. This was reinforced by many around her who wanted her to doubt Jesus and sought to drive a wedge her and Jesus. She was deeply hurting from the loss of her beloved brother and her sister was hurting so deeply that she was nearly delirious with anguish. Others were raising doubts about the integrity of Jesus and the way He had dealt with their problems. What was she to do?

Martha chose to put her trust in Jesus despite all the evidence that seemed to incriminate His integrity and trustworthiness. She chose to go out to meet Jesus herself away from all the distractions of those who sought to discredit Him along with the noise and confusion of all the intense mourning going on in the village. Martha chose the better part this time and went to intentionally place herself in the presence of Jesus to allow Him to share with her whatever He might have to offer in this time of intense grief and questions. She decided to bare her heart to the One who had always proved Himself faithful to her in the past even though this time it seemed He had let her down. Martha indeed made the right choice.

Jesus instantly capitalized on her choice to bring life and hope and encouragement to her to the extent that she was able to grasp. He chose to use her language about death rather than using the word sleep that He had first used with His disciples. This was no time to bring even more confusion to her heart and Jesus wanted to focus her attention on the good news inherent in Himself in this moment of deepest anguish and questioning. Jesus wanted to take her farther than what she already understood about the future life and link in her mind the hope of the resurrection to Himself.

He did not try to alter her belief in the future resurrection for it was already correct. What He did want to do was to take her much farther to allow her to see that He Himself was the essence of all good news, especially about life and death. He wanted to build on the foundation she already had and move her even closer by restoring her trust in Him personally as her only hope in every area of life. After she expressed her confidence that her brother would rise again on the last day (which was true and still is true), Jesus took her belief a step farther to link that hope in the resurrection directly to Himself. I am the resurrection and the life!

It is not just some future event that deserves our trust, it is a Person who's heart is passionately determined to love us and save us that is at the center and is the very cause of that glorious event.

The confusing part that I struggle to unpack is the following phrases that almost seem to contradict each other at first.

He who believes in me will live even if he dies.

Everyone who believes in Me and lives will never die.

O.K. There are two things the same and two things that seem to be the opposite here.

Both phrases talk about those who believe in Jesus, that makes sense. But then the other two things seem to suddenly be reversed. The first time He speaks of those who die and the second time He says they will never die. What is the real meaning here?

Part of the confusion I believe can be cleared up in the context of this passage. Jesus had just dealt with this issue in His discussion about death with His disciples earlier. Clearly I see there are two different events that take place in our lives that we call death. Yet Jesus prefers to use different names for them which can certainly help to make more sense out of all of this. But in His words to Martha He did not use different words because she had not been present when He had talked about this with His disciples and He did not want to confuse her under the present circumstances.

But we can view this from a better vantage point and take into accoung more context to make sense of it. We even have the insights of the book of Revelation where Jesus relays to us the reality of what is called the second death (Revelation 20:6, 14). This is the death that heaven warns against most strenuously and wants to save humanity from ever experiencing. And I believe this is the death that Jesus refers to in the second phrase of His words to Martha.

In contrast, the first phrase spoken to Martha is referring to the first death which is what Jesus prefers to call sleep. Jesus wants people to understand that even though we all may have to experience the terrifying experience we call death (that He calls sleep) that it is not so devastating from heaven's view of things. Whether we experience the first death, or sleep as heaven prefers to call it, is not nearly so important as whether we truly believe in Jesus. The thing that is most important from heaven's perspective is what we chose to believe about God as revealed in the heart and life of Jesus. Being properly positioned in our attitude and relationship to Jesus is the most vital thing in all eternity. The first death is almost incidental in contrast to the importance of what we believe about Him.

In no way is Jesus suggesting anything about some sort of conscious period of soul-life between the first death and the resurrection. This idea is a distraction and a diversion to draw people away from the beautiful truth about Jesus and the way He deals with death. The Bible teaches that when one dies the first death they go into what heaven calls a sleep in which there is no consciousness, no awareness of time or emotion or anything whatsoever. Their body and spirit are separated; they are disassembled in the reverse of how Adam was put together. When these two essential parts are separated there is no longer any ability to think or be aware of anything until the two are put back together. This is what Martha already understood and what Jesus assumed in His discussion with her.

What Jesus did want to stress in His brief words with Martha was the vital importance of clinging to her trust in His heart no matter what her emotions or surrounding circumstances or others might suggest about Him. She had made the choice to come to Him in trust that He cared about her pain and He reaffirmed and strengthened that choice. But His plans were for her to experience even more joy than she might dare to even hope for. In delaying His return to heal her brother Jesus had actually set the stage to give her something far better than what she had asked for and something that would also bring greater honor to Himself as God's representative to the world. In placing her trust in Him even in her pain and confusion, Martha was cooperating in paving the way for Jesus to bring to her something far better than anything she dared to ask or imagine.

The essence of the end-time resurrection was standing in front of Martha. In resurrecting Lazarus who was beyond hope of restoration according to all human calculations, Jesus was about to prove that He had the power and authority to raise to life anyone who had ever 'died' throughout history. This impending miracle was to be irrefutable proof of the divinity of Jesus that could not be ignored or discounted by the religious leaders of the Jews and they all knew it very well. This miracle was also a partial demonstration of these words of Jesus to Martha.

Lazarus had believed in Jesus and had already placed his trust in the heart of Jesus toward him before he had died. Jesus was now assuring Martha that He was fully capable of giving life to her brother whether it was another lease on temporal life or was a permanent resurrection that would occur on the 'last day'. In bringing a dead, rotting corpse back to life in the case of Lazarus, Jesus demonstrated to all that He had the full authority of the Almighty to give life to anyone, and especially those who were willing to place their implicit trust in believing that God truly cared for them and would save them.

Jesus did indeed raise Lazarus back to life. But it was not the eternal kind of life that Lazarus was raised to but was only an extension of the mortal life he already knew. Lazarus would later die again just as all of us do. But in demonstrating His power in the case of Lazarus Jesus wanted Martha and everyone else to know that He was powerful enough to fulfill the second part of His promise to her as well. All who put their complete trust in the life and death of Jesus and believe Him by giving over their life to Him totally will be brought up to eternal life in the end, the kind of life that has no end in a new body that has the attributes of immortality. That is the life where the spirit and the glorified body are recombined and our thoughts and emotions and awareness are implanted to take up where they left off when the old body died the first time. That is the destiny of all who choose to put their confidence in God and in His Son who was sent to offer us this redemption through His blood.

Then the most important question is posed, not only to Martha but to everyone confronted with this reality. Do you believe this? What we choose to do with this truth will make all the difference, not only in this world but for all eternity to come.

Do I really believe what God is showing me in these stories about Himself and His heart?

Am I willing to put all my trust in Him, so much so that I am willing to act and think in harmony with that profession of faith in Him? James says that faith without works is dead. If I claim to believe in Jesus it has to involve more than just a mental consent that what He says is true. I must have a level of belief that compels me to live my life in harmony with what I claim to believe about Him. I must experience a belief that comes from deeper levels of my heart, not just my left brain. To believe according to the Scriptural view of the word is a comprehensive, all-encompassing kind of belief that permeates all of the life both inside and outside.

Jesus, I believe. Please heal me from all my lingering unbelief!

Does He Care?

What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him? (Psalms 8:4)

So the sisters sent word to Him, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick."

Martha then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You."

Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw Him, and fell at His feet, saying to Him, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.

Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" (John 11:3, 21-22, 32-33, 40)

It is starting to become even more clear to me now. It is this mystery that has baffled me for so many years, this insistence on a belief that seemed to be so elusive to me. I was often very frustrated by repeated injunctions that I had to believe or I could not succeed in being a Christian. Yet when I tried to figure out just what it was I was supposed to believe the list seemed always very slippery at best, very subject to the varied opinions of whomever it was that was teaching.

So one of the things I have devoted myself to over the past few years is a journey to find out the truth about this issue of belief. As I have stated a number of times, the reason I am immersing myself in the book of John is primarily to discover for myself just what it means to believe in Jesus. Since John seemed to have the best grasp of this concept and wrote about it more than most anyone of the Bible writers, I figured that if I spent enough time and effort and research that sooner of later it would start to make sense, both to my mind and more importantly to my heart where real belief has to take root.

As I have meditated on each occurrence where this issue is brought up (which is pretty much every story in the book of John), I begin to grasp a little more of what Jesus really meant when He talked about belief. And as I have been meditating on this story involving Martha and Mary it is becoming even more clear. As I have been increasingly realizing for some time, saving belief must have as its primary focus the good intentions toward us and the fairness of God.

If I compare this story to some other stories in the gospels that clearly demonstrate this focal point of our problem with believing in Jesus, it is easier to see what is going on.

But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me." (Luke 10:40)

Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?" And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And He said to them, "Why are you afraid? How is it that you have no faith?" (Mark 4:38-40)

In the original Greek there is just one root word that in English we translate into several words like faith, belief and trust. They are all one and the same thing as far as heaven is concerned. To have faith in God is to trust Him implicitly and to trust Him is not something based on sheer imagination or some feeling that is conjured up but is always based on evidence and experience. This is one of the most important things to know about faith/belief. In addition, the original culture understood this faith as something that was naturally acted upon, not just a claim without corresponding outworkings in the life and behavior.

The core issue involved when Jesus asks me to believe is whether or not He truly cares about me. Does He notice my pain, my frustrations, my situation, the condition of my heart and most importantly does it make any difference to Him? That is the bottom line that every being in the universe needs and wants to know and especially those of us who live on this deceived planet full of sin. Does God really care about us enough to be willing to do something to help us and save us?

Martha herself had voiced a similar question in her confrontation when it seemed that Jesus was not showing any sympathy for her heavy burden of working to show Him and His disciples hospitality. Jesus was allowing and even encouraging her sister to seemingly shirk off all responsibility to help her sister with the preparations for the meal she was trying to fix for them and in her mind this seemed to indicate that He didn't really care about her. Was He playing favorites with Mary? Was Mary more attractive and thus more valuable to Jesus than Martha? Most men seemed to think so which was one reason Mary had had such a colorful life with men. Did Jesus really care about Martha's problems?

Martha's sense of self-worth was exposed in her exasperated words to Jesus. In a burst of honesty uncharacteristic of many people and especially women in that culture, Martha openly questioned whether Jesus was really being consistent with the things He taught others about how God feels about them. If God was so caring and loving and valued everyone so much, then why was Jesus letting Martha do all the work while Mary just sat around inappropriately hanging out with the men listening to Jesus teach. The culture they lived in prohibited women from sitting at the feet of such teachers and especially in the presence of male students. What was Jesus' problem anyway?

In Martha's heart she could not reconcile what Jesus claimed about a caring God and the way she perceived she was being treated in her present circumstances. If Jesus truly cared about her He would surely try to enforce at least to some extent the traditions of their culture by insisting that Mary get up and help Martha finish preparations as she was expected to do. But instead of complying with cultural expectations and Martha's demands, Jesus gently rebuked her perspective and insisted that Mary was indeed making the right choice and it was Martha who was confused about her priorities.

Does Jesus actually care about us? And if so, what does that look like in our daily lives? How does that translate into our culture and our circumstances? How can we know that He really cares when it seems that He doesn't bring the relief that we crave when we want it most? Why so His priorities seem so different than ours?

The disciples too had voiced very similar words when it seemed that Jesus was ignoring their desperate situation in a boat one day. While they found themselves fighting for their lives in the middle of a violent storm that threatened to sink their fishing boat in the middle of the lake, Jesus was sleeping soundly on the tackle in the back of the boat like nothing was going on. How could anyone sleep through such commotion? Why weren't His priorities more in line with theirs, as in – like – helping us to bail water before we all drown?!

What I find interesting is the way in which they voiced their cries for help to Him. Do You not care? And that is really the bottom-line question of all of us when it comes right down to it. Our deepest gut-level question that demands to be answered in nearly every situation is our intense desire to have assurance that the One who made us actually cares enough about us to intervene when we are in need or are hurting. If all of life could be condensed down to one question, this would be the essence of it.

It is not enough to retort with religious platitudes in response to this question. Those are nothing more than insults in the face of real-life problems and painfully difficult situations. Sin is torturing us to death and insists that God does not care about us. The beliefs of the world permeated with Satan's lies always assume that God cannot be trusted to be consistent, that He is fickle at best, that unless we depend on ourselves or each other there is no hope. We live in a world where the answer to this question about God is always in doubt. And yet our hearts still long to feel that the supreme being in charge of everything might actually be caring and willing to intervene in our behalf.

Yet so often apparent evidence seems to lead us in the opposite direction. For the disciples, finding Jesus ignoring their plight by sleeping blissfully while they are working so hard to save themselves seems very uncaring. For Martha, seeing Jesus allowing her adult sister to shirk her responsibilities in the kitchen leaving even more work for Martha seemed to be evidence that Jesus didn't really care for her as much as for her sister. Even the Psalmist presents this issue in the form of a question: what does God really think about humans? Does He really care?

In the case of Martha and Mary in this story this issue is implicit in the identical questions they both voiced when they first met Him. “Jesus, if you really cared about us You would have come when we first called for You. Why did You delay so long that our brother died? Do you really care about us?”

Do You care about us? Do You care enough to intervene to help us when we need You?

God! Don't You care that we are hurting, that we are being abused, are being exploited and victimized while You seem to just look on in apathy? Why don't you rescue us when we cry out to you the first time?

Do You really care like You claim to care? Where are You God when so many bad things are happening in our lives and nothing seems to slow them down or stop them?

Job experienced these feelings very intensely and had a lot of things to say about it.

David cried out to God in the Psalms wondering where God was when things weren't going well.

People all throughout history have been crying out and questioning whether God really cares as much as He claims to care. And the question still remains agitating in our own hearts. Does God really care about us enough to make a significant difference in our lives personally?

What is Jesus' response?

Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?

So the primary focus of belief must be about this issue of whether God really cares about us or not. And if I think about it, what does anything else much matter if this issue is not addressed. If God doesn't care enough then what difference does everything else make? If God doesn't care enough then we need to turn elsewhere for comfort, for rescue, for help. And that is exactly what the devil wants me to believe.

Jesus says that I need to face head-on this disturbing question in my own heart if I want to truly see God's glory. If I am willing to make choices to believe in spite of my circumstances then a door is opened through which God's glory can flow into my life and everything can be transformed. But the pivotal issue underlying everything is what I decide to believe about the heart of God towards me. The most important question for me and for each of us is how we will judge God's claim that He cares about us.

Does Jesus really care? Really? All the time?

Blaming and Claiming

Martha then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." (John 11:21-23)

I have been waiting with mounting anticipation to explore these words between Martha and Jesus that are so full of hope and encouragement. Martha meets Jesus outside of town full of sorrow, confusion and possibly some tinges of bitterness for Jesus not showing up in time to relieve her of the cause of her deep anguish. But she is not afraid to speak her heart openly to Him and Jesus honors her for that.

What is behind the words of Martha here? Is she angry with Jesus for not coming in time? That certainly might be a part of it. Is she stating a fact of reality, that if Jesus had been present the sickness could never have claimed the life of her brother? That is certainly a truth and might be what was on her mind. Likely it was a mixture of feelings that were swirling around inside her soul that gave voice to what she expressed to Jesus that day. But most important of all she did not try to suppress her feelings but at the same time she remained intentionally respectful and aware of who Jesus really was and the potential for Him to do things for her beyond her ability to imagine in the moment.

Even though Martha could only express faith in Jesus getting whatever He might ask for from His Father rather than her asking anything for herself, I believe Martha was stretching her faith as far as she could to give Jesus a chance to take it even further. And that I believe is a most important lesson to be discerned in this story. Like any of us under extreme pressures of discouragement or suffering emotional distress, it is difficult for us to exercise faith or experience peace when everything seems to indicate that God has abandoned us or is ignoring our cries for help. Yet I see in this interchange between Jesus and Martha some gems of truth that I need to store away in my own heart to remember in similar situations.

Even in her pain Martha chooses to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt while being honest about her frustration with Him. And in being both honest about her feelings while still trusting in His love for her, Martha opens the way for Him to build on her faith and move quickly above it to transform her circumstances beyond her wildest hopes. And Jesus is ready and eager to do similar things for any one of us who are willing to follow her example.

Was Martha blaming Jesus for the death of her brother? Possibly. It seems that most of us have a penchant for wanting to blame someone when things go badly in our lives. I've noticed how pervasive this habit is for so many of us including myself. When relationships malfunction, when accidents happen, when prayers go seemingly unanswered, when pain invades our lives, the first thing we seem to want to do is to point the finger of blame at someone instead of looking to see how we might be responsible for at least part of what is going on.

This is one of the primary symptoms of sin. It was one of the very first symptoms to appear minutes after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit they had been warned against eating. When gently asked by God about their choices to disobey they both immediately began to blame others while implicitly denying personal responsibility. Adam blamed Eve for tempting him and Eve blamed the serpent. But interestingly both of them explicitly blamed God for setting them up to fall by creating the source that they were using to blame for their disobedience.

This is what fear and deception by sin does to our heart. When we live with distorted views of God and entertain false ideas about how He feels towards us, we will always react to His presence by seeking to shift responsibility and blame to someone or something else. But since God created everything then ultimately we are doing no more than throwing the blame back onto Him while denying personal accountability. Living in fear of God from the false belief that He wants to hurt us and punish us produces an attitude of self-defense and a desire to shift blame away from ourselves. This will always result in embracing a falsehood to some degree, for all sin involves deception and false ideas about God.

But God does not react in kind and seek to blame us or contradict our faulty logic. Rather He is intent on restoring our relationship with Him to the trusting, loving, loyal relationship that He created us to have with Him originally. He is not interested in playing our silly blame games, rather He is intent on restoring to us the joy of intimate fellowship with Him that sin has destroyed in our lives.

Martha actually expressed a truth when she stated that if Jesus had been there Lazarus would not have died. So where is the deception in the potential blame she was expressing? It was not so much the technical truthfulness of her statement that involved deception but the spirit that sin brings to the way we view our circumstances. Martha was feeling deep anguish from the loss of her brother and because her natural fallen nature clamored to indulge in the blame game like all fallen beings do, she reminded Jesus that really it was His fault that her brother had died.

Interestingly Jesus did not deny her subtle accusation just as He did not do with Adam and Eve. Rather He seized on the positive in what she had said and sought to draw her out to an even deeper trust in His plans for her. He sought to turn her attention away from the blame game that never brings satisfaction or resolution to focusing on the truth about God. Rather than waste time trying to explain who's fault was involved in her pain, Jesus zeroed in on her statement of faith, her offer of a blank check to Him and then immediately made a counter-offer to her.

When Martha expressed her confidence that Jesus could get anything He wanted from His Father, it was the same as giving Jesus a blank check for Him to fill in with whatever He want to do. Jesus gets very excited when His children give Him blank checks like this. The most important thing about our relationship with God is a restoration of our confidence in who He really is, to belief in His consistent goodness, to have a settled assurance of His good intentions in our lives and an implicit trust in His heart for us. This is the ultimate goal of the whole plan of salvation and whenever we choose to offer God an opportunity to advance His value in our hearts and before others by expressing faith in Him He will reward our offer many times multiplied.

In this case I see Jesus instantly filling in the blank check given Him by Martha with the words, your brother will rise again. I sense that possibly Martha may have had a startled shock of hope for a moment until her logical mind kicked in and reasoned through that statement to fit her religious belief system based on what she had been taught from Scriptures. Again, Jesus did not seek to immediately challenge her beliefs but instead reaffirmed her confidence in the Word of God. He did not seek to discredit her hope in the resurrection in the last day when all the righteous will be brought up from the grave to be reunited with their loved ones and meet Jesus in the clouds of glory. He wanted her to keep her roots firmly attached in the Scriptures but He wanted to build even more on that foundation.

Jesus took hold of this opportunity offered Him in the expression of faith by Martha to unveil a greater truth about Himself that had to this point remained shrouded in mystery. Jesus reaffirmed her confidence in the future resurrection but wanted her to connect that promised event more directly with Himself. Jesus wanted her to begin to realize more distinctly how central He Himself was to every aspect of the plan of salvation and how it was through Him alone that all the promises of God can be fulfilled.

But all of this started and was made possible by Martha handing Jesus a blank check of faith so that He could return it to her filled in with something far greater than she would have dared to write on it. And even though Jesus used her limited view of truth to reinforce the promises of the Bible, He also used her tentative faith to expand her thinking and challenge her limited vision of what God might want to do for her. When she said God would give Jesus anything He asked of His Father, Jesus immediately took that statement and filled in the blank by saying He intended to ask His Father for the restored life of Lazarus.

What could Martha have felt at that moment? I believe she experienced a momentary shock of surprise and a thrill of hope before her logical thinking blocked it out again. I believe her heart must have leaped up to grasp the words of Jesus before her mind began creating its own explanation based on logic. In truth her first response was completely right for in reality the life returned to Lazarus by Jesus later in this story was only his mortal existence that again would come to an end later on. It would only be at the glorious resurrection at Jesus' second coming that Lazarus would receive the kind of life that will last forever which is the one God is most interested in.

But Jesus wanted to make a case in this circumstance that would prove that He had the power and authority to accomplish that future event by demonstrating it in a limited fashion before the world in the case of Lazarus. And while He did not give Lazarus immortal life when He brought him out of the tomb later in this story, Jesus proved that He was far more powerful than the religious leaders were willing to acknowledge. It was this miracle that so overwhelmed their attempts to discredit Him that entrenched their resistance to Him and caused them to finalize their plans to kill Him to stop His witness for God.

I want to give God blank checks like Martha did and let Him give them back to me filled in with stunning offers for my life. I want to become free of fear and to be willing to express my real feelings to Him while still maintaining confidence in His heart toward me like Martha did. I want to give God more chances to use my life to demonstrate His power and attract others to want to enter into a saving relationship of trust in Him. I want to know God intimately as it is my privilege to know Him and grow up in my trust and to rest in His plans for me.

When Venting Enhances Faith

Martha then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. "Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You." (John 11:21-22)

These words from Martha really stir me. They tell me some important things about her relationship with Jesus and her understanding of how He felt about her and about each one of us, especially when we are hurting and blinded by disappointment.

Too many times I have fallen for the false notion that God does not like me to be upset with Him and gets irritated when I express my real feelings to Him. Growing up in 'religion' I assumed that appearances were more important than people or their feelings and that God was more concerned with my behavior than with what was going on deep inside. But God is rich in mercy and has been slowly healing my heart of these lies and impressing me repeatedly that there is nothing I cannot bring to Him. When my emotions are raw, when I am angry from my perceptions of how I think He is handling my circumstances it is safe for me to unload on Him without fear of rejection or punishment. This has been a source of great relief for my heart over recent years as this truth has become more clear to me.

Martha was hurting deeply in more ways than one. Yes, she had just lost her brother to death and that produced the expected grief that any of us might experience upon losing a close loved one. But this death was much more complicated than the typical because Martha knew without a doubt that if Jesus had just made a little better effort that He could have arrived in time to heal Lazarus before death had claimed him. Her disappointment in the way Jesus had chosen to relate to her situation was a cause of potential deep irritation and a temptation to feel resentful on top of her grief. She was struggling not only with the normal pain of a death in her family but with the added pain of feeling that God had let her down when she needed Him the most without offering any good explanation.

When Jesus did finally show up it seemed that it was too little too late from her perspective. She was then faced with how to relate to Him when she did meet Him outside of town. Was she supposed to pretend that she was not upset with Him for ruining her life, her family, her faith? Was she supposed to submit to His decision without questioning His reasons? Was she supposed to keep her mouth shut and just blindly accept God's dealings in her life without comment?

I know that I can really resonate with Martha's likely feelings in this story as I perceive them. These feelings and urges have at times been overwhelming in my own experience and my confusion about how God expects me to relate to Him have too often prevented me from being as honest with Him as was Martha in this story. The strict expectations of religion to keep up external appearances and a supposed piety while ignoring the true conditions of the heart in an effort to appear 'correct' religiously can be suffocating. But evidently Martha and Mary had come to know Jesus sufficiently enough to know that He was not that way. They had come to the point that they were willing to vent the real truth about what was in their heart while at the same time giving Him the respect and opportunity to share with them why He was doing what He was doing.

One of the most important lessons I have been slowly learning over recent years is God's willingness to have me express anything that is going on inside my heart. God is not threatened by anything I might say to Him and is not intimidated or miffed by my expressions of frustration with Him. That is a big change from the intense fears I had of Him growing up: the fear that He would get angry with me if I said anything negative about Him, the fear that He would punish me severely if I inferred that He was not always fair, the fear that if I harbored even the slightest misgivings about Him that could be exposed into the open that He would become very angry and would treat me harshly.

Many of these fears about being open with God come from confused ideas about reverence. I still struggle to understand this issue correctly, but I do see that it is a source of many misconceptions about God for millions. Even today I feel agitated whenever I see people in authority putting excessive emphasis on keeping up appearances of reverence while suppressing opportunity for people to express what is truly inside. I believe that this issue of reverence is greatly misunderstood and has been exploited by the enemy to keep us far away from the heart of the Father.

I can distinctly remember in my early years being very afraid of God while spending much of my waking hours trying to keep Him appeased through repetitious pleas for forgiveness for every impure or inappropriate thought that might momentarily cross my mind. I spent much time all throughout the day trying to dredge up any possible mistake from my past that God might be using as an excuse to keep my out of heaven for eternity and begging Him to forgive me for that 'sin'. But all of the invented activities of my heart to find relief from the constant feelings of condemnation that I lived under 24/7 seemed to produce little relief. What it did produce over the years was a deeper resentment against this implacable God that seemed to always be raising the bar ever higher just out of my reach. In short, it produced and deeply embedded in me the heart of a rebel.

That is why I now have such intense reactions whenever I encounter teachings that remind me of those horrendous days of despair and depression. So much of typical religion as I knew it only served to make me feel more hopeless and resentful, not encouraged or attracted to want to know God. In those days my heart reacted in hidden rage whenever people would claim that the gospel meant good news and that we should be spreading it to the whole world. I could not (and still cannot) see any good news in the religion that permeated my thinking from those early days because it all seemed to be a confused jumble of doctrines and rules and demands that were impossible to achieve except for the very strong.

But worst of all I felt totally inhibited to be able to even express my frustrations, confusion and resentment for fear of severe retribution and censorship. The religion I knew did not tolerate dissent and all such talk was strongly discouraged and repressed. I was afraid to even admit to myself the rage that continued to increase inside of me against God for fear that He might see it and come down on me severely. So I strengthened habits of emotional repression and built into my heart a very large reservoir of anger, bitterness and wrath that remained largely out of sight both from others and largely even from myself. Any leaks in this reservoir were quickly plugged for fear that someone might discover how I really felt. Religion and keeping up appearances was more important than dealing with the true condition of my feelings about God.

With this background it might be seen why this response of Martha to Jesus might get me excited. Martha must have shared at least some of my feelings of frustration with God in this moment in her life. She had counted on Him to come through for her, had been very patient and polite with Him, had given Him the benefit of the doubt, had put her complete trust in Jesus just as she believed she was supposed to do. Yet after doing everything right that she knew how to do, it seemed to her that Jesus had failed her in her greatest moment of need. She could not see any explanation that would make sense as to why Jesus had chosen to ignore her desperate pleas for help.

Added to this was the intense external pressure from people around her intent on amplifying any of her doubts about the love of Jesus and His claim to represent the real truth about God in sharp contrast with religion's claims about Him. Martha found herself in the very center of the intense battle between two supernatural forces contending over what is really true about God's character and how He chooses to relate to His children. The temptation to believe negative things about God was increasing exponentially in her heart, yet her own personal experience with Jesus and the time she had spent in His presence had introduced radically different perceptions of what God was really like.

Martha, Lazarus and Mary had chosen to embrace the truth about God as revealed in the life of Jesus in contrast with what most other Jews believed. Because of this family's openness and willingness to lay aside their traditional views of God Jesus had found their home to be one of the very few safe havens where He could relax and be more open. These times together had cultivated a close bond of mutual respect and love and appreciation that few have had the privilege of experiencing. Martha had seen Jesus up close and had come to know for herself that He was worthy of her trust. Because of that she also knew that she could feel safe to express her frustrations with Him and even vent her anger without fear of censure or retaliation on His part.

But she also knew enough from her times with Jesus to realize that she did not know Him completely. While she could not formulate any reasonable explanation of why He was acting the way He was in her situation, she also knew His heart well enough to be able to both vent on Him but also to express her trust in His heart in spite of her feelings. This is the lesson that really resonates with my own soul coming from the background of fear as I have. I am greatly encouraged by seeing Martha's willingness to tell Jesus bluntly how she felt about the way He handled her situation, to tell Him her frustration but still to make a confession of faith that He was still worthy of her trust in spite of her intense feelings.

Over the years I have met various people who have learned this lesson in their own lives. At first it came as quite a shock for me to imagine that God might tolerate someone venting their true feelings on Him without reacting violently. But as the real truth about God has become more clear in my mind and heart, it makes more and more sense to believe that God is never intimidated or angered by my expressions of doubt, frustration or even resentment. At the same time it is important that I also give Him opportunity to explain Himself in His way and in His time. That is what I want others to do with me and it is only reasonable that I give God that same opportunity.

Martha told Jesus just how she felt about Him and I am sure her tone of voice conveyed even stronger how she felt, maybe even to the point of embarrassment at first. But Jesus didn't give the slightest indication that her venting on Him was any problem. In fact, He used her words as a foundation to build on and as a means of beginning to answer her deepest questioning. He seized upon her fragile expression of faith and immediately responded with a counter-offer that must have nearly overwhelmed her mind.

I sense in my reading of this interchange that Martha was daring to try to think radically outside her typical sphere of possibility. Jesus had previously challenged her to pay more attention to Him like Mary was learning to do and I believe Martha had done just that. Now when everything seemed to challenge her growing trust in Jesus she was choosing to be radical like she sensed He wanted her to do and tentatively may have even inferred in her words the crazy idea that Jesus might do the impossible if He so chose. This idea seemed so bizarre that even she may have not dared to voice it openly, but she left the possibility in tack in her words to Him and Jesus instantly seized on her tentative faith and sought to give it deeper roots in her heart.

What I find interesting is that what Martha said to Jesus was that she had chosen to trust in His relationship with His Father as well as His relationship to her. I perceive that maybe she could not yet bring herself to hope in the Father as much as Jesus did, but that her trust in Jesus based on all her previous experiences with Him was her choice when everything seemed to be pushing her in the opposite direction. She was confident that Jesus had something of a hot line with God and she would choose to rest in Jesus' love for her no matter how things turned out in her brother's situation. This was the best choice she could have made with the faith that she had and Jesus honored her faith and strengthened it in His response to her words in a very interesting way.