Modeling Faith

Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me." (John 11:41-42)

This story has been integrating itself into many issues and circumstances in my life lately. The underlying principles I am seeing more clearly in this passage are vital for me to learn and practice.

I have noticed in this story that the core issue involved here is the belief or lack thereof about whether God cares or not. Mary and Martha were under extreme pressure to revise their opinions about Jesus, to doubt His love for them, to question the motives of His heart and by extension how God was relating to them. Jesus had made it clear that He had come to represent the Father to humanity who had been saturated with lies about God. The way Jesus treated people and talked about religion was so radically different from what anyone else was saying that most people found it difficult to embrace His postive representation of God.

But Mary and Martha had personal history with Jesus and were coming to trust His heart more than many others. They had listened to His teachings, had encountered up close His power to save and had been challenged to rethink their pictures of God after experiencing Jesus up close. They were in intensive training as they were being personally tutored by the best teacher the world has ever known. But now a time of testing had arrived in their training and their trust that Jesus genuinely cared about them was under pressure pushing them beyond their comfort zone.

Their faith was being challenged by the enemies of Jesus along with supernatural evil forces who were pressing the old familiar beliefs and assumptions about God insisting that all these new ideas were far-fetched and unreliable. Darkness and misapprehension of God is the norm in this world and these women were familiar with the pall of this darkness. But Jesus had been bringing glorious light into their hearts and they had thrilled with revelations about God that they had received from Him. But now with everything going wrong and Jesus seeming to be ignoring them, they were under pressure to doubt whether He really cared for them as much as they had been led to believe.

Inferred in many of the statements throughout this story is this question about whether Jesus cared or not. Mary and Martha had placed their implicit trust in Jesus when they had called for Him to come heal their brother. They had continued to cling to hope day after day, but Lazarus had died and even then Jesus seemingly ignored their faith and still did not act in their behalf. Doubts began to press in on their hearts and as the mourning traditions began, infiltrators from the enemies of Jesus mingled with real friends to insinuate and strengthen these doubts. Everything seemed to lead to a conclusion that God wasn't listening, that He didn't really care for them as they had been led to believe.

How did Jesus relate to this testing of faith and the distress of His close friends? How did He treat them when they expressed their anguished feelings from their perceptions of how He was treating them? What was the disposition He displayed in response to their questions reflecting unspoken feelings that He may not have really cared for them as much as they had hoped? What picture of God did Jesus project under these intense and difficult circumstances?

This is again another instance of where the true character of God in contrast to our assumptions about Him is more evident. Instead of scolding them or making them ashamed about their struggle to believe in Him, Jesus only remained largely silent on this issue except to prod Martha to hang on to what she already knew. He did not scold them, condemn them or censure them, but He did speak the truth in love. In addition, what I see in these verses is Jesus modeling before all present what real belief looks like. In the words of Jesus to His Father Jesus demonstrates plainly how He wants them to respond to the circumstances that seem to incriminate God. He addresses directly the unspoken question about whether God cares or not.

Was God listening to their hearts? Did He hear and take note of their anguish and pain and sorrow? Was He sympathetic to their concerns and did He care enough to intervene? All of these issues lay at the core of the internal questions people were grappling with in this event. Everyone was wondering about the motives of Jesus and misinterpreting His actions. How could Jesus get across the most important lesson about what it really means to trust in God and be a true follower and disciple?

Jesus' life was a model of what God intends for all of us to live. But many have mistakenly assumed that the perfect life of Jesus was a model of how to try very hard to eliminate sin from our lives and live piously based on religious assumptions and standards of behavior. But Jesus did not come to this earth to show us how to work harder to be good; Jesus came to this earth to show us how good God is and to expose all of our false assumptions about how He feels about us that keeps us at a distance from Him. Jesus came to reintroduce us to our loving Father that we so deeply distrust because of the myriads of lies we believe about Him. Jesus came to demonstrate in person how much heaven really cares about sinners and to refute the lies of Satan that are so deeply ingrained in us.

How did Jesus use this crisis as a teachable moment in the lives of those willing to listen? I find each phrase in these verses significant in this respect.

First, Jesus raised His eyes. A few verses before it says He came to the tomb where He was surrounded with mourners reinforcing the doubt and unbelief so prevalent that day. Sadness and depression was everywhere, but infecting that sadness in many minds were false assumptions that needed to be refuted. Nearly everyone present was entertaining to one degree or another the idea that God didn't care very much about their situation or Jesus would have intervened sooner. Jesus wanted to set the record straight, so as the official representative of God and the perfect model for how we are to relate to God, Jesus turned His attention away from all the distractions that sought to reinforce the lies by turning His eyes toward the true source of light and love and truth.

After turning away from all the things seeking to distract from the truth about God, Jesus spoke clearly and plainly to the core issue of whether God cared or not. In speaking these words about God listening to Him, Jesus was addressing the issue of how much God cared. Martha and Mary had both expressed their doubts about Him in their first exclamations when they encountered Him. Why didn't you come when we called You? If you really cared about us you would have come long ago.

Others reinforced those doubts when they challenged the comments about Jesus' love in response to His tears. Some viewed His weeping as evidence of love, but others sought to discount His love by reminding everyone that Jesus had failed to heal Lazarus when He could have done so easily and had seemed to do so intentionally – which was actually the case. But His motives were the real issue at stake, not the facts here. Was Jesus' delay an expression of indifference and unconcern for the feelings and needs of His friends, or could He be trusted even when everything seemed to point in the opposite direction? Was God really listening in love and willing to respond or was He distant, uncaring and capricious?

In this context Jesus directly speaks to the issue. With gratitude Jesus publicly thanks God for always listening. He wanted to reinforce the truth that God is not distant and uncaring but is cognizant of every prayer and plea for help. While it seems often to us that He is not paying attention the opposite is actually the case. God is intensely interested in every detail of our lives and longs to do far more for us than we can ever imagine. However, the real issue is not whether God hears and cares about us but the problem lies in our blocking His actions in our lives by our unbelief in that very reality.

In the conflict between good and evil there are certain restraints on both sides. God and Satan both are restrained from doing everything they want to do. Some things require permission from human agents in order to release supernatural powers, either good or evil. Crucially, each human being has the ability to unleash enormous power from outside the natural realm simply by their choices as to which side they will endorse.

Unbelief is an endorsement of the lies of Satan and gives Satan permission to harass, to suppress truth, to bring depression and discouragement and despair. Endorsing the lies of Satan allows him access and permission to bring calamities and harassment into people's lives. Likewise God also needs permission to counteract the schemes and lies of Satan in our lives by open expressions of trust in Him. There are many blessings which fail to materialize in our lives simply because we fail to choose to trust His heart. He is not allowed permission to do what He wants to do as seen in this story because sometimes He cannot find anyone to give Him access through permission to enter our circumstances like Martha gave to Jesus.

Jesus makes it explicitly clear in His prayer to His Father that God always hears. And to reinforce the fact that this was the core issue He wanted to expose, He inferred that this was the motivation in true belief. Jesus was modeling the kind of prayer that He wanted everyone to pray, a prayer of confidence in God's heart, that God always hears our prayers and that He cares no matter what circumstances might infer.

Father, you are helping me to see more clearly the issues at stake in my own current circumstances. Help me to learn the lesson of trust in you even when everything seems to point the opposite direction and my feelings push me away from faith in you. I choose to trust in your heart right now and continue to trust you. I ask you to keep reminding me of my need to express confidence in you, that you always hear my prayers and that you are ready and eager to bless me and come to my aid in times of trouble and good times as well. Thank-you for these lessons from your Word to edify and train my heart in your ways.