Mining Deeper in the Word

Desire to Meet Jesus

2011-12-19T08:30:00.000-06:00

Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast; these then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Philip came and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus. (John 12:20-22)

I see a number of things I want to look into here.

Greeks – non-Jews – were coming to worship the God of the Jews at the most important festival in the Jewish religion. Were these just Jews living in Greece or were they actually Greeks? I tend to believe that they were really gentiles who had become influenced by Jews they knew and were genuinely interested in learning more about their religion and wanted to know their God better. They saw validity in the teachings of the Jews and were coming to sense the superiority of the Jewish religion over all others. They had decided to come to Jerusalem possibly along with their Jewish friends to see first-hand the religion of the Jews, but in the process they became aware of reports about a radical Jewish teacher who was rocking the whole country with His teachings and miracles. They became so intrigued by these reports that they decided to seek Him out for themselves and investigate Him personally.

These Greeks had not just come as casual observers of a different religion; they had come with the purpose of personally worshiping God. What they didn't know was that they were about to encounter God personally in a way that not even the disciples had experienced. Their honesty of heart, their sincerity, their openness to truth unlike that of the prejudiced Jews allowed Jesus to in turn open up to them new revelations about God that He could not share with the unbelieving religious people around Him. Like the woman at the well in Samaria, Jesus could be more transparent and direct with these Greeks because they were not seeking to distort everything He said and taught about His Father.

These Greeks found Philip likely as part of their process of trying to track down Jesus. How did they know that Philip could lead them to Jesus? Very likely someone else had steered them in his direction informing them that this man was one of Jesus' disciples. Obviously Philip was not with Jesus at the time but was somewhere alone when these Greeks introduced themselves to him. I find this to be interesting as well as instructive.

Philip did not immediately take these men to Jesus but went to look up his partner and friend Andrew. Andrew is most known for being a person who loved to introduce people to Jesus. Philip is more known for asking questions than for bringing people to Jesus, but he also had learned from Jesus that it is important to work in teams, especially when it comes to working with souls. Jesus had sent out His disciples several times to do evangelism and He always sent them out in pairs. He did this for their benefit and protection so that they could compliment each other's weaknesses with their own strengths. Just as God saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone He knows that it is not good for us to work for Him in the rescuing of lost souls alone. A lone disciple is too vulnerable to work with deceived minds and darkened hearts and it is very important that we learn this lesson ourselves.

“We wish to see Jesus.” I looked up the Greek word for wish and found something interesting. This word implies that they may have really said, “We would be delighted to meet Jesus! We would love to see Jesus.”

This really grabs my attention. I experience those same feelings myself many times. It is a symptom of the drawing power of Jesus and His reputation working on the heart when anyone expresses this kind of urge to meet Jesus personally. It is the main purpose of true evangelism to awaken in hearts this very desire. But it is also important to connect with another friend of Jesus in order to successfully escort such a hungry, curious person to meet Jesus in person for themselves rather than offering to answer their questions ourselves.

How often we spoil or dampen the hunger of people yearning to meet Jesus and to experience His power in their own lives by directing attention to ourselves, our opinions, our answers rather than leading them to Jesus directly to let Him teach them. How sad that churches and religious leaders tend to get people to depend on them to find truth and direction in life rather than showing people how to form a direct connection with Jesus and learn from Him personally. Imagine what would have been lost to these men and to all of us if Philip and Andrew had not taken them to Jesus but had rather tried to answer their questions themselves. One of the most surprising affirmations of the divinity of Jesus would not have occurred if these disciples had treated these seekers like we too often do today.

I notice as well that when the disciples arrived with these men in Jesus' presence they did not tell the men about Jesus but talked to Jesus about these seekers. How does this translate into our own practices in religion? Do we find ourselves talking to people about God more than we talk to God about people? Why do we find it so hard to encourage others to talk to God themselves without us interfering and trying to stay in the center of their attention? The reason God is drawing all unto Himself is to have a personal relationship with each one, not to have us act as constant intermediaries for others.

Certainly there is a period of time when we need to act our part in bringing people to Jesus. They usually meet one of God's friends first in their quest to know Him better and we certainly can share our own testimony as we are guiding them to meet Him in person. But if we fail to take them directly to Jesus and instead try to nurture them ourselves, we in essence are replacing Jesus in their lives and may actually be endorsing a false form of religion that has all the appearances of piety and truth.

We must learn the lesson that we have failed to learn for so long, that Jesus is to be the main focus of attention in every true believer's life. It is essential that we get this straight or we will fall into the scheme of the enemy who is always waiting to enhance our pride and make us the center of attention. God and the truth about His character is the focal point of all true religion. Anything other than this is a needless distraction and can easily lead all of us into a subtle form of religion while denying its power; and the true power of genuine religion can only be found in a personal encounter with the Son of God.

It is not enough that we may know Jesus personally and have a long-term relationship with Him. We must learn the importance of duplicating ourselves by teaching and modeling to others how they can know Him personally themselves. Philip and Andrew modeled the right way to lead people to Jesus and we could learn a great deal from their example. I am saddened by how far from this model we act in relating to those around us who are hungry and seeking to meet Jesus too.

I confess that I am often guilty of drawing too much attention to myself instead of focusing on helping others know Jesus for themselves. It is so easy to want to display how much I am learning about God without taking the time and carefulness to help others get into right relationship with Him so they can be taught of God too. I also need to team with other disciples in order to be more balanced and be more successful in leading curious hearts to know Jesus for themselves.

But the wonderful benefits of getting it right is that we can then share even greater joy as more and more people become personal disciples of our best friend. We do not lose these new friends by making them intimate friends with Jesus; rather, as we encourage them to connect with Jesus directly they become even better friends with us than if we had tried to tell them all about the truth ourselves.

I have been learning that the true nature of the rewards Jesus talks about that we will enjoy in heaven, and even here today, have to do with the joy we experience as we bond with those we have helped to encounter Jesus personally for themselves. This is the kind of investment that will last for eternity and is how we can store up fuel for our ever-increasing joy forever. It is up to us now how much fuel we are willing to invest in to produce these future and even present joys.

Perspective After Death

2011-12-02T07:45:00.001-06:00

The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also; because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus. (John 12:9-11)

Things in my life seem to be transitioning over the past few months. And although I don't know what the future looks like exactly, I sense more and more that trouble is looming ahead for me because of the things I have been learning and sharing with those around me. The more truth that I learn about God and about the revelation of God through the life and teachings of Jesus, the more out of sync I find myself with those whom I once shared harmony with in confused beliefs about God.

I keep seeing more clearly how mistaken ideas about religion have kept me from really knowing God and from being able to worship Him in both spirit and truth. I now find myself repeatedly confronted with decisions as to whether I will continue to believe things I have been taught all of my life about religion or whether I will embrace fresh revelations of truth that are more consistent with the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And as I keep embracing increased light as the Spirit reveals it to me from His Word and from others who are likewise discovering truth, the Spirit confirms these revelations in various ways. At the same time I sense growing resistance from those who once supported me and with whom I shared more traditional views about reality and religion.

It truly is our perception of reality, not just about religion but about how God really relates to sinners that defines how we react to circumstances. As my internal perceptions of God continue to be transformed through the renewing of my own mind I find that my feelings and my interpretations of events and God's messages in written form are becoming very different than ever before. I also see that my view of reality is becoming more and more of a minority view, that very few people are really willing to embrace the real truth about God for fear of what their church will think of them or how their friends and family will treat them.

I feel the same growing pressures myself as I share these exciting, liberating truths that I have been learning and experiencing with those around me. A few are becoming fascinated, intrigued and are starting to explore these things for themselves. But sadly many, even those who are well respected and who have been given positions of trust and leadership over the spiritual direction of others too often react to these new things with fear and suspicion. Rather than choosing to investigate these things through prayer and careful examination of the evidence from the Word of God they often use Scripture simply to reinforce their own dogmas and traditions. They rely on the long established technique of proof-texting which is itself sometimes heavily dependent on using only one version of the Bible to arrive at rather shaky conclusions.

As I read again this passage about Jesus and Lazarus this morning I wondered what might have been going on in the mind of Lazarus as he began to hear about the threats against his life because of his close association with Jesus. I find it rather confusing to even have a clue as to how the mind of a person might operate if they had already died once and been buried for several days to the point of their body beginning to rot away. Then they had been raised to full, vibrant life again and viewed reality and all their relationships through totally different context than any of us have ever experienced. How can I wrap my mind around what that might feel like?

The contrast between the unmistakable joy in the last chapter surrounding the resurrection of Lazarus and the dark forebodings created by the hatred of the religious leaders in this passage is unavoidably clear. Yet how does a person feel who has already died once and who is now being threatened with death again at the hands of others? Does fear have the same power over such a person as it does with us or do they have a unique perspective of reality through their connection and experience with Jesus that insulates them against the petty threats of those who refuse to embrace the truth about God and who see them as the problem rather than themselves? Maybe there are wonderful advantages to having died and being resurrected to give one a completely different frame of reference.

As I opened a devotional book this morning with some of these thoughts of impending trouble ahead circulating through my mind, I found words directed at me from the Spirit confirming that I need to more intentionally embrace these truths in my own life. I must not waver from the direction God has been directing me toward out of fear of those who feel threatened by my testimony about a God who loves us in contrast to the fearful, arbitrary, intimidating God that they believe in. As I read I listened and asked God to impress these instructions and affirmations deep into my heart and mind so that they can provide strength and courage for me when I do face more open opposition to my testimony for Him.

Possibly one of the most important things I have been learning lately is God's attitude of always respecting each person's freedom. God insists that each person needs to be fully convinced in their own heart and mind about what is true without any coercion or threats of punishment on His part if they fail to view things His way. While He gives abundant warnings as to the consequences of choosing other versions of reality or religion, those consequences are in no way to be viewed as arbitrary punishments imposed by an angry God in retaliation for not believing in Him. Rather they are the natural consequences of living out of harmony with the underlying principles of true reality as created by God. Only in harmony with Him can be found true safety and life.

I am becoming increasingly amazed at the grace of God and the perfect harmony of His principles and how merciful He is in holding back so many consequences already that should be destroying our lives. He is seeking in every way possible to get us to know the truth about Him and allow Him to heal our perverted minds and hearts. The dark views of God that pervade the whole world including most people in my own church are full of misconceptions about Him that we have inherited from others and some of these ideas have even been woven into every translation of His Word over the years. Yet we are not left without true witnesses of the real truth about God for it still glows through the pages of Scripture, from nature and particularly from the life of Jesus Christ when it is properly understood and appreciated.

I will close with the message that God gave me this morning as I meditate on the implications of how taking this to heart will influence my future and my destiny.

We need now to arise and shine, for our light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon us. We have no time to talk of self, no time to become like the sensitive plant, that cannot be touched without shrinking. In Jesus Christ is our sufficiency. Will we talk faith? Will we talk of the glorious hope, of the full and abundant righteousness of Jesus Christ, provided for every soul? . . .

The whole heavenly universe is interested, and the love of God is exercised in behalf of His faithful, commandment-keeping people. It is God in whom we must trust. . . . God has the world in His hand. We have God on our side. All heaven is waiting and longing for our cooperation. The Lord is supreme. Why then should we fear? The Lord is almighty; why should we tremble? In the past God has delivered His people, and He will be our helper if we will arise in His strength and go forward.

The Bible and the Bible only is to be our refuge. God is in His Word. {TMK 342}

I Need More Fragrance

2011-10-19T08:11:00.000-05:00

Each time I have read this verse over the past week or so I have been impressed with this phrase about the fragrance filling the house. I have felt conviction that my life is far too devoid of the kind of fragrance that would attract attention, at least the kind of attention that would cause others to want to become better acquainted with Jesus for themselves.

It has been coming to my attention increasingly over the past few years is that far more important than obsessing over getting my behavior in line with the law of God, the real issue has to do with the condition of my spirit and the atmosphere surrounding me that affects others. It is far too easy to just keep up appearances and work hard at looking like a good church Christian while failing to grow in true grace and making my life a genuine blessing to others.

Observing the messy kind of life that Mary had and yet seeing how her passion for Jesus seemed to connect her with His heart more than anyone else in the Bible has really piqued my interest. My heart wants to experience some of the passion that I see in Mary's story. Sometimes I have wondered if having that kind of depth and intensity of passion for God requires that I first be involved in a life of sin equivalent to hers. I have considered that option at times in my past but decided that it probably wasn't worth the risk of plunging into sin just to have the perspective of being rescued dramatically. What if I didn't make it back to God for some reason? Choosing to indulge in intense pleasures of sin not only would permanently damage and scar my own life but would endanger and wound many other hearts as well. I don't believe God favors this kind of option.

Yet coming to know God with the depth of intensity that I perceive in Mary's passion for Jesus is a very enviable thing. How can I, a person who grew up religious, taught the right doctrines and trained to do the 'right thing' and keep up the right appearances – how can I come to know Jesus and have my own heart catch on fire like what I see in Mary's experience? It has always seemed to me that it is far more difficult for a Pharisee-type person like me to come into intimacy with Jesus than for an open sinner to come into a passionate relationship with Him. While this may not be impossible it seems to be much more difficult. But that is the path that I have chosen and I want to be drawn into a much deeper relationship with the heart of God than I have yet experienced.

This morning I opened the devotional I have been reading this year only to find reinforcement for the conviction I have been receiving about this issue of personal fragrance. I don't think it is a coincidence as God has been faithful to communicate regularly to me things relevant to my needs for growing in grace. I find a number of significant elements that I have been learning over the past few years in this quotation that I would like to incorporate into my own life as well as addressing things that need correcting.

Love is the principle that underlies God's government in heaven and on earth, and this love must be interwoven in the life of the Christian. The love of Christ is not a fitful love; it is deep, and broad, and full. Its possessor will not say, "I will love only those who love me." The heart that is influenced by this holy principle will be carried above everything of a selfish nature.

Even among professing Christians there are persons who are always on the watch for something at which to take offense. If their friends are absorbed in matters that require their attention and have no time to devote to them, they feel slighted and injured.... Their lives are like the gorgeous flowers which possess no fragrance. Much to be preferred is the simple, unpretending blossom that blesses with its sweet odor those who come in contact with it.

Instead of finding fault with others, these persons should seek to become lovely by putting on Christ.... The character of Christ is the standard which the Christian is to keep before him. His aim should be to possess those graces that were exemplified in the life of Christ in humanity....

The religion of Jesus Christ is not merely to prepare us for the future immortal life; it is to enable us to live the Christ life here on earth. Jesus is not only our pattern, He is also our friend and our guide, and by taking hold of His strong arm and partaking of His Spirit, we may walk "even as he walked." {TMK 298}

I keep coming back to an awareness that one of my greatest weaknesses that I inherited from my family is the habit of fault-finding. It comes so naturally to me that it is difficult to stop, at least internally. My default reaction to many situations is to look for the negative, to play the devil's advocate. At the same time I often find it hard to feel spontaneously grateful, to appreciate the good in others and to affirm them liberally. I don't like this weakness at all and I want to become free of the selfishness that underlies it and reinforces it. Yet this tendency is extremely deep-rooted in my nature and I have to struggle against it constantly.

What I see in these references is admonition for me personally. I can see that my life is largely devoid of the fragrance of Jesus and that I need much more of Jesus inside of my own heart. Learning all kinds of wonderful truths certainly has its value, but unless these insights work into the deeper regions of my heart and begin to produce fruit that looks more like Jesus, they can become liabilities. I want much more of the spirit and disposition that was seen in the way Jesus treated people. I need the kind of spirit and atmosphere that attracted people like Mary, one whom nearly everyone scorned and marginalized, to feel safe to come close to and be around. I want the sensitivity and kindness, gentleness, compassion and forgiving spirit that will cause wounded people to feel safe to come close and develop trust. I want to exhibit the attributes that people saw in Jesus but were so rare in religious people.

Unfortunately right now I feel more like the description of the gorgeous flower devoid of fragrance, but even that hardly fits me for I certainly am not even gorgeous in any respect. I live a respectable life, try to stay out of trouble pretty much and seek to imitate Jesus' life by treating others fairly. Many look at me and believe I am a reasonably decent Christian, but that is not what I want to be. I want to become a passionate friend of Jesus, a person obsessed with devotion to Him like I see in Mary's example. I am tired and dissatisfied with mediocre living and yet I feel trapped in it. I want a radical personal encounter with Jesus that will open my eyes, soften my heart and help me to escape the average. I want to quit living in the rut and move into a high-risk life of faith out on the edge where the real excitement is and where I can feel like I am really thriving and bearing a more authentic testimony for the kind of God I have been coming to discover.

Hidden Odor

2011-10-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?" (John 12:3-5)

This disturbs me.

This exposes me.

This challenges me.

I see in this passage a very clear contrast between two attitudes that run very deep and that are in total antagonism with each other. And what bothers me is that I see far too much of the negative attitudes of Judas in my own heart more than the sweet fragrance that emanated from the heart and the hands of Mary in this story.

John crafted this story about the anointing far differently than any other version of it in the other gospel accounts. He left out nearly all of the negative aspects of the story and presented it almost idealistically. But it was not because he was trying to gloss over the ugliness of some of the characters involved but I believe because he wanted to make some of the most important points even more emphatic and clear.

I have started to see that John may well have been suggesting an alternative narrative to the previous story by paralleling these two chapters so closely. In doing so he wanted to suggest in the way he presented this story how things could have gone if Martha and Mary and others involved would have chosen to focus on the goodness of Jesus even in the midst of their grief instead of being so overwhelmed by doubting attitudes of the unbelieving Jews around them. If that had happened this feast could have happened in Martha and Mary's house and might have been recorded in the last chapter in connection with the resurrection of Lazarus. That scenario presents some very real and exciting alternatives to how that story might have unfolded differently than it did.

There is another aspect of this story that is very easy to miss in our distance from it. It is very hard for us to imagine the popularity that Judas enjoyed among the disciples before his true character was exposed at the very last minute. It is the same issues we have trying to wrap our minds around how so many people could have been so enamored with Hitler before his true nature was finally exposed. If one carefully studies history or talks with someone who lived before World War 2 they would learn that Hitler was extremely popular, not only in his own country but with many of the nations that later went to war against him. He presented hope for the people of Germany when it seemed all hope was lost. He launched expansive programs to rebuild a devastated country and improved the economy dramatically. He started the Volkswagen company – the car of the people – which still thrives to this day. He began building the superhighways still popular in Europe and did many other things to improve the lives of his countrymen.

It is hard for us now to imagine supporting Hitler because of what we know about him after the war. But before his true character became evident he did a masterful job of manipulating the media and keeping up appearances to solicit massive public support for his ideas and programs. Even his own perceptions evolved over time. He did not start out as a desperately wicked tyrant bent on murdering millions of people, but the effects of his selfish choices one after another had the effect of leading him down a path that ended in producing one of the negative icons of history.

So too, Judas was not an obvious candidate for a person lined up to join Hitler and other ruthless dictators of history when the disciples knew him as one of their trusted friends. He was actually the most promising candidate for success in their eyes and they often looked to him for guidance and were influenced by his political astuteness. Judas was more educated than possibly all the other disciples combined and wasn't afraid to let people know of his superiority. He was gifted in many ways and had natural advantages that the other disciples did not enjoy. Because of this he was strategically positioned to be a natural leader and could have in fact been a great asset to Jesus except for one thing.

Judas' downfall was not that he was a naturally bad person more than anyone around him. All of us have the same capacity and bent toward betraying Jesus just as much as Judas whether we perceive it or not. If we think we are in less danger of making the same choices as Judas we deceive ourselves and are in desperate need of serious conviction by the Spirit of God. Peter too, denied Jesus when things came down to desperate conditions and he consequently felt that it was no longer possible for him to be considered a disciple ever again until Jesus dramatically restored confidence in him after the resurrection. I believe Peter came very close to suicide after Jesus died and was only prevented from doing so through direct intervention from Jesus though this is scantly recorded.

The difference between Judas and Peter was the inner condition of their heart, not the outward actions or mistakes they made. Judas repeatedly resisted the tenderness, the humility, the true picture of God that Jesus sought to impress upon him. Repeatedly his heart was warmed and moved by the incredible kindness and compassion of Jesus in various situations, yet because of his deep-rooted selfishness and pride and his refusal to give up his preconceived ideas about what God was like, he, like the other Jewish leaders that he wanted to impress, disqualified his own heart and destroyed his own capacity to repent in the end. By continuing to choose over and over his own way instead of responding to the love of Jesus repeatedly offered him, Judas hardened his heart and the end result was the betrayal that emerged to the shock and surprise of all who had known him except for Jesus.

When John here contrasts the spirit of Mary and the spirit of Judas in these verses I believe he is seeking to put into sharp relief the difference between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. Judas at that time was still very popular among the disciples and they much admired him. On the other hand they were also influenced by his hypocrisy and shared some of his disgust and disdain for others who did not measure up to his supposedly high standards. Like the religious leaders, most of the people in this story still had suspicion for Mary who had spent so much of her life prostituting herself and living shamefully. It was no secret how immorally Mary had spent much of her life and that kind of reputation has a way of clinging to one's reputation particularly around professedly religious crowds.

What most people in this story failed to see was the true character of Jesus as well as the transformation that had happened in Mary's life. They failed almost completely to perceive the power of Jesus' love to transform a person from any level of hopelessness, wickedness or weakness to a child of God free of their past life of sin. What they failed to perceive was that most of them were actually far more guilty of sin and were resisting the truth about God far more than Mary was at this point. What most of them did not realize was that Simon the Pharisee in whose house this feast was taking place had likely been the very one who had first exploited Mary as a young, pretty woman that resulted in her plunging her into a life of immorality in the first place. It is also possible that Judas, the son of Simon, was likely infected to a great degree by his father's hypocrisy but like his father was able to manipulate public perceptions to make them look good compared to people like Mary.

John may be seeking in these passages to rise above the confusion and intrigue behind what was going on here to get to the real issues involved. The greater issues are still ones that we often miss yet today when we read these stories without heavenly perception. The way heaven views these things is much more oriented around the condition of the spirit of each person, not the history of their past failures. The previous chapter reveals the struggles that Mary and her sister went through in their desire to believe in Jesus and how they were growing in their trust in Him. Now when Jesus came back to town after their brother had been raised to life it only made sense to want to throw Him a party in gratitude for who He was and what He had just done for them.

In parallel to the beginning of chapter 11 I see all three individuals from this family mentioned here again. Martha is doing her usual taking care of the hospitality part and making sure all the food is in order. Lazarus is fellowshipping with Jesus and simply enjoying being alive again, obviously indebted to Jesus for his very existence. And the way John presents it Mary is doing what she does best as expressed through her personality – she is worshiping Jesus and showering affection and appreciation on Him far beyond what anyone else is willing to do.

Each of these people are relating to Jesus positively but in their own unique individuality. That is what God wants all of us to do. Until Judas inserts his dump of shame on Mary and injects his evil insinuations into the story things are looking like a well-planned celebration of the goodness of God. I don't think it is a mistake to see John's version of this story from this viewpoint. I believe John wanted to convey something important to us about how each one of us can relate to Jesus in our own context but in a spirit that is united with each other in love, gratitude and deep appreciation for our very lives.

The sharp contrast that is suddenly brought into view with the introduction of Judas into the story is even more ugly when compared with the spirit of these three siblings. The insinuations Judas makes are actually shocking if one stops to think about it. Judas is in effect saying that Jesus is not worthy of such an expensive gift and that Mary is stupid for making the choice to waster her money on Him like this. He also wants to shame her publicly, humiliate her, putting her down in order to make himself look better by contrast. This is always what happens when we lose perspective of reality due to pride and selfishness. We fail to appreciate the true value of life as revealed in Jesus and His character and instead focus on money, on influence, on political advantage and power and prestige.

Selfishness had so infected the heart of Judas by this point that he was nearly past the point of no return. He had become blinded to reality and had infected the other disciples to a great extent with his perverted views of what is important. As he saw Jesus receiving the affections of Mary without resistance, his own selfishness and ingratitude became so exposed that he felt compelled to divert any possible attention away by shifting everyone's focus to questioning the motives of Mary.

It was easy to twist the actions of Mary in order to indict her in the eyes of those who were watching. But in doing so Judas (along with his father Simon) were actually attacking Jesus. In the comment of Judas it becomes evident that he had no corresponding appreciation for the character of Jesus like these three siblings had. The heart of Judas had become so hardened from repeated resistance to the goodness of God that he was unable to appreciate the value of forgiveness or even desire it for himself like Mary did. He had lived in deception for so long, both of others and of himself, that he had lost his ability to see reality the way others around him were beginning to see it. The spirit of fault-finding, criticism and negative thinking along with dark pictures of God shared by most around him had blinded Judas to the true condition of his own heart and he was about to commit high treason against the very Son of God without realizing what he was doing.

In other versions of this same story Jesus stated that this event would go everywhere in the world that the gospel would go through the very end of time. I believe that John wanted to make sure that this story was properly understood and that we would grasp the true nature of what took place and the true nature of the people involved. Instead of Mary being the bad person in this story with her identity linked to her dubious past, it was Judas who was the real problem, the one with an unconverted heart. History would soon show that Judas was the villain, not Mary like everyone thought at the time. Even John himself did not yet see this while the story was taking place but he wanted to make the point clear years later as he recorded his version of the life of Jesus.

Fabulous Feast

2011-10-14T07:01:00.000-05:00

Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made Him a supper there, and Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him. Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (John 12:1-3)

I have been meditating on this story this morning and wondering why John reported it so benignly as it reads here. Given the scandalous, insulting way both Jesus and Mary were treated in what actually took place when seen from the perspective of the other gospels, why did John choose to present such a brief and almost idealistic version of this event?

As I meditated on it and listened for insights from the Spirit, it began to soak in that this is yet another revelation of how Jesus sees all of us and relates to us. John's version of this story is not a case of ignorance or apathy or seeking to manipulate facts to further a selfish agenda, but the reality is that God is fundamentally committed to drawing us to Him in every way possible with the greatest patience, kindness and tact. What purpose is served by exposing the faults of the guilty parties involved here? It is true that the feast was held in Simon's house and not in the home of Lazarus as in the story I wrote last time. I find this a little curious to start with and wonder what some of the background politics were involved in that decision. I suspect there was plenty of social maneuvering and influence manipulation going on behind the scenes and that the Lazarus' family may not have been completely satisfied with the outcome. Yet John quite likely aware of all this still chooses to portray this feast almost as if it were conducted with the purest motives, free of the tensions and gaffes more fully reported by the other writers.

If John's account were the only one we had we might easily be led to think that Mary had no stigma attached to her reputation. Aside from the rude comment of Judas which John notes, it might look like Mary's anointing of Jesus was just part of the scheduled proceedings that were designed to honor Jesus in every way possible. I had never noticed this before today and I find it curious that John so carefully masks out most of the intrigue and shame and censure that actually occurred.

I seriously wonder if John didn't portray this feast using this perspective to hint to the reader what could have taken place in the previous story if different choices had been made there. But beyond that I wonder what other lessons might be extracted from this idyllic picture involving each member of the family of Lazarus. This is such a positive story that stands in stark contrast to our penchant for wanting to know as much as possible about all the intrigue and the lurid details in stories that we hear. Our society is so addicted to airing the dirty laundry of others, we have such a strong appetite for drama and exposing the failings of others that we tend to view this version of the story as almost incomplete.

But I don't think it was an oversight on the part of John when he wrote this story the way that he did. John may be wanting to set the record straight about Mary after so many years of slights about her reputation. John may have been wanting to portray Mary from the perspective of heaven rather than to keep referring to her past life of prostitution as if that were the label that she would never be able to shake off.

From the other accounts of this story it appears that Jesus too, wanted to correct our thinking about Mary, for He seemed to indicate that Mary's grasp of the gospel and her relationship to Him was closer to what He has in mind for all of us than what most Christians tend to assume constitutes holiness. Religious people tend to think of religion in terms of outward behavior, of measuring the life by a list of do's and don'ts and looking at each other through critical eyes. But Jesus always seemed more intent on drawing out the heart and noting the condition of people's spirit.

What I find here is a story about a person who has such an overwhelming passion for Jesus that they are willing to expose themselves to any risk in order to pour out their love and affection on Him. Mary's passion for Jesus is reflective in some respects for her natural tendency toward passion in all of her life. In the past her passion had been abused and had become distorted. She had been terribly damaged and deeply wounded both by other's treatment of her and through her own choices to seek satisfaction and survival through immoral choices. But I sense that Mary was a person who could hardly hold herself back from living from her heart even after it had been abused and damaged repeatedly. And in that respect I admire her greatly.

What I have observed over the years is that the idea of living from the heart seems to produce the greatest resistance in people. There is such enormous pressure, particularly in religion, to keep up appearances, to conform to social or legalistic expectations and living from the heart is not viewed very favorably. But God designed us to live passionately from our hearts and to do anything else is to be less than truly human. To live from our head without having our hearts fully engaged is to live a damaged and severely handicapped existence from heaven's perspective. Jesus received the greatest resistance from those who had perfected the art of living by rules while suppressing and hardening their hearts.

Mary, on the other hand, was one of the rare examples of a person who was willing to live out on the edge. All of her life she had felt compelled to live a raw, exciting life full of passion that cannot be hidden. This kind of living full of passion for love and life is so electrifying and compelling to others who are unwilling themselves to live in the same way that such a one is often is viewed as a threat. How many times have we been warned against hanging around people who have this kind of charisma and who are almost irresistible? Yet this very magnetic attraction may be a God-given trait that is largely missing from most of our lives.

As I have noted before, I sense that Martha was much more of a person who was a thinker more than a person full of passion like her sister. Yes, Martha was certainly a performer and spent much of her life trying to do the right thing. But her sister had a very different personality that likely often got her into trouble. Her passion for life and even the look on her face and the sparkle in her eye must have constantly conveyed messages of a passion for living that few people show. This presents a real problem when that passion is taken advantage of by others and exploited for selfish, debased desires.

Yet with all the problems that Mary experienced throughout her life, Jesus saw her as one of the best examples of what He desires all of us to experience in our lives. Jesus designed us to live in joy and passion more than many of us are willing to admit. We tend to gravitate toward a far more conservative position and like to portray God as one who is more intent on squeezing us into a mold of proper performance and submission to rules rather than experiencing a passionate love affair with other hearts. Even to speak in such ways tends to scandalize many people trapped in typical religious thinking.

But in this story I see John trying to make the record more balanced and accurate. John may be suggesting here that we all have different personalities that are acceptable to God and that complement each other. Martha was not a person to pour out her affections publicly on Jesus like Mary, yet in her own way she was showing her love to Him in ways that fit her individuality. Likewise Lazarus was not sitting at Jesus' feet weeping over Him and splashing perfume all over the place but was sitting with Him in a seat of honor. Yet that does not imply in the least that his own heart was not just as connected in love to the heart of Jesus as was Mary's.

In this version of the story John seems to want us to see this feast more from the perspective of heaven and to see each of these siblings on an equal basis by not mentioning Mary's former reputation like the other accounts bring out. Only Judas is mentioned in a negative light here, and that too is part of John's seeking to set the record straight and to help us perceive that heaven views things very different than how we see them.

In contrast to Mary, Judas had been very highly esteemed in the minds of all the other disciples the whole time they had known him. We struggle to wrap our minds around this idea because we are so accustomed to thinking of Judas as the bad guy in the story. Yet in contemporary public perception up until the very last moments of his life, Judas was considered one most likely to succeed. He was talented, suave and had great people skills. He had natural and acquired capabilities that ensured he would be successful in life and he had good political connections he could use for his advantage. All of these things elicited the admiration of the other disciples who looked up to him.

Interestingly Jesus was likely the only one who really knew the condition of the heart of Judas most of that time, and yet Jesus never sought to expose the hypocrisy and failings of Judas or to publicly humiliate him. This is one of the clearest examples of how God relates to sinners in consistent kindness rather than resorting to shame and condemnation like so many of us tend to do. These words to Judas were actually the very first time in all their association together that Jesus had ever rebuked Judas, but even then it only served to trigger Judas to become resentful and angry rather than appreciate the kindness Jesus had shown him for so long. If anything reinforces the kindness and graciousness of God it is the history of how Jesus related to Judas and even allowed him a place of high trust even while he was completely unworthy of that trust.

In his account of this story, John is really reversing the common assumptions about both Mary and Judas from what people thought they were like. Publicly Mary could not escape the tenacious grip of her past reputation as people always thought of her based on her previous identity as a slut, an immoral woman of the streets. Yet in contrast Judas had carefully cultivated his own manicured reputation to make it appear that he was nearly flawless while often drawing attention to the failings of those around him. But at the heart level Jesus saw things just the opposite from what others saw, and here John is helping us see that heaven's view is usually very different than how we are used to perceiving things.

I find myself longing to know more of the passion of Mary for Jesus. Yet at the same time I am aware that to exhibit such passion publicly carries with it enormous liabilities. At this point in my life I still live under the bondage of fear of what others think of me rather than living in the freedom that God desires for me to enjoy in His presence. I pray that God will set me free of these galling, wounding chains that keep me imprisoned and that soon, very soon, my heart will have enough courage to live honestly, transparently and passionately like Mary lived.

As Martin Luther exclaimed during his most trying hour, “So help me God!”

What Might Have Been

2011-10-11T17:50:00.000-05:00

In filling out the comparison chart and examining the fascinating parallels between these chapters in John, I am starting to catch a glimpse of something John might have been trying to suggest about what could have happened if there had been more bold faith in the first story. The reality is that all of our stories have potential to move in quite different directions and have dramatically different outcomes determined largely on how much faith we choose to bring to our circumstances. God is very often limited by the small level and quality of the faith that we have in Him compared to the infinite resources He has to provide for our needs and His desire to intervene in our situations. The limiting factor in most of our stories is not God's willingness or ability but is our own reluctance to rest and trust in Him no matter what crisis is engulfing our lives or what emotions overwhelm us. I believe this may be part of the message that John was seeking to convey, to alert us that life could be far different if we would only believe in our Father the way Jesus came to reveal Him to us.

I would like to venture into a little inspired (by Scripture) speculation based on what I am perceiving from a closer look at these stories. I ponder what could have happened if Martha and Mary had made different choices in how to relate to their crisis and had chosen to trust and rest their hearts in Jesus when everything seemed to be falling apart rather than slipping into the normal pattern of thinking they were so familiar with.

Imagine how the story of the resurrection of Lazarus might have had far greater impact and the reputation of Jesus might have been far more enhanced if a few people in this story had chosen to believe in Him more than they chose to do. And in the end, the real reason for exercising our imaginations in this way is not so much to produce a story that may seem startling and speculative but to challenge our own hearts to begin to perceive what our own situations could look like if we made more choices to trust Jesus in the dark.

It is to this end that I feel compelled to take on this experiment with these stories, for my own heart longs to see my life and my circumstances more infused and transformed through direct interventions from heaven. I want my life to better reflect the lessons I am learning through meditating on these stories. I want my heart to be more trusting and to view reality from heaven's perspective rather than remaining stuck in the ruts of common thinking and assumptions. I want my experience to be more transformed through lessons of faith rather than simply being a life of religious information from my association with a church.

Rather than speculate about what might have potentially happened if everyone had chosen to fully believe in Jesus, I will choose to consider what might have happened if at least the main characters, those close to Him already, had made different choices along the way resisting the pressure of the status quo. Of course things could have been even more dramatically different if more people had chosen to believe rather than resist Jesus throughout His ministry, but I want to consider what might have happened if just those who had come to know Him intimately had acted more in harmony with the lessons He had already taught them. What if more had reflected on how Jesus had blessed them in the past and had chosen to apply some of the basic lessons of faith they had already received from Him in their current situation? There are many directions the story could have gone differently depending on who made what choices, but I think there are valuable lessons to be gained in meditating on what might have been if more faith had been employed.

Let's take a shot at seeing what might emerge by piecing together some of the clues that John embedded in these passages as he paralleled them so closely and ponder what might have been. Let's try to piece together a scenario that might have taken place in this story of Lazarus based on clues found in the next time Jesus came to Bethany where both of these stories took place.

Lazarus gets sicker and sicker and his sisters become very concerned over him. They begin to discuss their options with each other as they try every remedy possible to improve his condition. They think of Jesus all the time and wonder how they might solicit His help. Nothing else they try is helping and it becomes obvious that without divine intervention they may well lose their brother in death.

So far nothing is different from the story as it may have progressed already.

The sisters send an urgent message to Jesus but with intentional politeness urging Him to come immediately to rescue their brother from his serious sickness. They know in their hearts that death cannot exist in the life of a believer when Jesus is around and their greatest insurance against this enemy is to have Jesus near. They know this not so much from what He has taught them but from first-hand experiences with Him. Mary in particular has experienced the transformational life-giving power that occurs when Jesus' presence is injected into desperate situations. She has come to realize that simply keeping close to Jesus is really the only real safety one can have and so she reminds her sister that what they really need is for Jesus to be there.

Again, all of this likely could have happened in the story as it is recorded.

But as time passes and Lazarus sinks into a coma and finally slips away producing intense grief and arousing deep questions of doubt in the hearts of the two surviving sisters, they now face the ultimate choice of how to react in the face of severe disappointment with God.

Why didn't God answer their prayers when they had done everything possible to please Him? They had done so much to enhance the life of Jesus with their hospitality. They had become close friends with Him and had made their home a welcome safe place for Him to come at any time. So why did God allow such tragedies to come into the lives of people who had devoted their hearts to loving Him and honoring Him? Why does God allow such pain and suffering and even humiliation to come into the experience of those who have placed their trust in Him only to have their prayers go unheeded?

At this point, as in millions of similar stories in the lives of believers, the sisters were facing a severe choice. What would they choose to focus on? What would they allow to dominate their thinking? What picture of God would they allow to dominate when all the surrounding evidence seemed to indicate a God less caring than they wanted to believe? What emotions would they allow to permeate and direct their choices?

In no way do I want to diminish or make light of the intense pain and emotional trauma that any experience during such times of bereavement. But what I do want to suggest is that there are more alternatives than we often are willing to consider in such circumstances. Like Martha and Mary, it is easy to become swept away in the outpouring of sympathy, the grief and all the other emotions that come when such tragedies occur and become blinded by assumptions that keep us stuck there. Far too often sympathy can have a dark side to it that is hidden by the natural compassion people want to show.

I am not suggesting that people intend to paint God in dark colors while they attempt to lessen our pain, yet too often unchallenged negative assumptions about God are woven all through the comments made and the unspoken inferences implying that God doesn't really care as much as He claims to care about us during such times.

This was the core issue for Martha and Mary during those agonizing days, wrestling in their hearts with how to relate to their brother's death and the glaring absence of Jesus. But there was another option available to them that is seldom considered by any of us. What if they had chosen to resist the natural urges that come from intense sorrow and had chosen to fixate their minds on what they had learned about Jesus from their past experiences? What if they had kindly but firmly insisted that all the mourners to go somewhere else if they were not willing to try to exercise this kind of faith so as to avoid being overwhelmed with the typical sentiments about their situation. It is very hard to turn away from what we are used to doing in response to this kind of grief, but the normal reactions we have tend to unduly control our emotions and dampen our faith. But what if these sisters had chosen in place of indulging in being absorbed in the normal emotions surrounding death to separate from all who refused to seek a new path and instead had compelled their hearts to dwell on God's goodness?

They might have chosen to separate themselves from all other influences and intentionally filled their minds with memories of how Jesus had been there for them time and again when they needed help. They could have reviewed what they knew from the Word of God things that had taken on new meaning and challenged old assumptions about God. They could have directly sought God in prayer to show them their painful circumstances with new eyes. They could have chosen to rehearse over and over how faithful they had found Jesus to be and might have encouraged each other to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt even while unable to explain His strange absence in their situation.

Does this sound strange or even bizarre? Yes it does and some may even react to these suggestions with intense indignation or hostility. But I believe these options are very real though very unused alternatives to how we typically think we have to react to bereavement.

As the sisters chose to focus on God's goodness in spite of their own pain, the Holy Spirit could have inspired them to do make dramatic and radical plans contrary to what is normal for such circumstances. Rather than sitting around allowing their pain and other's encouragement of their doubts to darken their hearts, they could have begun planning something totally bizarre and bold. Choosing to believe that Jesus still had their best interest in mind even though they had no explanation as to why He had chosen to delay His return, they could have started planning to use their abilities and gifts to throw a big party for Him for when He would arrive.

Martha was always good at putting on a good spread and Mary could have helped her plan and prepare for it. Certainly everyone would have thought they had lost their minds under the circumstances, but they were choosing to act in ways consistent with their firm choice to believe that Jesus' heart was for them no matter what the evidence might seem to convey or what anyone else suggested about Him. They were going to celebrate the goodness of Jesus that they already knew firsthand and by faith would demonstrate publicly how valuable Jesus was to them.

But rather than having the feast take place in Simon's house, this feast would have been planned to happen right in their own home where Jesus had already enjoyed so much of their hospitality many times before. Choosing to express their belief that Jesus cared for them in spite of the ever-present feelings from their immense loss, they would show the world that Jesus was worth trusting even in the darkest times of life. Like a joyful dance in front of an execution squad, they would choose to smile and laugh in the face of death itself and focus on the truth they were learning about God rather than become saturated with insinuations about Him from the events in their lives.

As the feast was being readied it was brought to their attention that Jesus was at last on His way to Bethany. Yes, there was still intense sadness in their hearts as they could not avoid the emptiness felt in their home where Lazarus had always been with them. But they were going to choose to fill that emptiness with those who were still alive and would give Jesus a welcome fit for a king. They were going to choose to believe that Jesus was their king in spite of how their feelings pushed them to doubt Him and they urged all who were being affected by their choices to trust Jesus to join them in going out to meet Jesus with all the trappings of a king's welcome.

As a bizarre act of courage in the face of logic and emotions, this strange group of people choosing to believe in God's goodness in spite of what had just happened pour out of Bethany to welcome Jesus with shouts of affirmation waving palm branches and laying down their garments to provide a path of honor to welcome Him back to town. Of course His disciples would have been even more puzzled than they were in the original story, but Jesus would have understood completely and would have become animated by the faith of His dear friends. He would have blessed the sisters and would have affirmed them in ways I wish I could imagine myself. But then He would have insisted on a slight change of plans.

Instead of going directly to their home to enjoy the feast prepared for Him and His disciples, Jesus would have insisted on taking the party on a detour to the tomb of Lazarus. This of course would have been a real challenge for the emotions of the sisters who had been seeking to avoid their raw feelings and their doubts, but Jesus would have assured them that their choice to act on faith had not been a mistake. Rather He had come to honor and strengthen their faith and their bold decisions to take the most unusual path they had chosen. But Jesus was not about to leave Lazarus out of the celebration. As an loving affirmation of their trust in Him He was going to march on the citadel of death with a crowd of admirers who were trusting His heart and was going to publicly recapture one of His best friends from the land of the enemy.

As Lazarus' sisters stand in amazement, weeping at what they realize Jesus is about to do for them, Jesus invites them to help Him by removing the symbolic obstacle of death standing between them and their beloved brother – the stone. Excitedly they would have rushed to the tomb along with the others who had come to welcome Jesus and would have collectively thrown it aside like the hated object that had come to represent keeping them from their beloved. Then as they watched with joyful anticipation and baited breath, Jesus would have called out to Lazarus, just as His did in the original story, and Lazarus would have been welcomed to the party with joyful shouts of victory and delirious celebration. There would have been dancing in the streets, tears of joy and worship experiences at the feet of Jesus like never witnessed in history.

As the dancing and joyful shouts of adoration and honor continued, the growing crowd would have swept Lazarus along with them to the feast where Mary would have brought out the alabaster box she had been saving to honor her Savior in the only way she knew best. As Lazarus and Martha watched in amazement, Mary would have showered Jesus with her tears, her perfume and her affection. As everyone watched Mary's supreme act of affection being poured out on Jesus and her love that was beyond even what they could feel, any suggestion that Mary's gift was inappropriate would have been snuffed out instantly.

In sharp contrast with the terrible stench of death so recently encountered at the tomb, the far greater scent of life and love and praise now filled the air and added new incentive to the praise that was on every tongue. This unique act of love and passion on the part of Mary would have inspired others to join in the unusual faith that they had witnessed in her and they would have admired her love and desired to know Jesus more like she had come to know Him.

While it is certainly possible that Judas would have felt irritated by such expressions of affection for Jesus, it might have also been unlikely that he would have felt so ready to expose his selfishness as he did in the original story in the face of such overwhelming evidence of people's affections for Jesus. But even if Judas had made his insensitive comment toward Mary in her own home, Martha and Lazarus might have made it clear to him that Jesus was worth far more than even the expensive gift their sister had chosen to spend on Him. This was a celebration for the real King, not just another party, and the spirit of Judas would have been so out of harmony with the spirit of faith all around him that he likely would have felt compelled to remove himself entirely to avoid exploding from all the resentment and jealously he was feeling toward Jesus.

Could this scenario have actually transpired? I don't know for sure. But I am confident that things could have been radically different if some had chosen the road less traveled, the path of faith in the face of grief and doubt.

I have been starting to sense lately that the real issue I face in my own relationship with God is more along the line of choosing to trust His heart and the characteristics I have been learning that constitute His true identity and disposition toward me more than trying to figure out some formula whereby I can get Him to do for me what I think should happen in my circumstances. So often my prayers fail to take into account His bigger picture but are shaped instead on how I think my problems should be solved without taking into account the larger issues behind the scenes. When I fail to view my circumstances in the context of God's trial in which His character is being challenged and His reputation is under vicious attack, I remain trapped by my narrow and self-focused ideas from religion and on false assumptions about what God really expects from me.

Our perception of reality and of what kind of a God we serve shapes how we relate to Him, what we ask for in our prayers as well as all the decisions we make in our own circumstances. Our picture of God is always what determines how we relate to other people, for we intuitively treat others the way we feel God is treating us.

The only way to change how I treat others, the only way my life is going to come to reflect His character instead of the selfishness and sin that is so natural in my makeup, is to allow Him to infuse a completely new more accurate picture of Him into the deepest places of my soul. As my picture of God is continuously updated my reactions to circumstances follow the same track. The more I perceive the goodness of God, the amazing mercy and kindness and the real truth about how He feels about me, the more my treatment of others will reflect what I am experiencing with Him. This is the process called sanctification that is vitally necessary to prepare me to live securely in His presence throughout eternity.

Parallels

2011-10-10T08:54:00.000-05:00

I am starting to see more and more parallels in these passages I have been studying over the past few months that I want to explore further here. I believe there may be some significant discoveries that may emerge from this comparison in some of the details found in these parallels.

John 10:37-38 "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father."	John 11:47-48 Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."
10:36 ...Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world	11:51-52 ...he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
10:39 ¶ Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp	11:53 So from that day on they planned together to kill Him. 11:57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he was to report it, so that they might seize Him.
10:40 And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there.	11:54 Therefore Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the Jews, but went away from there to the country near the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim; and there He stayed with the disciples.
10:41-42 Many came to Him and were saying, "While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true." Many believed in Him there.	11:55-56 Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover to purify themselves. So they were seeking for Jesus...
11:1-2 Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.	12:1-3 Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made Him a supper there, and Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him. Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
11:39 Jesus said, "Remove the stone." Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, "Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days."	12:3 Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
11:57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he was to report it, so that they might seize Him.	12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him.
11:4 But when Jesus heard this, He said, "This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it."	12:4-5 But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?"
11:5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.	12:6 Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.
11:6 So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was.	12:7 Therefore Jesus said, "Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of My burial."
11:4 But when Jesus heard this, He said, "This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it."	12:9 The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead.
11:8 The disciples said to Him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone You, and are You going there again?"	11:53 So from that day on they planned together to kill Him. 12:10 But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also;
11:9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.	12:11 because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus.
11:19-20 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, to console them concerning their brother. Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him, but Mary stayed at the house.	12:12-13 On the next day the large crowd who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and began to shout, "Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, even the King of Israel."
11:21 Martha then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.	12:15 "FEAR NOT, DAUGHTER OF ZION; BEHOLD, YOUR KING IS COMING, SEATED ON A DONKEY'S COLT."
11:22 "Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You."	12:16 These things His disciples did not understand at the first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these things to Him.
11:25-26 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?" 27 She said to Him, "Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world."	12:17-18 So the people, who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to testify about Him. For this reason also the people went and met Him, because they heard that He had performed this sign.
11:28 When she had said this, she went away and called Mary her sister, saying secretly, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and was coming to Him.	12:18 For this reason also the people went and met Him
11:31 Then the Jews who were with her in the house, and consoling her, when they saw that Mary got up quickly and went out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.	12:19 So the Pharisees said to one another, "You see that you are not doing any good; look, the world has gone after Him."
11:32 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."	12:20-21 Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast; these then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."
11:33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.	12:27 "Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour.
11:40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?"	12:28 "Father, glorify Your name." Then a voice came out of heaven: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again."
11:39 Jesus said, "Remove the stone." Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, "Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days."	12:3 Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
11:40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?"	12:26 "If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him."
11:41-42Then 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."	12:27 "Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour." 12:30 Jesus answered and said, "This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes.
11:45-46 Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done.	12:37 But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him.
11:47-48 Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."	12:19 So the Pharisees said to one another, "You see that you are not doing any good; look, the world has gone after Him."
11:49-50 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish."	12:31 "Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out."
11:51-52 Now he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.	12:32 "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself."
11:9-10 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him."	12:35-36 So Jesus said to them, "For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light."
11:54 Therefore Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the Jews, but went away from there...	12:36 These things Jesus spoke, and He went away and hid Himself from them.
11:57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he was to report it, so that they might seize Him.	12:42-43 Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.

Seeking Jesus

2011-10-09T08:48:00.002-05:00

Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover to purify themselves. So they were seeking for Jesus, and were saying to one another as they stood in the temple, "What do you think; that He will not come to the feast at all?" Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he was to report it, so that they might seize Him. (John 11:55-57)

A few verses before this I noticed the effect that Jesus had on both those who refused to believe in Him as well as those who were coming to believe. While John took the larger view and saw in the ominous words of the High Priest not just a threat but a promise from God that Jesus' influence would gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad, at the same time the effect of Jesus on those opposed to His presentation of the Father became united, put away their political and religious differences and planned together to kill Him. Thus John is showing how Jesus has a unifying influence on both sides.

Now in these verses I see again how John is taking the larger perspective and is noting how the polarizing effect of Jesus life causes all men to seek Him, but for rather opposite reasons. He says that many went up to Jerusalem to purify themselves before the Passover. I don't think it is incidental that John mentioned this fact. Jesus came to this earth to purify all who would be willing to listen with their heart to the truth about God. Everyone who is willing to lay aside the opinions and challenge the deceptions of Satan, his accusations against God, the lies that permeate our minds and hearts and religions, Jesus will come to purify our perceptions of God, to reveal to us the truth about God, that He is not someone we should be terrified of but is someone passionately eager for us to engage with Him, to know intimately, to become so enamored with His grace, beauty and loveliness that all the delusions that have caused us to hide from Him become ludicrous and unappealing to us.

While these Jews were following the instructions of Moses given by God to ceremonially purify themselves in preparation for the great symbolic day of Passover which was part of the sandbox model of the great plan of salvation given by God, the true object of all these symbols had arrived to take its place. The real Passover lamb had come to replace the animal lamb; the central figure represented by nearly every object and ritual in the sanctuary system had come to fulfill the laws of Moses and to introduce the far greater and more effective means of purification.

Some were starting to perceive that this Man indeed was revealing something radically superior to what they had ever perceived previously. Jesus had not come to do away with the law, the principles of reality symbolized in the sanctuary system and rituals; He came to expose the realities they represented. In the life, teachings, sufferings and resurrection of Jesus a far greater revelation of the truth about God was being exposed not only to this world but to the whole universe. All who's hearts were open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and who were humble enough to challenge their religious assumptions were being led by the Spirit of God and were being called as children of God. In responding to the attractiveness of Jesus' life and ministry they were being drawn to seek for Jesus to receive more of what He had come to give to the world – namely, a fuller, better revelation of the truth about the Father.

At the same time, all those who resisted repeatedly the revelations and teachings about God found themselves also coming into more unity with each other. And while at first they may have chosen to try to avoid Jesus rather than seeking for Him, the more His influence grew with the people the more they saw Him as a threat to their ability to dominate and control the masses. Their popularity was being undermined; their ability to keep people in deception and fear was being seriously eroded and in desperation they finally were ready to put away many of their differences that had divided their efforts to come together to seek Jesus, but for very opposite reasons than those who were being drawn by His attractiveness. These rejectors of Jesus' picture of God, these men who felt scandalized by the outrageous representations by Jesus of a God who would so easily forgive sinners and would brush aside any agenda for punishment or retribution in favor of restoring fellowship and acceptance when the vilest sinner showed any sign of wanting to return to Him – these religious, pious men simply could not tolerate any longer allowing such a reprehensible picture of God to continue to infect the minds of those they had kept in fear and under their control for so long. They were ready to seek Jesus intently, but for the sole purpose of eliminating Him rather than embracing Him.

Jesus' actions, teachings and example made it impossible for anyone coming within His sphere of influence to remain neutral about Him. Either a person will be drawn to Him and become willing to lay aside their preconceptions to embrace a new picture of a loving Father or they will feel pushed to reject this view of the God He came to reveal in favor of the darker caricatures of God circulated by His archenemy, the great accuser.

The same is happening still today. The more that the truth about God, the glory of God as described in the first few verses of Revelation 18 spreads throughout the world, the more people will feel compelled to seek Him for one reason or the opposite. The real truth about God always creates this polarizing effect wherever it is exposed. We either will feel scandalized by these revelations about a God who seems too soft on sin for our liking or we will become overwhelmed by the love, grace, tenderness and compassion of a God who is nothing like how He has been presented by mainstream religions.

I am reminded that those who feel compelled to seek Jesus for the wrong reasons, in order to eliminate His influence like these Jewish leaders did, will continue to try to eliminate His perceived threat all throughout history until the final day of full revelation. If Jesus is not here in person for them to attack they will turn their animosity toward anyone who challenges the status quo, who upsets the balance of power, who is seen as undermining the ability of churches and politicians to operate through fear and intimidation as they have done for so long. Anyone aligning with Jesus in challenging Satan's kingdom of fear and misapprehensions about God will come under similar suspicion and attack from those who have vested interests in keeping things as they are. The clearer the testimony about the truth of God one presents the sooner their lives will come under attack and their testimony sought to be discredited.

Only a few verses farther on in this passage it mentions that Lazarus also became caught up in the diabolical plans of these men to suppress the truth about God that was going viral among the people. As insane as it may seem, soon after Lazarus had been spectacularly raised from an extended period of death thereby refuting insinuations about Jesus by His enemies, they decided that Lazarus too, as well as Jesus, needed to be killed to return their country back to the way things had functioned in the past.

The truth about God and revelations of His glory and character are always a threat to those clinging to traditional views of God and who resist the truth about His love. No matter how religious or pious or benign people may appear on the outside, when one continues to choose to resist increasing revelations about the true God of heaven and turn rather to maintaining more familiar and accepted opinions about what God is like, they eventually feel compelled to resort to force and threats to maintain their unfounded beliefs about God that keep them in power. Sooner or later everyone is forced by increasing revelations about God to move one direction or the other. The real issue is, which direction will I choose? Which side will I take? What perception of God will I allow to shape my heart and life?

Unity

2011-09-04T09:40:00.000-05:00

....in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they planned together to kill Him. (John 11:52-53)

I suddenly realized recently close connection in these verses. A number of versions miss one of the main points here by not noting the togetherness in their planning to kill Jesus. But I believe John is here trying to highlight the fact that there is a unity that heaven is bringing about among those who are willing to respond to the truth Jesus came to reveal that is in contrast with the kind of unity sought through fear and resistance to God by His opposers.

That there was polarization taking place in this story is an understatement. People were being compelled to take one side or the other as a result of the unmistakable evidences Jesus was uncovering of the truth about what God is really like. Either people were drawn to respond and be changed by the clear demonstrations of love and compassion that Jesus displayed or in their resistance they found themselves becoming more and more aligned with the diabolical schemes being crafted by the enemies of Jesus who were settling into their firm determination to block all alternative views of God that were out of line with their traditions. These men so entrenched in their stubborn resistance of the real truth about the Father were being backed into a corner by ever-increasing evidences about God as a loving Father as Jesus was portraying. As a result all middle neutral ground was fast disappearing.

One of the themes that religions like to promote is the issue of unity. When one joins a church or a religion of any kind they are expected to surrender their own opinions and views for that of the mainstream. Otherwise they are not viewed as loyal members of the group and are seen as dissenters and disruptive. People are urged for the sake of unity to submit to the authority of the organization they belong to for the sake of the strength of the whole.

The degree to which pressure is placed on people to conform to the mainstream opinions and beliefs of those in charge is based on underlying assumptions about what authority is and how it is to be exercised. Our typical idea of authority is a far cry from what I find in Scripture. Heaven's version of authority is based on respect, truth, freedom of choice and freedom from coercion. Earthly models of authority are based on nearly the opposite depending largely on force and punishment rather than on earning the respect of those expected to submit to authority. True authority can only be given by those submitting to it and cannot be commanded arbitrarily. This kind of authority is based on respect for the integrity of those in charge and a trust that they will do what is right. Counterfeit authority seeks to impose itself on others and relies on fear, intimidation and even force to get its way. It is willing to compel others into compliance to maintain control while avoiding accountability for personal integrity.

While authority is necessary for unity is a given. But how people go about seeking unity varies vastly with their ideas about what creates unity. The principles which heaven uses to bring about unity among the children of God are in stark contrast to what most of us depend on to produce unity. This is actually revealed in this story as it is all throughout the gospels. But the fact that unity is the goal of each side for the purpose of having greater strength and effectiveness is not in dispute.

Something that troubles me at times is when I see methods and attitudes among Christians seeking for unity that rely on counterfeit principles adopted from Satan's methods of keeping people under control. Christianity has come to depend on many of Satan's methods in the assumption that they are needed when love and truth don't seem to be as effective as we would like. It is often assumed that to live together with others as Christians, love and compassion and kindness will only go so far and then one must resort to fear and force to accomplish what we want because God's methods are too weak to bring about conformance. This thinking has perverted the truth of the gospel and has brought confusion and darkness into the churches and the hearts of all those affected.

It is not too hard to see the methods used and the attitudes that shaped events from the perspective of these leaders hostile toward Jesus in this story. What is harder to grasp is the sharp contrast and the methods and spirit used by Jesus to bring about His kind of unity. In all His dealings with people and in all His teachings, Jesus revealed a radically different motive for unity that was to be founded in the hearts and affections of all who would join Him, not based on eliciting fear through threats, shame or any other false means of motivation.

If Jesus had chosen to use any of the world's typical methods for achieving unity by conformity to rules or by relying on superior force, He could have done so at any point in His life. He specially addressed this in His words to Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane when He mentioned His option to call legions of angels to His defense. It was not that Jesus was powerless in the face of overwhelming odds that He chose not to use His power but that His kingdom was to be founded on very different principles than what we are used to living by. Jesus was quite aware of how we think and do things here but He had no interest in utilizing counterfeit ways of thinking. He came to show us a superior power based on freedom, love, humility and selfless deference for the good of others.

Even living in deference to others over our own desires cannot be something imposed by force into a person's heart. As soon as force or intimidation is used to try to impose Christian fruit into a person's life it loses its authenticity. When principles based on fear rather than love are used to motivate a person, the infection of Satan's counterfeit system immediately destroys the reflection of God and His likeness in us is distorted. Only by close cooperation with the superior principles of heaven can the power of God be seen clearly functioning in a person's life.

The unity that Jesus brings is based on attraction rather than compulsion. Clearly these hostile leaders found Jesus' methods and attitudes totally incompatible with their own beliefs about achieving unity. They refused to accept that God's methods relying on respect and appreciation for His love and His defense of the freedom of each person to choose for themselves was sufficient to hold people together in lasting unity. They had bought into the notion that love was not reliable enough, not strong enough to overcome the forces that always seek to tear apart unity. They believed much like we still do today that there must at some point be a time when force must be used and fear must be injected and people's freedoms have to be violated for the benefit of those in charge.

What most fail to realize about these basic assumptions about unity were conceived in the mind of Satan and are not the true principles created by God. Satan is the one who originally asserted that God's government based on love was flawed because it was unwilling to resort to relying on force when necessary. It was Satan who claimed that there were hidden flaws in God's character and that God's methods were too soft to rule effectively. At the same time Satan asserted that God was too harsh and demanded strict obedience arbitrarily. Ironically if God had not been as gracious as He is, Satan Himself would no longer be in existence; for if God had treated Satan as Satan insists must be done God would have long ago resorted to force to stop the horrible results of Satan's activities.

God knows that unity achieved using any of the principles promoted by Satan will only result sooner or later in even greater problems and more dissension. Any unity founded on fear is doomed to fall apart and disintegrate sooner or later. Only unity achieved by earning the respect and affections of the hearts of those willingly united under the banner of love can be truly lasting. All other methods of producing unity have fatal flaws and relying on them to hold people together will ultimately end in failure. This false adhesive for bonding people together will fall apart when the light of the presence of truth exposes all things into the open.

What I see in these two verses is the idea of unity being pursued from two completely different directions. In dying at the hands of hateful people who opposed allowing the truth about God to be seen clearly, Jesus accomplished what nothing else could do: He exposed the kingdom of darkness for the fraud that it really is. In allowing sinners to demonstrate their hatred against God they only ended up exposing the deceptive nature of the accusations of God by Satan. Jesus demonstrated that forgiveness, kindness and true love can never be suppressed from the heart of God. No one could do anything wicked enough to get God to stop loving and forgiving sinners. All they could do was to destroy their own reflection of His image in their souls that will ultimately lead to eternal death as a result.

All who choose to embrace the truth about God as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus will find themselves inexorably drawn into a true unity that results from coming into synchronization with the character of God through natural assimilation. God never imposes Himself or His character onto the life of any believer. Rather, He transforms from the inside the motives, the character, the impulses and desires of the life until each person finds themselves living in perfect harmony with all others who likewise are living in harmony with heaven. This is the unity that has true power – power to attract others, power to redeem any willing person from any amount of sin and restore them to wholeness, power to overcome all odds and power to produce a universe ultimately free of all fear or dissension.

I really want to have a clearer, firmer grasp of these principles that make up God's body. This verse demonstrates that the unity within the body of Christ is dependent on a positive response to the attractiveness of the character of God like that displayed in the actions of Jesus in raising Lazarus from death and in the ways Jesus treated Mary and Martha. I want to understand and cooperate with the methods that Jesus uses to achieve heaven's kind of unity and to refrain from all use of force, fear, deception, shame or any other false method of pressuring others to conform. I want to come into much closer sympathy and harmony with the attitudes that Jesus demonstrated that brings about true long-term, permanent unity that has no regrets. I want to enjoy the unity that protects each person's freedom and that draws out spontaneous reactions of love rather than relying on fear to hold people together.

Expedient for You

2011-08-31T09:37:00.001-05:00

...it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish. (John 11:50)

Expedient: conducive to advantage or interest, as opposed to right. (dictionary.com)

As a person allows their choices to move away from compliance with God's moral principles toward seeking advantages for themselves, the result will always be a life of expediency. Sooner or later people will compromise the principles of truth, honesty, justice and what is right and will become willing to sacrifice someone else's well-being in exchange for their own interests. The example of these religious leaders is a classic case of this very truth.

I believe that up to this point many of these priests and leaders had been trying to maintain some semblance of righteousness, a reputation for obeying the commandments of God. Even after this turning point in their lives they still tried to keep up an outward appearance that they were following God's laws, but in their hearts they had turned away from God and had embraced their own agenda in place of God's will. They had fully chosen a dark master and their lives from that point on became controlled by the prince of darkness as their reason became more insane. Later stories about these men reveal that they had lost their ability to think clearly, to act from principle rather than lust and their behavior became more and more bizarre.

I notice the emphasis by Caiaphas here on selfishness. The expediency was for themselves, not for the benefit of anyone else. And the very presence of the idea of giving preference to expediency over principle betrays the true spirit and motives of these men as being evil. As soon as I begin to use expediency as my preferred method for making decisions I am on the road toward ruin and moral disaster. Expediency may feel good and may bring advantages in the short term, but living for myself at the expense of others will result in destroying my own soul as well as harming many around me.

Even worse is the fact that this suggestion came from the highest official and most influential religious leader in a nation chosen by God to be His representatives on this earth. Spiritual leaders, far from being exempt from accountability are the most responsible for the influence they exert on others around them. They are also higher profile targets of the enemy of souls for he knows that if he can capture their hearts with selfishness that he can access many others more easily through their diabolical influence.

Caiaphas was a corrupt man who had used the system and politics to secure the lucrative position of high priest through fraud, deception and manipulation. He was willing to stop at nothing to keep his political position of power in the country and was ready to resort to murder if need be to maintain the status quo. We recoil in horror when we see people willing to stoop to such degradation of character striving for supremacy and willing to compromise truth for personal advantage. Yet these same motives lie in each one of our hearts ready to spring into action whenever circumstances create a good opportunity for self-promotion. Infected by sin, every one of us is liable to exploit others for our own advantage just as these men had finally become willing to do.

Father, sometimes I catch a glimpse of how selfish my own heart really is and I shudder in horror at what I might do if push came to shove. I begin to realize more clearly how much I need your grace, your restraining power to prevent me from following the example of these men who were so willing to exchange your life for their own advantage. What they didn't realize was that in choosing to turn all their animosity against you they were exposing the true nature of sin for all the universe to recoil from in disgust and horror for all eternity. Help me to grasp the reality of the diabolical power of sin to turn my own heart away from your grace and help me to keep close to you for my own protection. Make me willing to die to self and sinful desires rather than participate in the spirit of these men who preferred subjecting you to torture rather than suffer potential loss of their own comfort and prestige.

Father, put your spirit in me to counteract and dispel the spirit of death that presently dwells in me. Win the battle for my own soul and draw me to keep myself in your presence for safety's sake. Honor your reputation by finishing your experiment of grace that transforms my life to reflect the life of Jesus rather than the example of these self-serving men. I submit to your authority because trusting in your goodness is the only option that really makes sense. I am designed to thrive in your love so help me to remain conscious of your love every moment.

Expediency

2011-08-30T09:35:00.001-05:00

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish." (John 11:49-50)

The more that I meditate on these verses the clearer becomes the contrast between the methods and attitudes of the world's way of relating to each other and heaven's methods as demonstrated by Jesus. The world depends on what we can term a hierarchical structure, the arrangement where people are elevated or demeaned depending on their perceived value, status and achievements. I have observed that the basic principles of God's kingdom operate quite differently than the hierarchical system, but sadly most of religion has accepted the world's methods in how churches are operated and governed.

In these verses are displayed evidences, results of running things using the world's methods even in highly religious institutions. The Jewish nation was ordained by God to be His representatives on earth and they were keenly aware of that fact. But instead of learning God's methods and relating to others using His principles they followed the world's methods and the end result was they killed the very Son of God who had initiated their nation originally.

In these words by the high priest, the highest spiritual leader of the true church of that time, one can see the attitude of a person deeply entrenched in the hierarchical way of thinking. The corruption of integrity that ensues from relying on dominance and control rather than respect for freedom and love produced the fruit seen in the character of this evil man. There are two initial statements that Caiaphas made that are revealing about his spirit and character.

I sense that Caiaphas had been waiting for the time when the attitudes and desperation of the other leaders would ripen to the point where he could offer them a plan he had been developing for some time. Caiaphas was thinking larger and longer term than the average leaders and had been waiting for circumstances to come around to favor his ideas, plans that were inspired by the spirit of Satan. The prince of this world had shaped the spirit of these men who had so long resisted the kindness and compassion of Jesus and taken over their hearts progressively. Satan in turn, was working through them to bring about his own diabolical plans to get revenge against the Son of God for what had happened to him in heaven before the creation of this world.

Satan harbored deep resentment against Christ for what had happened to him in heaven that ended in his being cast down to this earth. Now with Jesus living as a human being vulnerable to Satan's power, he saw a chance to vent his rage and revenge against Jesus to inflict on Him all the pain and suffering he could devise. Satan is the author of the spirit of wanting to 'get even' and he could hardly temper his overpowering urge to attack Jesus as a human.

Caiaphas was reflective of the spirit of Satan in the way he related to the people and even to the other leaders. It appears to me from this passage that the lesser leaders, though full of animosity toward Jesus and bitter about His witness about the Father, had still been functioning to some extent in respect for their law. They had been restrained from engaging fully in banding together to overtly organize specific plans to commit blatant injustice against an innocent person. While they often were driven to want to kill him in their rage over being exposed by His statements and actions, they had not yet come to the point of fully degrading themselves to the same level of evil where Caiaphas had already arrived. Caiaphas was biding his time just waiting for circumstances to come around to favor his plans and this final miracle of Jesus had driven the leaders to extreme desperation for a solution that they now presented just the opportunity he needed to introduce his scheme.

But notice how this religious leader treated the other elders of the people. The first words out of his mouth were words of scorn intended to demean and shame the others. Today we might hear him say, “You stupid idiots, you ignoramuses, you are so dumb I can't believe it.” This man obviously had no respect for his peers except for how he could exploit them to help carry out his selfish desire for more power and authority. As he saw their own thinking coming into line with his he knew he could now gain their cooperation for facilitating his plans, the very plans of Satan, to destroy Jesus.

The second thing Caiaphas said here was similar and enforced the first comment. “You do not take something into account here.” Now he is not only insulting them as stupid and ignorant but he points out that they are not thinking big enough to perceive the 'opportunity' they have in front of them. He implies that these leaders have been too restrained by their morality to see the way in which they could satisfy their hateful feelings against Jesus. They had been too intimidated by the restraints of God's law to lower themselves to fully embrace intentional sin and plan an innocent man's murder. But because of these recent circumstances this wicked man saw that they were now finally ready to listen to him and to lower themselves to his level and cooperate with him to unit together in planning the death of Jesus.

What did Caiaphas want them to take into account? It was not morality he wanted them to think about but expediency. Today we sometimes call this pragmatism. The pragmatic thing to do in a given situation becomes the most important method to achieve the outcome we desire no matter how it aligns with truth or morality or justice. This has become the hallmark of politics all throughout history. For Caiaphas this was not a new idea but was one that was in harmony with his own debased character. He had been waiting for the time when a majority of the leaders would be willing to join him to carry out wicked and selfish desires. He pointed out to them that the reasonable thing to do under these extreme circumstances was to simply eliminate one innocent man in order to recapture their own influence and return their country back to the status quo that had been so disrupted by this insurrectionist. For the 'peace' of the nation – which really meant for the benefit of the elite, the powerful and the rich oppressors in control – it was only reasonable – expedient – that the source of all their problems simply be liquidated so that their version of 'law and order' could be restored.

This form of reasoning is very familiar to us, yet it is chilling once a person begins to see its implications clearly. I hear this same refrain frequently in the reasons government uses to make decisions and how churches try to maintain control over members. Corporations, clubs, denominations, nations, all engage in this twisted logic to achieve their desired self-serving ends. People become expendable while the goals of the organization become of ultimate importance. Individual value is ignored while the prestige and power of the 'greater good' becomes the driving force to violating the rights and ignoring the basic freedoms of the individual.

This is the inevitable result of living by the principles of the world while ignoring the true principles of heaven. Sooner or later, following the methods of expediency will result in subverting justice and crushing the innocent. Those in control will eventually stop at nothing in debasing themselves to achieve their desired selfish desires. No one is safe from the dangers inherent in the kingdom of darkness when God's principles are ignored for the sake of expediency.

Without realizing what he was doing though, Caiaphas was actually carrying out the very plans of God who was exposing the fundamental roots of Satan's kingdom through his words and actions. Jesus had come to this world to expose and highlight the true nature of Satan's kingdom in contrast to His own methods and character to make sin explicitly plain and to show how horrific people will become if sin is not removed from their hearts. By stooping to indulge in hatred, pride and expediency, these leaders brought themselves so low in character that they were quickly passing the point of no return. They were hardening their hearts and destroying their consciences so thoroughly that they were moving beyond the reach of the conviction of the Spirit of God to save them from evil. They were slipping into the same condition as the master they had chosen to follow who was motivating them to act out his own hateful passions against God. By rejecting the picture of God that Jesus had come to reveal they came to reflect more accurately the character and spirit of the great accuser, the father of lies who had started the whole experiment of sin long before.

Caiaphas had no respect for his fellow leaders and only offered them scorn to push them into coming into agreement with him. He pressed on them the principle of expediency as the reason upon which to base their decisions. By appealing to their selfishness and pride to motivate them to come into alignment with each other, Satan was able to accomplish his goals through these wicked men. Satan's kingdom scorns respect and relies on shame and intimidation as the reliable means of motivating others to come into agreement. The unity achieved in Satan's kingdom relies on different 'glue' than what God uses to bring about unity in love. This story presents a clear contrast between these two kingdoms.

Let Him Go On

2011-08-29T06:09:00.001-05:00

If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him.... (John 11:48)

How very interesting. Out of the mouth of unbelievers God elicits truth at times.

These men who were so hardening their hearts against the strongest evidences of the beauty of God's character were confessing that the words and actions of Jesus were exerting an overwhelming influence to draw people to Himself with love and compassion. They even seemed to imply that if He were not resisted and prevented from continuing His activities that even they might succumb to His drawing and come to believe in Him. They felt that their only choice – if they did not want to end up believing themselves – was to take decisive action to silence His voice before it was too late.

This is a classic example of what is termed the unpardonable sin. In actuality there is no sin that God cannot forgive; but a person who finally is able to silence the voice of God in their hearts by destroying their own capacity to respond to Him removes all ability for repentance. After destroying their own capacity to ever want to believe in the goodness of God as Jesus presented it, a person then feels free to believe whatever they want about Him and they ultimately fall hopelessly into the deceptions of Satan, immersed in what they have chosen to embrace permanently.

But what inspires me in these words from some of Jesus' fiercest opponents is the fact that if I choose to let Jesus go on like this that I can finally come into fuller belief myself. I have spent years searching for real belief – saving faith as it is sometimes called. I determined some time ago to understand this phrase, not just to be able to make logical sense of what it actually means but far more importantly to enter into it fully with my whole heart. That is the reason I am immersing myself in these accounts about Jesus recorded in the book of John, and now I am seeing it better from a most unusual place.

I remember many years ago hearing a quotation that puzzled me a great deal. It was something about 'drawing warmth from the coldness of others'. I often reflected on what this might mean since it seemed to be such an oxymoron. Now I see again how it might apply from this verse. From the coldness of these men's hearts emerges a truth that can actually warm my own heart, the fact that I can choose the opposite of what they chose to do, to let Jesus continue His work of grace in my own life, to let Him go on like He has been doing so that belief can take even deeper root in my own soul.

How exciting to realize that all I need to do is to keep letting Jesus do what Jesus wants to do in order to increase faith and see more people believe on Him along with me. Instead of fighting against the quiet promptings of the Holy Spirit within, I can choose to let Him continue by agreeing with Him and letting Him reshape me into His image. I tried very hard for many years to reform my own life into conformity to God's laws but all of those attempts ended in failure. But the problem was not with the law of God for that is simply a description of what God is like. The problem was in understanding that it is not through trying that one is transformed but through the renewing of the mind. And that can only happen by letting Jesus continue to do what He wants to do within me.

Will the world around me come to a crisis like these men suggested if I allow Jesus to go on like this? Well, their assumptions of the outcome may or may not have been accurate, but the real isue was their fear of losing control. They wanted to stay in charge of not only their own lives and destiny but of everyone around them as well. They accurately perceived that if Jesus continued to draw all men unto Himself that reality as they knew it would collapse and they were unwilling to allow that to continue.

But again, I see good news in these words, for I see that evil men resistant of God's drawing love will not always be able to suppress the glory and goodness of God from accomplishing its intended purpose of drawing all to Him. While all will not ultimately come to Him, it is impossible to prevent God from drawing us. Only by steeling the heart and making it impregnable through repeated rejections of His love and beauty can one finally remove themselves from the power of His drawing. But no one will ever be able to stop the inexorable power of the love which never ends, the fire which can never be extinguished any more than they can destroy gravity. Sooner or later the fire of God's passion will either cleanse a person of sin from within or it will consume the person totally because of their choice to cling to sin in preference to clinging to God.

I read in the end of the Bible that Babylon finally falls never to come into power again. My church prides itself in proclaiming this message of a fallen Babylon, yet I fear that many who preach this still do not really grasp the significance of what it means. Babylon represents the counterfeit systems of beliefs about God that infiltrates what all of us have been raised to believe about Him. All of us have been infected to some extent or another by lies about God that cause us to malfunction and to be afraid of Him. This is Satan's studied purpose, to keep fear and confusion about God in our hearts while maintaining that we have the truth and have no need of challenging our own ideas.

God declares that in the end of time Babylon will finally completely fall. That tells me that the false system based on lies about God that has so effectively and repeatedly silenced the voice of God and His activities in so many hearts cannot accomplish its goal of silencing Him completely. When it all comes out in the wash it will be seen that love ultimately cannot be suppressed but will always come out on top. It is those who determine to prevent Jesus from drawing everyone to Himself that will be seen to be fools as the complex labyrinth of false ideas about God finally collapse under the light of the glorious truth about Him that will finally fill the whole earth. (Revelation 18:1-5)

Because God is so good and is fiercely protective of our freedom to choose for ourselves which power will dominate our lives, He allows each one to decide how we will respond to His drawing love for our affections. Many choose to silence His drawing and seek to prevent others from responding like these men chose to do. But love itself cannot be stopped anymore than gravity can be eliminated. Sooner or later gravity will bring things back to earth unless they go so far away that they are captured by another gravity of their choosing.

I see in these words an invitation by God to let Him go on as He has been doing and allow Him to draw me through the attraction of His glory into an intimate relationship of passion and thus to be transformed by His grace and love and peace as I continue to choose to give Him access to my own heart. I can learn from the tragic choice of these men that there is a better way to live. I am encouraged and reminded that I can make a different choice than they did and can ask God to keep on doing what He longs to do within me, drawing me to His heart and awakening responsive love deep in my soul as His acts of love and mercy change me and transform me.

Jesus, I choose right now to let You go on like this so that not only I but many around me will come to believe in You so the kingdom of fear will finally collapse. Fill me with Your presence today and replace my desires with Your plans and Your disposition and Your character. Do this for Your name's sake, Amen.

What Are We Doing?

2011-08-26T05:28:00.000-05:00

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." (John 11:47-48)

What are we doing? This man is performing many signs....

This question comes to me and everyone of us sooner or later. What am I doing in the face of the signs sent from God meant to induce belief in my heart. The truth is standing in front of me in the person of Jesus Christ and His example given to display more clearly how God feels towards me. But the vital question is, What am I doing about it?

John mentions many times throughout his writings that these signs were given so that we might believe in the Son of God. I have been learning that this means Jesus came to reveal just what His Father is really like, that I don't need to be afraid of Him but that I need to change my opinions about how He feels about me. It is my own misapprehensions of God that block me from coming into sympathy with His view of reality and to allow my patterns of thinking and living to synchronize with heaven's. It is by coming to believe the evidences presented by Jesus in a multitude of ways that I am transformed and drawn to embrace the truth about God and am thus made safe to come close into His presence.

What am I doing in response to these many signs that Jesus is giving me to entice me closer to Himself and into fellowship with His Father? What are we doing? This man is performing many signs, and the question persists, what are we doing in response to them?

The evidences presented by Jesus sooner or later force every one of us to have to ask of ourselves this question. We cannot live in indifference to God's love indefinitely. Either I will surrender my resistance to Him and renounce the lies I have embraced for all of my life about Him, allowing Him to reintroduce Himself to me and redefine my perceptions of Him, or I will cling to my traditions, my fears, my religion in place of the real truth about Him and end up like these men who were so intent on maintaining their religion they refused to change their stance toward God based on the signs from Jesus.

If we allow Him to continue like this, all men will come to believe in Him....

Really? All men?

Well, maybe not quite all. These leaders themselves were making a fatal decision to dig in their heels, to continue their intense opposition to the wooing of the Holy Spirit on their hearts through the many signs of Jesus declaring the goodness and love of God towards them by steeling themselves in their established views of God. In doing so, by rejecting any new ideas about what God was like and how He relates to sinners, they were hardening their hearts to the point of destroying their very capacity to be changed by love. By resenting the compassion and scorning the signs and seeking to discredit the greatest witness for God the world has ever seen, these men were becoming examples of the unpardonable sin.

Just what is the unpardonable sin? It is not some mystery of theology or some horrible act of violence or obscenity or shocking act of blasphemy. It happens through a subtle and repeated resistance over time to the softening influence of the Holy Spirit on the heart seeking to change our opinions about God, pleading with us to see Him as far better than we ever thought was possible. It occurs from resisting the truth that God loves unconditionally no matter how wicked a person may have become and refusing to accept that He never holds onto offense in His heart about any act of trespass against Him.

I am startled by the profound truths embedded in words from men who were fast becoming the greatest opponents of the truth about God ever seen in history. Like their leader Caiaphas who unwittingly prophesied truth about Jesus while relying on human logic, these men were uttering a truth that needs to be taken seriously by anyone facing the choice of how to respond to God. Indeed, if Jesus is allowed to continue to testify as to the real truth about God it will indeed exert an overwhelming influence to draw all men to Him. Jesus stated so Himself in the very next chapter. (12:32)

If He goes on like this all men will believe in Him. Oh that this were allowed to actually happen! Yes, if people would really allow Jesus to continue to infiltrate their minds and hearts with the truth about God He came to reveal to us without continuing to resist Him, we could all come to believe in Him. This statement was true, yet the conclusion they drew about what would happen next was based on their false perceptions rather than heaven's. Their beliefs of how life operates was based on Satan's principles of government rather than God's methods. The Roman empire epitomized dependence on the use of force and fear to govern and control its subjects while Jesus came to establish a kingdom based on very different principles. The conclusions assumed by these men were based on earthly logic and reasoning. As a result all they could see in their future was their being overcome by the forces of their enemies if they did not continue to maintain their defenses they had so carefully put into place.

For their survival these Jewish leaders had come to depend totally on their ability to negotiate compromises with their enemies while harboring deep hatred for them at the same time. It would be no stretch to say there was no love lost between the Jews and the Romans. But at the same time these leaders had carved out a tentative though fragile peace if it could be called that with the Roman occupiers. Jesus' influence was seriously threatening that fragile balance of power and they knew that the status quo was impossible to maintain so long as the ideas of Jesus continued to increase His influence in the hearts of the masses. Jesus presented a fatal threat to the economies of this world, the politics of this world, the methods and religious of this world. This had become unavoidably clear to these men and they were determined to do whatever it would take to stop His influence and try to return things to the way they believed life must operate.

Notice that there are two specific things mentioned that are under threat from the ministry of Jesus. The first is our place.

After examining a number of translations of this verse I am reminded how nice it would be to have a more complete knowledge of the original languages to better understand what this might mean. It appears they may have been referring to a specific but unmentioned place such as their city but more likely their temple which they revered more than God Himself. One version even implies that they may have listed three things rather than two, the third being themselves.

My impression from my study of this is that they are afraid of losing their power and prestige at least as much or more than their losing a physical place. But if the place, especially if that place was the temple upon which their prestige and power was based, were to be removed by the Romans, then they felt that this would likely be the worst thing that could ever happen to them. This potential of losing their identity and temple which had become the source of their status in connection to worship as they had defined it, and their political position which was dependent on their fragile arrangements with the Roman occupiers, was simply untenable.

Another fact I see emerging from this passage and the comments of Caiaphas is that up to this point in the narrative they seem to not have accepted the option of creating a detailed, overt and coordinated plan to destroy Jesus. While the gospels report a number of instances where they wanted to kill Jesus, evidently that desire had not yet coalesced into a willingness to degrade themselves to the point of coordinating their efforts together to consciously work out overt plans to eliminate Him. Apparently it was in this meeting that the sadistic, pragmatic high priest finally found his opportunity to present his option of forming coordinated plans to destroy the work and person of Jesus as a matter of policy for the nation. Rather than having various leaders simply wish that Jesus would die or attempting uncoordinated attempts to put Him away, they had all now become so united in their fear and hatred of Him that they were willing to stoop all the way down to endorse a united plan to kill Jesus. They were now willing to do whatever it took for the sake of maintaining what they considered more important for their own agenda and to protect their preferred sources for value and identity.

When people come to the place where they are willing to sacrifice another person's life to maintain the status quo and protect their own agenda, it is then that they have sunk to dangerous levels of satanic immorality. The world thinks little of resisting this kind of thinking because the world is largely in sympathy with the principles of Satan's kingdom. But it was to expose these false principles by bringing to light the true principles of heaven's government that Jesus came to this earth. It was through revelations of the goodness of God that all of this was brought to a head and that flushed into the open these attitudes, pushing these leaders to stoop to choosing to kill an innocent man rather than to question their own agenda.

This spirit of placing higher priority on self-preservation and the status quo above human life is a hallmark of the kingdom of darkness. It was to contrast this spirit with the disposition of God that Jesus came to this planet. Far from coming to appease an angry God bent on punishing sinners, the purpose of Jesus coming to this earth was to reveal a God who was not at all like what we have become.

While it sometimes appears that Jesus' death may have come about because of the plans of evil men, it was in actuality the free choice of Jesus to submit to the outworkings of humanity's selfishness. He allowed Himself to be treated as He was to the point of death to expose the true nature of sin. No amount of planning on the part of humans or even demons could have brought about the death of the Son of God if God Himself in Christ had not chosen to submit Himself to be subjected to those schemes. Jesus' death was His own free choice to willingly allow evil to fully expose itself without resisting it. It was in this way that God induced evil into the open, to be seen more clearly so that in horrifying every intelligent being they might be completely cured of ever again choosing to take any direction that would tend in a direction of sin and selfishness. By allowing these circumstances to mature God was working out His incredible plan to inoculate the universe against the virus of sin ever being repeated.

Status Quo Guards

2011-08-23T07:26:00.002-05:00

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs." (John 11:47)

I see here an admission by these leaders that Jesus is clearly able to do things to substantiate His claims of true leadership that they cannot do. They are increasingly jealous that His abilities to perform miracles in support of His radical teachings about God carry so much power to change people's views of God. But this very shift in public opinion about what God is like is the very thing undermining their own influence and control over the masses because they have built all their power structures on pictures of God as one who employs force and fear and shame to maintain their allegiance.

In this statement they are forced to admit that they seem powerless and wimpy in the face of such overwhelming and compelling signs that Jesus has been using to draw the people to Himself. While Jesus is performing sign after sign and they have been unable to discredit even one of them as hard as they have tried, in contrast they cannot think of anything they have done to really effect a viable alternative to keep the people's allegiance for themselves. They have set themselves up in direct competition against Jesus and yet they have been unable to match anything He has been doing to win that competition. They are now becoming frantic in their desire to do something – anything to win this contest even if it means violating the rules of the game and surrendering the last remnants of their moral integrity.

The whole book of John is focused on the evidence of signs in support of Jesus' claims about what God is like. John wants to make sure we see that Jesus is the one winning the competition and here he reveals what the opposition is feeling as they realize they are losing. At this point they are ready to grasp at anything, legal or illegal, moral or immoral, to protect their status, to maintain their positions of dominance and control and to preserve the status quo at any cost.

These leaders were aware of their responsibility to fulfill the obligations of their offices and positions for leading the people. These men were the religious instructors of the people, they were to be an example of holiness before the public, their job was to set the tone for a whole nation of people that depended on them to know how to live rightly before God.

These men were also powerful political leaders of the people. They controlled most of the commerce and wealth and were in charge of the legal system of the country. Although the Roman occupiers had taken over much of the enforcement by martial law, the Jewish leaders still had been allowed considerable latitude to enforce local civil and religious requirements. These men had worked hard to manipulate themselves into the positions they had attained and they were not about to let all of those years of effort and promotions slip away from them easily.

Because of this the leadership of the Jewish nation viewed Jesus as a rebel, a maverick, a constant and growing threat to the social stability of their nation. In many ways Jesus was disturbing the fragile 'peace' that they had worked so long and hard to carve out for their nation. Yes, there were many problems and corruption and criminals that were everywhere, but this Jesus threat had come from a very different direction. Never before had they ever encountered a person that was so unique and so friendly and yet so threatening to the status quo. They found His approach of challenging the establishment through grassroots involvement with the masses far more of a threat to their power base and prestige and honor than that of any wild-eyed rebel or prophet or religious fanatic they had ever encountered before. This man was seeking to redefine the very roots of their identity as a people.

As Jesus during His ministry performed miraculous sign after sign while spreading around His disturbing views of God that undermined much of what was promoted by the religious teachers, the leaders kept doing everything they could think of to discredit His theories and discount His miracles. In growing desperation to keep the people believing in traditional views of how society should operate so as to maintain their own control and influence, they knew they had to soon contain this strange threat that was stealing away the minds and hearts of the masses. Yet every tactic they tried, each plan carefully crafted to entrap Him, each question calculated to trick Him into incriminating Himself publicly always backfired only to bring even more dishonor to themselves instead of to Jesus. This had become a major source of irritation for them.

One of their main concerns was that Jesus was unbalancing the careful arrangements they had forged with the foreign powers dominating them. They had spent years crafting compromises and acquiring privileges from the Roman government that other countries did not enjoy, but these privileges were dependent on keeping everything carefully in place politically. If someone came along and upset all the arrangements and secret deals they had put in place they could threaten the fragile security and limited peace that had already been forged and chaos would surely result. Something had to be done to stop this man from ruining everything they had worked so hard to put in place, but so far every tactic to stop His influence among the people had failed spectacularly.

It was from this background that these leaders now convened an emergency council of the religious and political leadership in reaction to a home run grand slam that Jesus had just performed (using a baseball analogy). Every other time Jesus had raised someone from death He had done so soon enough after their death that people could reasonably question whether the person had really been totally dead. In those days before medical techniques allowed people to know better information about the internal systems, it was not hard to make a mistake and assume someone was dead when they were really only in a coma. Sometimes people had awakened spontaneously after a day or two and this gave opportunity for doubt that Jesus had really used supernatural power to awaken them from supposed death.

But it was well known that after three days if a person was not awakened by then that decay would take over the body and it would begin to rot and stink. As long as Jesus had not raised anyone from the dead after three days the religious people could keep circulating questions to fuel the minds of doubters. But this time Jesus had smashed past the three day limit and had intentionally waited four days to make His point absolutely clear. In doing this He had performed a sign that was totally irrefutable, a sign that could not be discounted. Jesus had moved the competition to a whole new level and the impact of this miracle had created dramatic effects to undermine and expose the hypocrisy and true motives of the leaders.

This miracle had pushed them to believe they had to take desperate measures to meet a desperate situation if they were to keep in place the status quo protecting their livelihoods and their influence. Whether their plans were within legal limits or not, they now realized that nothing they had done in the past had really won much ground and they were fast losing control of the masses to this carpenter.

What are we doing? An interesting question indeed. Of course it could not be a truly honest question, for to admit what they were really doing would be to admit defeat. But this was one of the very things that Jesus had come to expose. The ways and plans of men in the name of God have ever been contaminated with selfishness and grasping for power and desire for control over others. To admit their selfishness would be to admit they were counterfeits and not worthy o public trust. Keeping the status quo in place always requires a certain amount of deception and intimidation of those under one's control. The fundamental principles of this world's ways of governing requires the use of fear, shame and force.

Jesus had come to this earth to initiate a new kingdom. But this kingdom was to be in sharp contrast with all the ways people were used to governing and being governed. The principles of the kingdom of heaven are so different that they are a direct threat to the function of the kingdom structures of this world no matter how much they may claim to operate in God's name. Whether it be a nation or a church, the underlying principles used to hold people together under a social system are either based on the principles of Satan's kingdom or must be subject to the sovereignty of God and rely on His principles to bond people together while maintaining full respect for their individual freedoms.

Jesus came to reveal the truth about how heaven treats people with respect and love, honoring their right to choose for themselves. This threatened the very adhesive of society that the world's systems use to keep their groups in place and their leaders in power. Jesus was injecting solvent into the fabric of earthly society that was making their kingdoms come unglued. Because of this the source of this solvent had to be eliminated and the damage contained. Otherwise society as they knew it would fall apart and then what would happen to the status quo and all who depended on it for their livelihoods and their identity?

What are we doing? In comparison to all the things Jesus had been doing that drew attention to Himself, swaying the opinions of people about how God wanted to relate to them, the religious leaders seemed to be doing very little to limit His influence. Somehow they had to come up with a way to contain the damage from this man that they were not able to intimidate. It was time to take extreme measures to meet an extreme threat to the world's system of control. It was time to do whatever it took to stop this man so the damage could be repaired as soon as possible.

Furthermore, it would even seem reasonable that it might be necessary to put Lazarus to death as well to eliminate the living witness that Jesus had produced who was helping spread His infectious beliefs. It was time for an extreme response as soon as possible if they were to protect the very existence of society as they had maintained it. In contrast to what they had attempted previously, what they now had to do needed to be dramatically more radical. If threats, deception, logic and trickery had not worked, it was time for brute force like the Romans had used so effectively.

Whatever it takes. That is the tactic that the kingdoms of this world and every religious system relying its methods have had to resort to when faced with erosion of their existence by the kingdom of heaven.

The Sisters

2011-08-21T10:50:00.001-05:00

Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him. (John 11:45)

I have previously noticed the curious differences I see in references throughout this story and in other places to Mary. Sometimes Mary and Martha are mentioned together and at the beginning of this story that is the case also. Other places they are mentioned alone and even the sequence in which they are listed I believe may be significant.

I believe that John was making intentional inferences in the way in which he referred to these sisters particularly throughout this story and in the order in which he listed them each time. At the beginning of the story, since the story is primarily centered around Lazarus, he is listed first and then Mary and then Martha. The location of this event is 'the village of Mary' and then her sister's name is added.

I believe that one of the reasons John is so careful to arrange their names in various places is to make some important points for those who would read between the lines and ponder the differences between these two sisters. Different people can relate quite differently to these stories because they have different personality traits that resonate with one or the other sisters. I have observed that for years and have found it to be helpful and instructive.

I have long gotten the sense that Mary was not only quite attractive physically but she also likely had a very magnetic personality that tended to draw people to herself, especially men. Whether she intended to exploit that natural gift or not it was simply a fact of who she was. On the other hand I sense that Martha may well have been much less glamorous physically and her personality was likely very different from that of Mary's. This could at times have caused some insecurity on the part of both women for different reasons. Martha being the more pragmatic and thinking type usually gravitated toward noting what needed to be done and paid attention to social details. This is why she became so frustrated when Mary was spending so much of her time sitting at Jesus' feet while Martha was stewing in the kitchen in more ways than one. Mary on the other hand was much more focused on people rather than on surroundings and could easily be distracted by social interaction.

The reason Mary was sitting with the men and was mesmerized by the words of Jesus was because she had come to realize her weakness in this area and how much she needed to keep close to Jesus. She had learned from very painful experience that this was the only choice that could empower her to keep from falling into sin so easily. Martha did not face the same sort of temptations as Mary because she did not have the same physical and social disposition and attractions as Mary. Because of this Martha's temptations were along a different line. She was used to trusting to her own resources, skills and experience to get things done expeditiously. She was an organizer efficiently bringing people together to do whatever needed to be done to keep things moving smoothly. Mary on the other hand was the talker, the life of the party wherever she went. Her smile was irresistible and her personality and appearance drew people around her like a strong magnet.

Because of these differences there could have been times of tension between these two sisters. Mary's life of moral failure must have been a source of deep embarrassment and shame to Martha. Yet because she was her sister she was willing to let her come home because she was unwilling to view her like so many others who were more interested in condemning her than in caring for her heart. I find it interesting that almost nothing is said about Lazarus as far as his personality or relations with his sisters. In fact I cannot think of a single instance where Lazarus is quoted as saying anything at all.

I can't help but think that John called this village the village of Mary because she was by this time so publicly known for various reasons. Her loose lifestyle and many friends from various backgrounds made her well-known for quite a distance around. She is also known in other references as Mary of Magdela or Mary Magdelene. Magdela was a city some distance away where many Roman troops were stationed. It was an army town and very likely Mary had spent considerable time there 'servicing' the baser desires of the soldiers in exchange for lucrative profits.

Throughout the gospels the story of Mary can be pieced together to understand her better. Apparently Jesus had taken a keen interest in Mary earlier in His ministry and had come to her rescue at least seven times by casting out demonic spirits that had taken over her life due to her promiscuity or other activities. When Jesus began working with her she was likely far from being welcomed back home and it was only through His persistent intervention that she was later finally able to even come home and feel welcome enough to hang out there when Jesus was around.

Mary had a long and intense history with Jesus and because of this had much deeper emtions for Him than possibly anyone else at that time. Being an emotionally-oriented person to start with, Mary had spent a lot of time getting her life turned around, for the typical methods that others used to 'get their act together' didn't really work for her. Each time she made resolutions to change her lifestyle and begin 'living straight' her emotions would overcome her and she would be sucked back into indulging in familiar activities that had become her source of temporarily feeling good. She was a classic case of an addict dependent on her 'drugs of choice' to keep going. But Jesus able to demonstrate in her life the truth that love, compassion and forgiveness can change anyone who is willing to hang in with Him.

Based on considerable history up to this point, John identifies the village of Bethany as 'Mary's village' along with Martha. These siblings had come to open their home to Jesus anytime He was near, to provide a safe place for Him to hang out, rest and refresh Himself without feeling threatened by the ever-present enemies from the religious establishment. The more these siblings got to know Jesus the more they wanted to have Him visit, for His presence and influence brought a blessing to their souls like nothing they had ever encountered before. In becoming some of Jesus' closest friends they had not been disappointed for He had accepted their affections for Him and blessed them possibly more than any other family.

The intensity of affection from this family and particularly in Mary's heart is the reason John takes special note to make sure the readers know this is the same Mary that was involved in the scandalous event where she washed His feet with perfume and had stirred up so much trouble with the establishment for doing so. That is another very compelling story but it must wait till I get there in the next chapter. But the point John wanted to make here is that this is a woman who was intensely emotional and expressive of her feelings far more than others around her.

While Mary's emotional makeup made her a powerful magnet attracting many friends of all types, her ability to draw people to her also created a great deal of jealousy and even hostility among the religious leaders who were themselves quite addicted to recognition and public attention. Ironically it would not be at all surprising if some of these very leaders had had improper relations with Mary themselves and had exploited her for personal pleasure but then turned around to betray her and condemned her publicly for things they had participated in themselves while covering up their own involvement.

The differences between Mary and Martha's personalities I believe figure prominently in this story and John seems to want to note that carefully. It was evident for people to see how easy it was to be affectionate of Mary for she was such an attractive person already. Nearly everyone liked Mary in a way but for different sorts of reasons and even those who wanted to condemn her for her many sins were drawn to her physically. While they didn't love her with kind of love that cared about her as a person, few could resist the allure of her natural attractions.

On the other hand Martha was a very different person. I sense that Martha very possibly was not nearly so much a naturally attractive person. She may have been quite reserved and maybe even plain looking. She did not have the charisma that Mary had and may have even at times been jealous of her sister growing up for this very reason. But as she saw how much trouble Mary's natural attractiveness caused her sister she may have begun to wonder if her plainness might not be a blessing in disguise. Yet I suspect that Martha had come to compensate for her lack in this area by depending heavily on her performance as a good host and her abilities to network and please people in other ways than Mary did to help make herself feel valuable.

While Mary had learned she could use her personality and her body to attract attention as her method for feeling valuable, Martha had her own ways to prop up her self-image. But Jesus was intent on addressing the inadequacies of both approaches for defining a person's value. Jesus wanted these sisters and everyone else to come to realize that the only real source of value and identity and a sense of self-worth comes from experiencing how God feels about them and knowing in their heart that they are His special children. He wanted them to come to know this, not from anything they could do to earn attention or affections from others but by receiving it directly from the Son of God.

Because of this background I find it significant in verse five that John says Jesus listed Martha first as the one He loved rather than Mary or even Lazarus. In fact, this verse does not even mention Mary's name. I believe that was because by this time there was little question that Jesus loved Mary after their long history of rescues and redemption and their growing close relationship. But Martha at this point was really struggling with her feelings about herself and what God thought of her. Yes, Mary was also struggling with her feelings about Jesus right then too, but Martha had not experienced the same personal encounters with Jesus that Mary had so many times so here John makes a point of noting that Jesus' love specifically included Martha, the less lovable (in her own mind), less attractive sister.

In verse 19 the sisters are listed again and this time Martha is listed first again. This is in reference to the Jews who had come to share in their grief which I find instructive from another angle. In this case, unlike a similar reference in verse 45, some of the Jews may have likely come to try to reinforce doubts about Jesus in the mind of Martha in particular during her most vulnerable moments. It is clear other places in the story that some of these Jews were intentionally wanting to insinuate doubts about Jesus' intentions and character. These were friends of higher leaders who had come to deeply hate Jesus and were looking for every excuse possible to discredit Him with as many as possible. So when they saw this situation developing in the lives of some of Jesus' best friends they thought they had found the perfect opportunity to exploit it to their advantage to encourage bitterness in the hearts of these sisters. If nothing else they could hurt Jesus as deeply as possible by turning these two women against Him.

Because Martha was the one possibly struggling the most between her emotions and her head beliefs about Jesus, it was Martha that first chose to go out to meet Him upon His arrival. Though it is not specifically noted in the text, I am increasingly of the opinion that Mary likely also knew that Jesus had arrived but was unwilling to go face Him because of her deeply conflicted feelings about Him and her disappointment that He had seemingly failed them. But Martha was willing to give Jesus a chance to speak for Himself so she went out to dialogue with Him – which turned out to be vitally important in the outcome of this story. Because Martha was willing to engage with Him even in her great pain, Jesus was able to draw valuable faith from her heart and increase it through His gift of heavenly life and wisdom. Martha became the 'link of permission' that allowed Jesus to continue His plans to reverse the evil that presently clouded their thinking.

Even after receiving the words and promises of Jesus initially, Martha was still having a hard time putting all the pieces together in her mind while Jesus kept pushing her beyond her comfort zone by asking to have the stone removed. Jesus kept working with her as He wanted to teach her to trust Him implicitly even when surrounding circumstances seemed to be overwhelmingly against trusting in His goodness. I feel Jesus was working primarily with Martha in this story as her faith was being tested severely, but because of her willingness to listen and cooperate with Him her faith was also being dramatically strengthened.

Nothing is said about their inevitable emotional feelings after Lazarus was finally unwrapped and welcomed back to the land of the living. There is no doubt that most everyone present experienced intense reversals of the feelings they had previously been experiencing, but not all those involved shared in the unexpected joy. Those who had been gloating over the apparent failure of Jesus to maintain His reputation of compassion and had been attempting to exploit this to their advantage likely felt humiliated and even angered by this amazing miracle. That is the tragic effect of sin which causes us to have opposite priorities from heaven's priorities. Rather than celebrating the goodness of God and the joy of these sisters they had come to 'console', these men rushed away to deliver the 'terrible news' to the leaders that their well-crafted plans to undermine Jesus had backfired once again and they were now in a serious dilemma politically and in other ways. While Lazarus' family was celebrating and soaking in the goodness and glory of God, others were hatching a plot to kill both of them.

In this last reference in verse 45 only Mary is listed in reference to the Jews who had come out to be with them. I see here again a distinction made between those who had come primarily for Mary's sake and those who had come to undermine Martha's faith in Jesus. Many of those who were real friends of Mary and had come to share in her grief did not share the dark motives of those who were in sympathy with the animosity of the religious leaders. These friends of Mary were much more open to the testimony about what God is like demonstrated through this grand miracle of grace and responded by dramatically increased belief in what Jesus had come to reveal about God.

But those who had come to infiltrate the mourners to spread doubt and unbelief to as many as possible and especially to Martha were the ones who in verse 46 hurried away to consolidate new plans to exterminate this increasing threat to their position and power. Martha had been saved from their evil intentions to wean her growing affections away from Jesus, but the future of Jesus' ministry on earth had definitely reached a turning point in the performance of this miracle for her family.

Wrong Government

2011-08-20T05:57:00.002-05:00

"If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." (John 11:48)

His kind of government just won't work around here. He is too weak to keep the Romans at bay so we have to employ whatever means necessary to maintain our national identity. Preserving our heritage as the chosen people of God is more important than the continued protection of some crazy man claiming ludicrous things about God that contradict clear teachings established over many years of research and calling into question the wisdom of the elders. After all, its up to us to please God by keeping order and peace around here and this man is certainly disturbing the peace and disrupting the established order.

Notice the foundation on which all these assumptions are based. Fear is behind everything these men are seeing and assuming.

They are afraid of what will happen to their grasp on power if Jesus' way of relating begins to catch on even more.
They are afraid people will begin to believe and act in love rather than be intimidated by fear, for then the leaders will lose all the handles they have been using to control everyone.
They are afraid of the Romans who in turn have used force and fear to accomplish conquering the world, and the Jews are jealous of the Roman's power and success.
They are afraid the Romans will not tolerate love and compassion as competition to their rule of force and will intervene by force to remove the last vestiges of authority these leaders have negotiated so long to occupy.

Their scenario thinking becomes the fact base upon which they are ready to make life and death decisions rather than to seek heaven's view of reality and what God might actually think about what constitutes security.

Competing Versions of God

2011-08-19T08:29:00.001-05:00

I find this passage to be a telling revelation into the truth about the nature of evil versus good. It is so easy to become confused about the nature of unbelief and to become infected by it. But we all suffer from some level of unbelief because we all have been infected with lies about God that have influenced how we relate to Him and to each other.

The greatest resistance that Jesus encountered when He walked this earth came not from the open sinners or even from the pagan Romans. The people who had the most animosity toward Jesus and His revelations of the truth about God were the very people whom God had chosen as a people to represent Him on earth and particularly the religious leaders of those people. How ironic that the ones who claimed to know the truth about God the best turned out to be the most fierce opposer's to His ministry to save sinners and demonstrate the goodness and compassion of the Father.

Jesus had just finished demonstrating compellingly the reality that God really did care about hurting people far more than anyone had thought. He had also revealed that what seemed to be an impossible obstacle in the minds of humans was no problem at all for God. God is not stymied or thwarted by incidental problems like sickness or death; the greatest obstacles that God is up against is in the stubborn resistance to His love in the deceived hearts of people who think they know God better than His own Son knows Him.

I believe that today we are in a very similar situation. We are deeply deceived about the real truths about God, how He feels about us and how He wants to relate to us. Religion today is little different than the religions of the world in the times of Jesus really. We still build our constructs of reality and our views of God on human reasoning which is based on pride and selfishness rather than on trusting in the revelations He has provided in His Word and in His Son. Because we have the added testimony of the life and death of Jesus more beyond what the Jews had, we assume that we are not deceived like they were. But that only adds more layers to the deceptions that blind us because we still refuse to acknowledge the underlying truths about the real nature of God's goodness and kindness and forgiveness.

The problem we run into is that we either think God is obsessed with our behavior and rule-keeping and is constantly looking for mistakes for which to punish us, or He is passive and willing to ignore and excuse sin while we claim that the death of His Son allows us to let sin remain in our lives unchallenged. We tend to take this to one extreme or the other which is exactly what the devil intends for us to do. But in doing so our lives begin to reflect the same attitudes exposed in these verses where the religious leaders revealed their true allegiance. Their focus was not on the principles of God's kingdom but on the priorities of the world as embodied in the methods of Rome. The context in which they couched their statements was the reality and principles defined and practiced by the Roman empire rather than by God. They revealed in their words that their greatest fear was of losing power and influence and social status and that these things were the highest priorities in their lives.

In the kingdom of fear and darkness that Jesus came to expose and displace with His new kingdom, force and shame and fear and intimidation have no place. In the kingdoms of fear, decisions are based on who has greater power to exercise force to get their way. Rome epitomized the use of force more than all the previous empires that had existed although they too relied on it heavily. Rome in Scriptures is a symbol of reliance on force to gain dominance, and even the great church that emerged from Rome is marked by this fundamental philosophy up to the very present. In Satan's kingdom force is considered not only a legitimate means of advancing one's agenda but it is claimed that God uses the same methods whenever it is useful and convenient for Him.

This is where all of the world is terribly deceived about the nature of God's kingdom and methods and character. God has been misrepresented more by religious people claiming to act in His name who utilize the methods of His enemy more effectively than any other group of people on this planet. When any of us indulge in the use of force and rely on fear to sway the minds of others to join our religion or conform to our demands, we are blaspheming the reputation of our God and are perpetuating the web of lies about Him that Satan has been circulating from the very beginning of sin.

Without a proper understanding of this greater context it is difficult to grasp why these leaders reacted the way that they did. It is important that we be more aware of the stark contrast between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of force and darkness. To allow our minds to remain infected with lies about God's methods and God's attitudes toward sin and sinners is to continue to misrepresent Him and ultimately to find ourselves in total opposition to Him. Ultimately we will find ourselves reacting just as these men reacted in fear and hostility toward the One who revealed the truth about God so plainly.

Logically, at least in a mind not too blinded by lies about God, it would seem that after Jesus had performed such a miracle of grace as raising a friend back to life from the dead, that anyone with any heart at all would respond in wonder and awe and appreciation for such a revelation of the goodness and love of God. How could people, especially those claiming to know God better than the average person, be so virulently hostile and angry about such an innocuous miracle as this? What fault did they see in Jesus bringing to life a man of the character of Lazarus? Did they hate Lazarus for something he had done or did they think he didn't deserve to be shown such favor?

Clearly the character and reputation of Lazarus or even of his sisters had little to do with this intense reaction of hostility on the part of the religious leaders. The underlying issue that rankled them so deeply was the fact that Jesus was openly promoting a picture of God as one who had far more compassion than any of those claiming to represent Him officially had, which made them look very bad by contrast. It was the fact that the picture of God revealed by Jesus was in such sharp contrast with the pictures of an austere, stern, condemning and controlling God promoted by the religious people that caused them to become so irritated. And ironically, in spite of all that Jesus did to show us the Father's heart religion still maintains the same lies about God that were so prevalent in the days of Christ.

I too struggle at the heart level to believe like I should in a God as good as what I am seeing in the life and practices and teachings of Jesus. The reason I have to keep coming back daily to immerse myself in the Word and meditate on the life of Christ is because my own heart is still so infected with deeply rooted false notions about what God is like. I am also surrounded by people who share similar lies or even worse some who feel compelled to impose their views of God on others to keep them living in fear. Yet the God that I have been discovering in my own examination of the Word is so different from the representations of Him by nearly all the religious people around me that I feel constant tension as these opposing views contend for dominance in my own life.

In these verses I catch a glimpse of the end results of not expelling from my heart the lies about God that Jesus came to expose. I see in the example of these stubborn men who were more interested in their own survival politically than in coming to know the truth about God, the end result of anyone who resists the revelation of what God is like in the life of Jesus. God will not utilize the tactics of His enemy to advance His kingdom, for to do so would be to legitimize the claims of Satan that force is necessary to operate the universe. But to force people against their will to make them believe truth totally destroys the very atmosphere necessary for love to exist; but God will not accept a universe where love is not the compelling power holding it together.

What I see emerging from this story is the basic issues in the struggle between the lies about God and the truth about what God is like. It is the titanic struggle for men's hearts and minds, the struggle to compel people to believe in a God who doesn't mind utilizing force and fear when it is to His advantage verses a God who refuses to indulge in the deceptive and diabolical methods of His opponents but rather relies on winning hearts only through demonstrations of love and freedom.

To all of us under the pale of sin, it seems bizarre to think that love has enough power to win over the philosophy of force. Oh, we think love has a lot going for it alright, but we also don't hesitate to resort to forcing people and overriding their freedom to choose whenever it seems it might advance our agendas. I believe we are observing the delusional aftereffects of our ancestors eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We assume that mixing a little evil in with the good when necessary is acceptable. But in God's kingdom a little poison mixed in with the sweet is a deadly proposition and God will not tolerate that formula for it only leads to death.

These religious leaders found their control, prestige and influence over the minds of the people being so eroded by Jesus' revelations about a caring, loving God who values freedom and love more than conformance to arbitrary rules, that they reacted out of intense fear and desperation. But in this very desperation they were actually revealing the weakness of the kingdom of darkness. Far from being wimpy and weak and powerless in the face of force and fear and evil, true selfless love is the most powerful force in the universe. Jesus came to reveal the self-sacrificing nature of true love by demonstrating that a person did not need to rely on any of the false principles of Satan's kingdom to live. Jesus came to expose the fallacies of these false principles and to show us the love of the Father so we could be transformed back into the original function and joy for which we were designed.

These men had the freedom to choose and could have embraced the fresh revelations of God that were so graciously offered to them. But their selfishness caused them to reject the clear revelations about the Father and they chose instead to cling to lies about God that allowed them to keep their own agendas firmly in place. They chose to live their lives based on the principles of force and fear and rejected the Son of the very God they claimed to follow. In making that choice their lives become molded into the nature of the enemy of God and their hearts became so hardened through choosing darkness over light that their characters reflected the demonic principles of Satan himself. The same will happen for everyone who continues to resist the revelations of truth about God in any age.

The Man Who Had Died

2011-08-17T09:24:00.002-05:00

The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him. (John 11:44-45)

The man who had unwittingly become the stumbling block for the faith of those who were watching, came out of his tomb removing their excuses for doubting Jesus. Of course it was no fault of his that he was a cause of doubt for others, but his death resulting from Jesus' delay to answer his sister's prayers had created opportunity for offense. Jesus had chosen to allow this state of affairs to test their faith, to press them beyond their comfort zone and to challenge them to grow in faith.

Indeed, they struggled between trusting in the One who had already done so much to prove His love for them and the strong temptation to feel He didn't care. Lazarus' death put them under tremendous pressure to question Jesus' care for them but they chose to cling to the evidence they already had in spite of current circumstances and insinuations by those seeking to discredit their faith. But that did not prevent their own emotions from causing depression as their faith began to waver and slip.

Jesus knew all of this and much more. He could see the true condition of the hearts of every person present that day which was part of the reason He was so deeply moved in His own spirit by a sense of heaviness and sadness. It was not for Lazarus that He wept as most thought, but it was for all those who were unwilling to trust the heart of God, who were clinging to lies of Satan about the Father and were spreading those lies to others. It was resistant unbelief despite evidence all around them in the form of blessings unnoticed and favors spurned that caused Jesus to groan so deeply in His spirit.

But in spite of all this darkness Jesus wanted to bring a glorious exhibition of light publicly before all so they would have even greater incentive to trust His heart. The whole purpose of raising Lazarus from the dead was not just for the sake of his sisters but intended as a stark revelation of how the Father feels about all of us. Jesus longs to bring life into all the places of death for God hates sin and all the death that it produces. Sinners are still God's children and He longs to reverse the curse brought into the human race by sin. He chose to resurrect Lazarus as a symbol of the life that He promises to bring into the experience of every person who is willing to turn away from their doubts and be transformed by trusting and believing in the real truth about God that Jesus came to demonstrate.

The man who was dead came forth – but he was no longer dead. I see a parallel here with a similar phrase in a previous story of healing. The man who had been born blind met amazing resistance from those who did not want to believe in the love of Jesus. Even his neighbors and friends found it difficult to change their perceptions of his identity and continued to view and label him by his past.

Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, "Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?"

They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind.

The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, and questioned them, saying, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?" (John 9:8, 13, 18-19)

The spirit of unbelief is incredibly tenacious and will never give up looking for excuses to avoid admitting the truth. The spirit of doubt and unbelief is un-convertable and it is a total waste of time thinking it can be changed. The only way to escape the devastating, blinding damage of unbelief is to renounce it, repent of it and have it displaced by the Spirit of God that will fill our hearts with appreciation for the truth about God's heart of love for us. Unbelief cannot be transformed into belief; it must be replaced altogether with a new spirit full of love and appreciation inspired by revelations of the grace and truth that fills the heart of God.

This is itself a fresh revelation for my own heart. I am beginning to sense that I have spent far too much time trying to convince my spirit of unbelief to change its 'mind' when that is an impossibility. I will never get a spirit of unbelief to morph into saving faith; I must resolutely turn away from it, reject it, renounce it and expose it for what it really is and accept a new spirit from God to replace it. I have to be honest about the presence of unbelief in my own heart every time it rises up inside of me doubting God's love for me and bring it to the light of truth to be exposed and expelled. Like Martha I need to make public expressions of faith to strengthen my resistance to doubt and deepen my trust in Jesus.

The man who was dead came forth to confirm the obscured truth about how Jesus really felt about them. Lazarus came out of the tomb as overwhelming evidence of the compassion of Jesus that had been in doubt and to give incontrovertible evidence of the power of God to bring life into places of hopelessness and death. But this was not enough to convince those determined to believe the lies of Satan to change their hearts. Instead, the resurrection of Lazarus served only to polarize people's beliefs and cause them to move more quickly in the direction they were already headed.

Those who wanted to believe in Jesus' love for them found in this miracle powerful evidence to deepen and settle them in faith. But those who had been resisting repeatedly the evidences and teachings and demonstrations of the truth about the Father's heart in the life of Jesus found themselves moving further into unbelief and even becoming enraged that this evidence was impossible to deny. They became so angry that their opinions and lies and hypocrisy were being exposed that they not only wanted to kill Jesus but felt compelled to kill Lazarus as well.

Just as they had been determined to discount and discredit the miracle that blessed the life of the man born blind a few days earlier, they clung to their own blindness in the face of a living former dead man. They became even more irrational in their logic as they hardened their hearts to the point where they would kill the very God who had come to save them from their sins. This is the very essence of judgment. Judgment occurs naturally by polarizing people's opinions and beliefs when light exposes the secret things of the heart. The beliefs that we choose to cling to shape our characters for eternity.

As a result of Lazarus coming out of the grave alive John says that many of the Jews believed in Jesus. Those who had not chosen to harden their hearts in resistance to the truth about God found themselves drawn by this overwhelming evidence of love and compassion and grace. And even by allowing Lazarus to come out still bound about with restrictive leftovers from the grave and inviting others to help set him fully free, Jesus was demonstrating God's love by involving humanity to participate in the process of healing and liberation with each other.

While none of us can bring life into our places of death and we must depend solely on God to do that for us, God does ask us to be involved in the process of helping each other take the wrappings and baggage away from our hearts and lives that keep us from fully enjoying the new life God has gifted to us. All of us have a part to play in the plan of salvation in reaching out to cooperate with God in His work to liberate hearts from the realms of darkness. We can share in the joy of new life by coming alongside others to unbind them and let them go free. And in doing so our own faith is strengthened.

Religion Exposed

2011-08-16T06:55:00.002-05:00

Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

"If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." (John 11:45, 48)

Miracles do not produce belief; miracles produce judgment. Judgment exposes what we already believe at the deeper levels of our being. Whether they are true or counterfeit miracles they still have a similar effect. Miracles tend to harden people or accelerate them toward the direction they are already leaning.

It is important to keep in mind the true definition of judgment. The concept of judgment as the Bible uses it is an arrangement of circumstances that forces into the open the secret things of the heart. Interestingly the secret things of the heart are also directly connected with true belief.

Jesus is always more interested in the heart belief rather than just our head beliefs. The Jews had spent so many years focusing on head beliefs that they had largely lost their ability to even be aware of their real beliefs at the heart level. Like many of us today caught up in the externals of religion, more concerned with keeping up appearances than with the true condition of our hearts, the Jews assumed that doctrines and behavior were the most important things to keep pure while they ignored the inner condition of their spirit.

This has been one of the most effective schemes of Satan to keep people caught in a trap of professional religion while denying the power of it. God spoke of this in the Old Testament when He pointed out the real center of strength. 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6) But the spirit manifested by these stubbornly unbelieving Jews was not the Spirit identified in this verse. Their spirit was focused on clinging to their political power and their prestige derived from their ability to control the people of their nation along with the advantages they had been able to gain by compromise with the Romans.

Rome was the ruling power of the world in that day. Rome more than any other empire up to that time relied heavily on raw power and cruel suppression to accomplish and maintain their control over the world. Because of Rome's success in forcing so many countries under submission to their control, the leaders of Israel had also become addicted to their desires to rely on similar methods. Instead of turning to the God of their fathers who taught a very different approach to life, these Jews had adopted the ways and tactics and spirit of the enemy of God and thus indulged in a governing style incompatible with the ways and methods of God.

When Jesus showed up in their midst acting and relating to people like the true God rather than the false ideas about God that were so popular, the very men who claimed to know God most found themselves totally at odds with Him and out of harmony with His spirit and ways. They were constantly irritated and even enraged at His methods, His attitudes, His way of relating to sinners because it made them look bad by contrast. They refused to believe that God had grace and love like that displayed by this meek and gentle Jesus. They refused to accept that God was not a harsh, demanding, condemning deity waiting to severely punish all who strayed from His strict rules.

He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. (John 3:18-19)

It at first seems very strange that religious, pious 'men of God' would rely on such arguments as what are expressed here. But the very nature of judgment is to expose the true nature of the underlying motives lurking deep in the heart. By this incredible display of love and divine power over death, Jesus brought intense light to bear on all those who witnessed this amazing miracle and that light of the real truth about God could not help but to expose the things hidden in darkness up to that point. The hidden motives of selfishness and pride and greed began to come out into the open as these men coalesced into a united front of evil bent on terminating the witness of Jesus about the truth about God.

The same is always true. When people today begin to catch a glimpse of the real God of heaven and discover that His agenda and His Spirit and His methods are in stark contrast to what we are accustomed to using, then judgment and polarization begins to take place. The true motives of selfishness and pride in our hearts began to be seen in all their ugliness and we are faced with a choice of either repenting and seeking God's grace to be transformed into a new person or we dig in our heels and try harder to resist and resort to Satan's methods to silence all those who make us feel so uncomfortable.

The sad thing about this is that the greatest resistance usually emerges from those who have been the most prominent leaders in religion, those who claim the most to represent God and to know His ways. This creates a real dilemma for all those who have followed them and trusted them to lead them to a saving knowledge of God. This is why it is so vital that each one of us pursues a personal experience and a person education in the things of God rather than relying so much on religious teachers to do our thinking for us.

While it can be very beneficial to learn many important things from teachers and preachers, it is extremely dangerous to rely on them too much to do our thinking and reasoning in our place. The world teaches that we should rely on experts who have spent years training in a particular field of thought and not to question their conclusions. After all, they are the experts and we should not argue with them for they know far more than we might ever come to know their subject of expertise. But therein lies a very subtle danger, for when it comes to our salvation there is no substitute for personal investigation and a personal encounter with the primary Source of life and truth. Only an individual education in the things of God and a personal tutoring by the Spirit of God can bring us into a saving knowledge of the truth. Others may be able to assist us in that direction, but only a personal accountability to our Creator will give us an authentic education in the things of heaven.

In raising Lazarus from the dead and confounding the insinuations of those who were seeking to spread unbelief and doubts about Jesus, God flooded them with greater light that exposed the evil and selfish motives of the religious leaders and threatened their credibility with the people. Strangely their reasons for wanting to silence the witness of Jesus seem at first bizarre and almost irrelevant. But upon closer examination they can begin to look uncomfortably familiar.

Our deepest drives at the heart level are to feel valued and important. However, the directions that we choose to look to from which to derive our sense of value and importance will determine ultimately where we will spend eternity. If we choose the accept the world's paradigms about how to achieve peace and happiness and a sense of value, we will turn to any number of false sources upon which we will depend to gain our sense of worth. We will rely on the counterfeit principles of Satan to seek worth but in the end will come to realize that every false method only ends in emptiness and death.

On the other hand, if we accept the testimony of Jesus Christ who came to reveal the real truth about how God feels toward us, our value in His eyes and accept His prognosis of our condition, we can turn to Him for hope, for grace, for redemption and forgiveness and come to see that God is far better than any have ever dared to dream. We will come to discover that God's reputation has been terribly maligned and lied about and misrepresented by Christians and unbelievers alike. As the Spirit draws us closer and closer to the light we will begin to catch a glimpse of the true glory of God that is in stark contrast with the dark pictures of God we previously believed and we will be challenged to lay aside all our preconceived opinions and fears and shallow religious pettiness and embrace the grand truth that God truly is one who can be trusted in every way. The deepest longings of our hearts will resonate with the emerging truths about Him as the Spirit leads us closer and deeper into His glory.

Only by denying our previous opinions and fears and perceptions of God and allowing Him to reveal Himself to our hearts will we ever be able to avoid the tragic mistakes of these religious people who ended up killing the very Son of God. Religion is not safe enough to rely on to come to know God. Only a personal pursuit of Him through the testimony of His Word and especially in the testimony of Jesus His Son can we ever hope to come to enjoy the real destiny for which we were created.

Father, keep teaching me and expanding my capacity to know the real truth about you. Keep me from the subtle deceptions and blindness that obscured your beauty from the hearts of these religious people. Put your Spirit in my heart and breath life into all the dead places deep inside of me as you continue to transform me from dark views about you into transcendent joy and peace in your presence.

Finishing God's Miracles

2011-08-15T16:14:00.002-05:00

The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." (John 11:44)

I find these words both instructive and compelling. They seem to me a parallel to Jesus' command to roll away the stone. What I see here is a need for us to be much more aware of the obstacles that we need to deal with blocking our freedom and also our responsibility for helping others around us.

Jesus had access to all power in heaven and on earth. Yet He did not step in to miraculously move the stone away from the tomb. He let those standing around know that it was their job to cooperate with Him to prepare the way for what only He could do for them. Likewise, Jesus could have had the wrappings fall off or disintegrate or some other means to set Lazarus completely free before he emerged from the tomb. After all, when Jesus Himself was resurrected not long after this story no human assisted Him in removing similar bindings from His body. Somehow He was set free from the tomb and from His grave-clothes without help from others. Quite possibly the angels may have provided that service, but in this instance Jesus asked those standing around to take the responsibility.

Just as the stone in front of the tomb represented a major obstacle in the way of Jesus intervening in behalf of Martha and Mary, so too the bindings around the body of Lazarus represented yet more obstacles that needed to be dealt with. Note that Lazarus was helpless to set himself free just about as much as he was helpless to bring himself to life from the dead. Lazarus was dependent on others to come to his aid both in removing the stone as well as removing the bonds restricting his freedom of movement.

God had restored life to the rotting corpse of Lazarus and likely had miraculously restored it back to pristine health and vitality. However, God did not miraculously remove the encumbrances that still severely restricted the ability of Lazarus to function normally. It was up to others to come alongside him to cooperate with God in restoring Lazarus to full freedom and wholeness and functionality.

I believe there is great significance and meaning and instruction in this miracle for us to learn. How many times does God intervene in someone's life miraculously only to have that person become discouraged as old baggage continues to weigh them down and restrict their freedoms. Too often others around them are reluctant to come to their aid and may even feel confused about why there are still problems. We too often assume that after a rebirth experience that a person should not have so many problems. But just because God has miraculously brought life into our lives after being dead in our sins does not mean that there will be no baggage from the past that must be dealt with.

Furthermore, a person encumbered by baggage from their past, both emotional, spiritual and/or physical, often does not have the capacity to deal with all those problems alone. It is the duty of the body of believers to not only celebrate the new condition of a person brought to life by Jesus but to come close to them for as long as it takes to assist in unwrapping them gently in love and helping them be completely free, not just alive in Christ.

How many people have become discouraged and may even have given up on their new life in Christ because they discovered that there were still many problems hemming them in restricting their ability to live freely and joyfully? Many are confused and baffled after accepting Jesus and receiving new life from Him to discover that there is still a lot of baggage from their past still causing problems and tripping them up. But woe be to fellow believers if they fail to come to the aid of such and sympathetically work with them for as long as necessary to assist them, protect them and help deliver them from the lies, the pain, the leftover residue of their past life until they are totally free in Jesus. It is our duty to remember that all of us have similar problems, that all of us have residual wrappings that continue to hamper our freedom and peace and joy in Christ and that we are all responsible to help each other in the process of being set free from the baggage and restrictive bonds of our previous life of sin.

It is not a sign of failure or lack of conversion to discover that we have things that continue to bind us and hamper our freedom in Christ. Just as Lazarus was fully alive inside the bindings but outward appearances didn't make that so obvious, so too we must be extremely careful not to criticize and condemn born-again siblings who are still trapped inside baggage from their past and in need of further deliverance. What is needed as much today as it was with Lazarus are loving friends who will see past the ugly outward appearances wreaking of the smell of death, to joyfully come to their side and help release them in the name of Jesus so they can enjoy fuller freedom. Rather than stand around in a daze wondering what we should do or questioning why some still have so many problems, Jesus tells us we should go to them to offer our assistance, to bless them, to love them and to help set them free in His name.

Gratitude and Faith

2011-08-14T10:32:00.002-05:00

So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me." (John 11:41)

Jesus is our example. One of the reasons that He came to this earth was to live life as a human being to show us how we were originally designed to live, except that He was doing it in the context of pervasive sin all around Him as we now have to live. In this story Jesus was surrounded by an oppressive atmosphere of unbelief and doubt that made the situation even more intense. And in the middle of all of this He modeled what it looks like to have simple and total faith in God when everything is going wrong.

After raising His eyes to turn away from the depressing circumstances around Him, Jesus begins His prayer to His Father with gratitude. Thankfulness and praise to God is the most powerful weapon at our disposal that Satan is terrified we will learn about and utilize in our lives. Far too often it seems to us that gratitude and praise are side issues and the real problems that consume our focus require petitioning God or working harder to get our problems straightened out. But gratitude is one of the most essential ingredients of the atmosphere of heaven and Jesus practiced it regularly.

Another common mistake that we make in reference to gratitude is the assumption that we need something tangible to be grateful about before we are ready to express it. I know that most of my life I have operated with this subconscious assumption so when people talked about expressing more gratitude and praise I secretly resented their urging because I could see very little to be grateful for and much for which to complain. Thus this mistaken assumption has molded my mental wiring to gravitate me toward fault-finding than toward appreciation. I now have a great deal of remedial work to occur in my heart and mind to be restored to the design God has for me.

What I have been learning over recent years is that my praise and thankfulness must be primarily based not on what God has done for me or even necessarily what I hope will happen but must be rooted solidly on who God is irregardless of what circumstances may suggest about Him. I have been coming to focus my attention far more on choosing to believe the truth about what God is really like from what He has been showing me in His Word rather than basing my opinions and feelings about Him on how things are going in my life. As I have done this it has become more apparent that this issue is one of the most effective areas that the enemy has used to keep me in doubt and unbelief about God.

If I allow my gratitude to rest more on what God does for me instead of on the real truth about Him irregardless of what happens, then simply by manipulating circumstances around me the devil can jerk my feelings about God around to keep me from living in freedom, rest and trust. I become a puppet subject to the whims of circumstances that influence and shape my views about God rather than depending on the Word of God about Himself alone.

Jesus throughout His ministry consistently demonstrated the importance of basing faith on the Word of God instead of on feelings or on miracles or any subjective foundation. When He was severely tempted in the wilderness experiencing extreme hunger He relied solely on the Word of God as His defense against the subtle suggestions of the enemy rather than depending His own authority as God incarnate. All through His ministry He urged people to remember what was written in the Scriptures and even after His resurrection when He joined two of His disciples who were terribly discouraged, He did not rely on personal revelation or authority by revealing Himself to them immediately but rather spent time carefully explaining to them from Scripture the foundation that their faith needed to rest on before confirming it by allowing them to realize who He really was.

In His discussion with Martha Jesus led her to keep her faith rooted in what she already knew from Scripture without trying to move her away from that to trusting only in His current words to her. He did encourage her to think beyond what she already understood so that she might be open to an expanded understanding, but He wanted her to connect what she knew about Scripture already with the fresh revelations about Himself from what she was learning about Him.

I say all this because what I see in this story is Jesus thanking God before there is any spectacular physical evidence of God's power or intervention in the situation. Jesus is demonstrating what He wants each of us to do, to base our gratitude and praise to God on the reality that God always hears us whether we can see any evidence of it or not. Jesus did not wait to see if Lazarus might come back to life before thanking God but confidently and publicly declared His appreciation for God's interest in their situation before any thing else was mentioned. Then after laying down a foundation of praise to God and expressing openly His complete confidence that God was intimately interested in every detail of life, Jesus was ready to act on the reality of how God viewed the situation and moved forward in harmony with the promptings of God's Spirit.

The core issue of doubt in this story was whether God was paying attention to people's problems and whether He cared about them or not. In His public prayer Jesus addressed head-on these core questions by stating unequivocally that God always hears no matter what circumstances may suggest. This is the stark difference between belief and unbelief. Faith is not something we have to muster up, an intense attempt to believe that God will answer some prayer while trying to eliminate every feeling of doubt in an atmosphere of fear. The kind of faith that Jesus demonstrates here is a spontaneous expression of gratitude and confidence that God is genuinely and seriously interested in our circumstances no matter what our feelings may be telling us. This kind of saving faith is always rooted in a choice to believe the Word of God over our feelings and often against the conclusions we are tempted to draw from surrounding circumstances.

In the book of Revelation which was recorded by the same author that wrote this book, the people who are shown to be saved in the end are described as having the 'faith of Jesus'. In this story I catch a glimpse of the faith of Jesus in His confident expression of gratitude to His Father that no matter what is going on around or within Him God can be trusted to care. The faith of Jesus chooses to express gratitude and praise to God irregardless of what is going on or the seeming lack of evidence of God's intervention in our situation. The faith of Jesus is believing that God cares and hears because that is what God is like and who He is, not based on whether He comes through for me the way I want Him to. The faith of Jesus relies on God's superior wisdom and defers everything to His will while trusting that God always has my best interest at heart.

I want to have much more of that kind of faith. I want this story to soak into my psyche and permeate my thinking and alter my reactions under difficult circumstances. I want to be transformed through spending more time meditating on how Jesus related to difficult situations so that my own reactions will began to reflect the faith that I see Him exercise even as He dwells within me.

Modeling Faith

2011-08-10T09:39:00.000-05:00

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.

Sign Addiction

2011-08-01T10:32:00.000-05:00

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs." (John 11:47)

I am noticing a number of compelling clues throughout this passage that I want to explore a bit.

Early in this story John speaks of a group identified as Jews.

...and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, to console them concerning their brother. (v. 19)

What is quite interesting is the later reference to this same group of Jews.

Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him. (v. 45)

Did you catch the difference here? The first time it says they came to see both Martha and Mary. The next time it is only Mary that they came to see. I don't think this is just incidental but I don't yet see enough of the implications to know what to make of it yet. But I am confident that there are other clues in the text that connect with this.

Parallel to this are references to the people who make up this group who begin to polarize in their opinions as this story progresses. In reference to these Jews, John begins to note that some of them seem to have a different motive and agenda. These people are mentioned in both verses 37 and 46. And the hidden agenda of these some is flushed out by what they say and do.

But some of them said, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?" (v. 37)

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done. (v. 46)

Immediately the religious leadership convenes a crisis meeting to discuss their concerns about this growing threat to their power and position that is becoming so intimidating for them. But what I find revealing is what they say when they get together. What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs.

Now isn't that interesting! How many times throughout the gospels do we find these very men demanding more signs before they are willing to believe in Jesus and what He is saying about Himself and God. They try to give the impression that if they just had more signs that somehow they could be convinced to switch their opinions about Jesus and embrace what He stands for.

Yet in their own confession to each other in these verses they admit that Jesus is in fact performing many signs, too many signs as far as they are concerned. The core problem is not that there weren't enough signs to convince them but that they did not like the implications of what those signs were proving. Their hearts were not changed at all by the signs except to become more and more hardened against believing in the goodness and grace of God.

Because of this mindset of demanding signs while at the same time resenting and trying to discredit those very signs, these men proved beyond all doubt the ineffectiveness of miracles to be a reliable foundation for the kind of belief that Jesus is seeking to induce in the hearts of sinners. The history of these men whom we find here deciding it is time to eliminate Jesus rather than believe Him is a stark warning to everyone about craving miracles to motivate belief.

There is a place for miracles in the work of God but it is often not the place that we tend to assume. Miracles can often get people's attention and challenge their thinking, but only those who are willing to make positive choices about moving from unbelief to belief aside from dependence on those miracles will be benefited by the effects of those signs.

A dangerous mistake in religion is to think that miracles prove that someone is from God. Simple-minded and intellectual doubters alike often think that if they could just see something spectacular, some stimulating display of supernatural power that it would be sufficient to compel them to move into saving faith in God. The enemy of souls is keenly aware of this penchant in our thinking to depend on our emotions more than careful reasoning and objective analysis based on evidence and Scripture. People addicted to miracles and signs suffer the same effects from addiction as anyone else with more obvious destructive addictions. Addictions inherently are destructive as they cause us to look to other sources away from God for life, value, satisfaction and identity.

Miracles may be from God or they may not be. The miracles that Jesus performed were all assuredly from God yet they did not compel many to actually come into belief in Jesus as the true representative of what God is like. In the case of these religious Jews it ended up doing the very opposite.

But the good news is that not all chose to be effected in this way. This story notes that a number of the many of the Jews who had shown up at this mourning event ended up believing in Him (v. 45). I suspect these were the same ones who had earlier commented on the compassion of Jesus in verse 36 when they saw Him weeping. Even though they had little clue as to why He was weeping they did not have the predisposed antagonism toward Him that the some seemed to cherish in their hearts.

Some time ago when I first began exploring the book of John I remember looking at this issue of belief and signs and how these are so heavily emphasized in John's gospel. I could see that these two things were intimately related and that John was going to invest the entire book seeking to get across the importance of these and how they relate to each other. John wanted to help us 'get it', to not be satisfied with a shallow, counterfeit belief that is addicted to signs and displays of power. What is needed is a heart-based belief that involves true repentance inspired by revelations of the kindness of God.

It is only as I catch a glimpse of the heart of Jesus for me personally and respond by choosing to trust His heart and allowing Him to come in and transform the way I perceive God that signs may have their intended effect. To do any less than this is to set myself up to follow in the example of unbelief as demonstrated by these unbelieving Jews who ended up rejecting and finally killing the very God who had come to save them.

There is much more that can be learned from this that I don't currently have time to explore. But I want this to soak into my own heart and be careful not to slip into the addiction of depending on constant infusions of supernatural intervention as the basis for my belief. I am starting to see the ruinous end result of that following that path in the lives of these pious, religious leaders and I realize that is very easy to do.

I have noticed that religion can often be one of the greatest hindrances to a true spiritual connection with God. But at the same time turning away from religion can lead down a similar road ironically. I am learning that it is only as I focus my attention often, repeatedly and intentionally to the Word of God and seek the guidance of His Spirit to convict and guide and transform me that I can receive the nourishment that is needed to keep my vital connection with God alive.

Father, I don't want to be one of the 'some' that are always finding fault with Your works and words. Criticism is such a subtle and even pious-appearing habit at times and I am well trained in that field. But I want to be set free of this terribly destructive habit and be transformed into a real Christian who reflects the spirit and disposition and character that You demonstrated when You lived out these stories I am reading. Forgive me for turning to other sources so easily every day to seek satisfaction when I know full well that they are only counterfeit gods. Save me from my own internal cravings that invite temptations so easily. Heal my heart and soul and mind and imagination. Revive and reform me and have Your way in my life. I again give myself to You to do whatever it takes to save me and make me fit to be an effective channel of Your grace and love and truth to others.

Facets of Unbelief

2011-07-30T10:30:00.001-05:00

Jesus said, "Remove the stone." Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, "Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days." (John 11:39)

He said... she said.

He says, but I say...

Nearly every time I open to this passage now these words of Jesus are the first thing that jump out to grab my attention. And every time I read them I feel a conviction that I am still not really grasping enough of their significance and applying it for my own life.

There is far more in here than I am seeing, and I am seeing a lot already. But it is not so much logical explanations or expositions that need to be exposed in this passage as it is heart messages and warnings about intellectualizing truth instead of believing. And God knows that is a real struggle for me.

Jesus said, "Remove the stone."

Jesus says – and keeps saying – to remove whatever obstacles keep blocking Him from doing what seems to me to be nearly impossible. Yet like Martha I keep going back to what is logical, what makes more sense from my frame of reference.

How many times I find myself telling God about my feelings of worthlessness, how much my habits and history inhibit my ability to change, how stuck I feel. Yet He patiently keeps reminding me that my view of reality is not only very limited but is terribly distorted and biased by many factors, not the least of which is my deeply-ingrained selfishness. But I suspect that possibly the biggest obstacle is my unbelief, my lack of confidence to trust that God always knows best and actually loves me no matter how circumstances may make me feel. I feel very uneasy to let go and my wanting to stay in control of my own life causes me to argue with God instead of joyfully rushing to push away the stones guarding the dark places of my heart.

Stones/rocks were symbols of God all throughout the Old Testament. So when Jesus commanded to have the stone pushed aside He was in essence also asking people to push aside their preconceived ideas about God and allow Jesus to introduce them to the real truth about God.

Jesus says,

Let go of your ideas of what I am like and let me show you something radically new, fresh and life-changing about myself.

But I say,

Lord, You don't completely understand my situation. You don't know how bad things really are in my heart. If I take away the defenses that protect others from seeing what's inside me the stench will be overwhelming and others will see how bad I really am and will not like me anymore. I don't think that is a very good idea, Jesus.

Jesus says,

Remove the habits and crutches that provide you with a false illusion of security, that you depend on for your sense of identity is not what I want you to trust. It is necessary for you to let of of your resistance to my entrance before I can introduce a new infusion of life into the dark, rotting, shameful places deep inside of you.

But I say,

Lord, I'm not sure that's such a good idea. How am I supposed to know what You might do if I move this protective stone and make myself so vulnerable? Other people are around here too and I would be terribly humiliated if they also see what is really deep inside that I have been hiding so successfully.

Jesus says,

Remove the stone that is so hardening your heart that God doesn't have permission to intervene in your life. Trust me on this, for it is only in trusting and obeying even when your feelings and fears all pressure you in the opposite direction that you will be able to see and experience the real power and glory of God.

But I say...

Well, just how long do I want to keep playing this dangerous game of hiding my ugliness from God anyway? I said previously that I wanted Him to come and heal me, to fix my situation. But He didn't do it the way I wanted Him to and now I am a bit miffed with Him. O.K. I am really upset with Him if I am willing to admit how I feel deep down inside.

Why wasn't He here when I wanted and needed Him most? Why doesn't He answer my prayers and give me relief from my pain, my shame, my confusion when I ask? Why does He seem to wait so long before He even shows up, and then when He does come He wants to do everything different than what I expect Him to do for me? And why doesn't He just communicate the way I want Him to and come out and explain to me clearly what He plans to do so I won't be kept guessing as to how to plan my life?

Oh, this is resonating all too deeply in my own heart even as I write these things. I find it flowing from my mind so easily that I can't hide the fact that I am really quite in sympathy with Martha more than with the perspective of Jesus. But then, I sense that I first must get totally honest before I can move forward very much. Jesus did not condemn Martha for resorting to logic and trying to reason with Him from her very limited mindset. But neither did He allow her to remain unchallenged in her assumptions or have the last word. Rather He challenged her to let Him be the definer of what is real, what is possible and what is true. He wants to have our trust no matter what.

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

Practical Belief

2011-07-29T13:37:00.002-05:00

So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. (John 11:41)

I have been observing some of the dynamics swirling around in this story. I have noticed the intense darkness of unbelief and even hostility on the part of some of those present that blended together to create a nearly insurmountable wall of obstacles more difficult to overcome than the stone covering the mouth of the cave where Lazarus lay. I have observed the contrast between the view of reality that Jesus maintained with the more familiar views of reality assumed by His disciples, by His close friends and by His enemies. It is this huge disparity between what is truly real and what is assumed to be real that caused the deep heaviness in the heart of Jesus resulting in His public tears.

Jesus was able to find one person that responded with enough belief to cautiously and tentatively agree with God's perceptions of what was going on, at least to a limited degree. While Martha could not yet push her own imagination very far outside of what seemed possible in her thinking, she was willing to openly make a confession of faith and agree with Jesus enough to provide Him with necessary permission to move ahead in this situation. That was sufficient to let Him proceed although I am certain Jesus longed to find more than just one person who might join Martha in her choice to trust. My heart wonders as I read this what must have been going through the mind of Mary during all of this. But according to the account it was only Martha that actually stepped forward to openly trust Jesus even in the face of seeming impossibilities.

I notice too that nearly all of the dialog in this part of the story is with Martha. Mary comes to repeat Martha's anguished reminder that from their perspective Jesus had failed to respond in time to their desperate request for Him to heal their brother. But throughout this very emotional story it was only Martha who maintained open dialog with Jesus. I don't think this point is insignificant.

But today I notice some other things that I feel are vital for me to learn and internalize from this story. How did Jesus effectively face the enormous mass of unbelief that surrounded Him there? What method did He employ, what disposition did He maintain to overcome and address the darkness that was seeking to suffocate the light of hope and truth that He had come to reveal about God?

Just performing a spectacular miracle is not really too effective as was proven repeatedly throughout the life of Jesus. Only recently He had performed a stunning miracle by healing a man blind from birth. But there was more heated debate than belief generated by that miracle and for those determined to resist what Jesus wanted to convey that miracle had only produced more hostility rather than trust. Upon examination of the gospels it becomes clear that miracles are not the answer that many think they could be. A miracle may be a sign of supernatural power but does not change the direction of the heart. And it is the heart that God is most interested in winning, not a mere acknowledgment that He has more power than we have.

When Jesus arrived at the cave surrounded by people filled with various emotions as well as some with deep skepticism about Jesus Himself He asked them to remove the stone that symbolized the many obstacles that still largely remained in their own hearts. But then how did Jesus proceed from that point? What was the most important thing He could do to deal with the pervading spirit that was set in opposition to Him under these circumstances?

What seems surprising at first but shows up repeatedly throughout the whole Bible is what Jesus does next, the very first thing that comes out of His mouth.

Jesus gives thanks to His Father.

Rather than seeking to change people's minds about Him, Jesus openly demonstrates what real belief looks like. But there is more. Jesus does not just sharpen His focus on gratitude and praise to His Father but He reinforces that by explaining in His prayer why He is doing it publicly. It is because everyone needs to be sure to get the point. In the very next verse Jesus in conversation with His Father states for everyone's benefit who is listening that He wants them to pay particular attention to the fact that He is giving thanks and that He has full assurance that God always hears Him even though nothing has changed yet in their circumstances.

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. (verse 42)

Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

In the face of overwhelming unbelief blanketing the hearts all in His hearing, Jesus gives thanks in the face of impossibilities. And John recorded this for all those who would struggle to believe for centuries afterwards. Jesus demonstrates explicitly here what it looks like to believe and act out that belief. For the sake of all of us who live in confusion and fear and doubts about God's care and love for us as reflected in the hearts of the people in this story, Jesus Himself makes the ultimate confession of faith in His Father to model to us what real belief/faith looks like from the inside out. I would like to put His expression of faith into my own lingo:

Father, of course I already know You are listening and I personally have no doubt whatsoever that Your caring heart is always intensely interested in everything about my life. There is no question in my heart that You know all about this situation and that You only have good plans for all of us in our pain. But because so many people around me are still questioning whether You really care about them and as a result have deep reservations about trusting Your heart, I am speaking this openly so they can be drawn deeper into the kind of saving trust in You that I enjoy in Your love all the time.

Father, I have been demonstrating a radically different picture of You to these people than what anyone here on earth has assumed You are like. Most find it very hard to reconcile their perceptions of You with how I act and relate to them. Many of them are beginning to appreciate the compassion and kindness and gentleness that I have demonstrated towards them, but they find my example incompatible with how they feel that You relate to them. Because of this many are resisting my statements that You sent me to show them that You feel exactly the same way about them as I have been demonstrating. Some like what they see in me but they find it difficult to bring themselves to believe that God is like me and that You sent me to demonstrate explicitly how You relate to them and how You want them to perceive You.

So Father, in what we are about to do together here to demonstrate even more clearly how great Your love is for all of us – greater than what anyone here has ever dared to imagine – I am publicly thanking You and praising You for who You are and what You are like so people through my words and my demonstration here will be moved to trust You more readily. I want them to learn to praise You in the face of difficulties rather than waiting until things improve to engage in gratitude. Father, I am thanking You now even though externally nothing has changed. In faith we have pushed aside the grave stone, the last physical obstacle that remains in the way of You exhibiting Your love through a glorious exhibition of what You long to do in our lives all the time.

Yes, that is a very long paraphrase of the simple prayer of Jesus in front of Lazarus' tomb. But I see this and more in the compact statement that Jesus made in His words and reflected in the expectant animated glow I am sure could have been seen on His face as He turned His eyes away from the darkness and evidences of death toward the light of heaven and focused on the face of His Father.

Notice that it specifically mentions that Jesus raised His eyes. Again, it is not incidental that these words were included in this narrative. Jesus was modeling how to face difficult situations for each one of us follow His example. He turned His attention away from the problem and lifted His eyes to the One who is far above the limitations of all of our difficulties. Then He deliberately choose to pour out a litany of praise and gratitude to disperse the darkness of unbelief and resistance against the truth about God. He affirmed and reminded everyone listening that God cares, God listens, God is interested. It is vital that we acknowledge these things that so that He may have permission to intervene even more in our lives.

In my persistent search for the true meaning and understanding of the essence of belief that John wanted to convey through his gospel, I am starting to think this may be one of the best places yet that I have come across that make it plain to my own understanding. As I continue to meditate on this story and allow it to increase its impact on my own heart, I see more and more of these vital elements that need to be practiced in my own circumstances if I want to live a life of real faith.

I need to pay attention to what I allow my eyes and my imagination to feed on and realize how much that impacts my ability to trust the heart of God.
I need to intentionally engage in much more deliberate gratitude and thanksgiving. I need to cultivate a spirit of praise, to be more expressive in thanksgiving both to God and to others far more than I do.
I need to take a public stand clearly establishing that I am trusting in God, publicly confessing my intimate relationship with Him without giving in to the intimidation from others who want me to feel ashamed about that.
And most of all I want to have a heart that ceases to doubt that God's heart is always for me and never against me. I may frequently come under conviction by His Spirit that my actions or thoughts or attitudes are not in harmony with Him. But I need to remember that my malfunctions are not my identity, but that is a lesson very hard for me to embrace even after years of learning otherwise. My true identity and value is only found in perceiving myself through the eyes of the Father who always loves me, listens to me and cares more deeply about me than my mind or heart is even able to grasp.

Father, thank-you again for warming my heart with fresh revelations from Your Word. You are so faithful, and through the example of Your Son that You sent to demonstrate the real truth about You to us, I am seeing again how You want me to relate to You when things seem very dark and unbelief presses in on my heart. I choose to turn my attention and gaze upward, both to avoid the distractions that keep me confused about You and to focus my attention more deliberately on the real truth about who You really are.

Help me to be far more frequent in my expressions of praise for You, to not be intimidated by what others think about me but to confess our intimate relationship openly and make it plain that I am choosing Your truth over the lies about You that swirl all around me. Father, make me a better, clearer channel of the truth about You through the way I treat people, the way I act and speak and communicate in every way. Continue to transform me so that others will be more readily attracted to want to know You because of the joy they will be able to see in my relationship with You.

Father, thank-you for always listening to me even when my feelings don't detect that or reflect that reality. Thank-you for Your faithful love, mercy, kindness and compassion. Fill my life with Your Spirit and make me more reflective of what You are like, for Your reputations sake, Amen.

Faith First

2011-07-28T11:56:00.001-05:00

Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" So they removed the stone.... (John 11:40-41)

I want to personalize the lessons that I am finding in this story so that they will have the effect in my own life of causing me to believe in Jesus the way He wanted His friends to believe in Him then.

Yesterday I explored the idea of obstacles that prevent us from believing. In this story it was the stone in front of the grave that represented the unbelief that was the main obstacle Jesus was seeking to surmount so that God's glory, the truth about His goodness and how He feels about sinners, might become evident and have compelling power to attract souls to Himself.

The underlying issue more important than any other in this battle between good and evil is the issue of what we believe about whether God really thinks about us. Does He really care or is He just interested in getting compliance to His arbitrary regulations and demands? Satan has generally convinced most of us that the latter is the case, but over the past few years I have been discovering that for my heart to really trust God, to come into the kind of belief that John talks about all throughout his gospel, I must revise my gut-level perceptions of God to see the truth about His fairness, His kindness, His compassion and His caring love for me personally.

There are any number of obstacles that prevent my heart from embracing these truths about God, inhibitors that need to be removed just like this stone was blocking Jesus from revealing the truth about God more fully in this story. When Martha, confused by her feelings, objected to the idea of removing the stone because she felt that it would only add to her pain to have the stench of her dead brother's rotting corpse come into the open reminding her of her loss, Jesus gently chided her that she needed to refocus her attention on what was more important. It was not the seemingly impossible problem of Lazarus being hopelessly dead that was the real problem here; it was the unwillingness of people to believe in the goodness of God, to believe that God genuinely cared about them no matter what circumstances might seem to indicate. Jesus reminded her that the stone was not really the biggest obstacle but the unbelief that she was still experiencing that needed to be set aside. When the unbelief was dealt with the stone would be incidental.

How did Jesus propose for Martha to roll away her unbelief rock? He told her to remember the words He had spoken to her. It is the promises of God that are the most powerful weapons against resistance of unbelief. When the suggestions of doubt and unbelief surround our hearts with darkness like a suffocating mist, it is then that it is most vital to immerse our minds and imagination and hearts in the Word of God and the promises that He has provided to inspire faith in the midst of our situation.

Rain and snow fall from the sky and don't return until they have watered the ground. Then the ground causes the plants to sprout and grow, and they produce seeds for the farmer and food for people to eat. In the same way, my words leave my mouth, and they don't come back without results. My words make the things happen that I want to happen. They succeed in doing what I send them to do.

(Isa 55:10-11 ERV)

I noticed another important lesson in these words of Jesus to Martha. So often we want to base our faith on miracles, on demonstrations of power, on revelations of glory, on the emotional reactions we have to spectacular displays of what we think is the supernatural presence of God. We feel confident that if we could just have more signs from heaven that our faith could then be firm and confident and secure.

People have had this mistaken idea likely ever since sin entered the world. But in reality it is just another example of the backwards thinking that is produced by the effects of sin on our brains. Jesus states in this verse that it is the belief in His word that needs to come first, not the display of the glory of God. If you believe you will see... Like most people my heart is sure that if I could just see the glory of God first then it would be easy to believe. But I am learning that the kind of belief that relies on displays of power or supernatural interventions is a very fickle faith. In addition, because the enemy of God also has supernatural abilities and is intent on using it to deceive, it sets me up to be easily deceived into thinking I have faith in God when in fact I am being led toward destruction without realizing it.

This is why it is so vital to learn the lesson of basing our faith on the promises and the instructions and revelations of the established Word of God in the Scriptures rather than on impressions or supposed revelations from inspiring preachers or teachers. Jesus demonstrated this clearly during His temptations in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry. This world is full of counterfeits designed to draw us away from the saving truth about God that can transform us into His image and prepare us to live with Him for eternity. The real truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ – the good news about God – is so rare that it is nearly impossible to learn correctly from those professing religion. I am finding that the more I search the Scriptures prayerfully seeking to discern the real truth about its message the more I see the distortions in what is claimed to be the gospel message from other sources.

Jesus told Martha that if she would believe she would then see God's glory. There is a distinct sequence laid out here. In Martha's mind she found it very difficult in her grief and her assumed perceptions of reality to imagine what Jesus wanted to do in her circumstances. She was under so much pressure from those around her and from her own intense feelings to believe negative assumptions about God that are so common in this world that Jesus had to urge her to stretch far out of her comfort zone and trust His heart even if she could not perceive His plans for her. Martha did not have to believe and understand fully how Jesus intended to relate to her pain, but she did need to choose to take hold of His word spoken to her and invest at least a little faith in His care for her in order to release the permission necessary for Him to intervene supernaturally in her situation.

Faith in the goodness of God's heart must precede revelations of God's glory if it is to make a saving difference in our lives. It is dangerous to wait for supernatural revelations of glory before we are willing to trust the heart of God. This is one of the schemes of the enemy to keep us diverted from the true kind of faith that will save our souls. For miracles to accomplish what God intends for them to, faith in God's heart needs to come first.

But this is not a self-generated, artificial kind of mental gymnastics faith that is often confused for trust in His heart. Real faith is choosing to believe that God's heart is towards us even when our feelings insist otherwise. Saving faith is making our reason and conscience supersede our feelings and choosing to not allow our feelings to control our will and choices.

Martha's feelings were driving her to doubt the heart of Jesus, to feel that He didn't care for her as much as her reason and experience had led her to believe previously. Because of her natural interpretation of her circumstances reinforced by nearly everyone around her, that Jesus had failed them in their greatest time of crisis, her feelings felt very strong to doubt the goodness of God in the midst of her pain. But Jesus took this opportunity to remind her that feelings were not to be the determining factor for her faith; her faith must rest on the promises of God which cannot be defeated no matter how impossible circumstances may seem to appear. And if she was willing to make that investment of trust, the returns would be beyond her wildest hopes and dreams.

I want to learn that lesson too. I find myself daily facing the challenge to turn away from my feelings and choose to trust the heart of God, especially when it seems things are not going well. When it feels He is not listening to me I want to practice the lessons in these words of Jesus so that my own faith will strengthen and mature in spite of my feelings. I want to rely intentionally and intently on the promises of God when things look dark or hopeless. I want to overcome the temptation to allow my feelings to determine my relationship with God whether they are good or bad, and rather to depend on what He has said about our relationship. I want to re-prioritize the hierarchy of the processes of how I make decisions, not allowing my feelings to control my will but basing my choices on what God has said even when it sounds bizarre or impossible. I want my life to be shaped by the Word of God rather than the traditions of religion or culture or any other faulty foundation.

What I allow to surround me, the influences of the inputs that flood my thinking and imagination and stimulate my emotions have a great degree of influence on the direction of my faith and character. I find that when I allow the messages of the world through entertainment or negative friends or any number of other sources to occupy my attention that my faith begins to shrink very rapidly. The only safe way to keep my faith alive and growing is to keep putting myself back into the presence of Jesus and choosing to turn away or cut myself off from sources that contradict what He says about me and about God.

Father, help me to guard more carefully the channels to my mind and heart that erode my faith in Your heart. Keep reminding me of Your words of hope, of truth, of how You really view me. Fill my thoughts with the truth about Your goodness, Your fairness, Your passionate love and Your power to save.

Remove the Stones

2011-07-27T11:27:00.001-05:00

Jesus said, "Remove the stone." Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, "Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" (John 11:39-40)

There is something compelling for me in these words of Jesus, something that resonates deeply both in the context of this story and in my own life.

I believe this large stone was not the only obstacle that Jesus was referring to in His words here. But the stone had become a symbol of many of the obstacles that Jesus was seeking to have people put aside so that the glory of God, His goodness, love, power and grace might become clear before all.

This stone was standing in the way between Jesus and His friend Lazarus. Could Jesus have simply spoken a word and the stone would have moved itself away? Could Jesus have commanded angels to remove it and they would have done so eagerly as they did at His own resurrection a few days later?

Of course He could have done those things and any number of other options. But God does not interfere with our own freedom to make choices about the obstacles in our own lives. For the sake of developing a genuine and lasting relationship with our hearts, He asks us to take the initiative and remove all the obstacles that we have control over and move them out of the way.

I think of some of the other obstacles, other 'stones' that Jesus had to get past on His way to displaying the glory of God that day. First He was up against the fears of His own disciples who were so intimidated by the threats of the religious leaders that they did not want to even return to Judea even though some of Jesus' closest friends were in desperate need of Him. He was also contending with those same threats Himself, but He chose to ignore them because He always trusted in the guidance and protection of His Father rather than relying on what others thought about Him to make His decisions.

Then He was up against the spreading atmosphere of unbelief that was threatening to undermine the trust of Martha and Mary who's brother He had come to rescue. The pervasive attitude of mistrust in Jesus that infected the hearts of many of the Jews was also being pressed into the minds of these sisters and causing them to question their own relationship with Jesus. Even in the mourning practices the sympathy of others was only serving to press in the despair and reinforce the darkness even more instead of inspiring faith. There is hidden danger in much of what we call sympathy that goes unnoticed and unquestioned.

As He met the sisters individually He sought to re-inspire them to trust His heart even though circumstances seemed to demand a different view of what He was like inside. In His words here He urged them to remember their past experiences with Him and all the things that had so filled their hearts with love for Him in the past. Their faith needed to be strengthened, but not just through a spectacular and unexpected miracle. They needed to rely much more on what He had already taught them and how He had already treated them previously.

This large stone was a monument to all the massive obstacles piled up by Satan who seeks to do everything possible to instill doubt and darkness into the minds of everyone. His evil suggestions that Jesus could not be trusted to really care about people and their needs had already had considerable effect to deepen the unbelief of many. But Jesus said to take away the stone of unbelief so that the glory of God could burst out from very unexpected places.

Interestingly, even later in the story when Lazarus came struggling out of the tomb very much alive but bound tightly with grave clothes, people still did not get it. Jesus had to once again request that people quit standing around gawking and step forward to remove even more obstacles. Even though it was obvious what needed to be done and an incredible miracle was already in progress, people were still not paying attention to the things that were inhibiting God from doing what He so wanted to do.

Another thought came to my attention as I contemplated this obstacle of a large stone in the way of Jesus. In the Hebrew culture, rocks were very closely associated with the idea of God. All throughout the Old Testament scriptures references are made to God as a rock. In the Hebrew mind whenever someone referred to a rock the idea of God would be closely connected in some way. When David took up stones to confront Goliath, he was symbolically sending the message that it was God whom David was sending his way to do whatever God wanted to do as the stone flew through the air.

With that background I find it compelling that Jesus had to ask people to remove the very symbol that they were so used to connecting with their concept of God. This time instead of the symbol of God serving as a protection from harm it was now an obstacle to be removed so that God's true glory and character might be seen more clearly. This large stone had become a representative of the false pictures of God that had grown up to obscure the real truth about Him for centuries. It was distorted views of God created and perpetuated by religious leaders and the chosen people of God that prevented them from trusting Him like they should. It was misapprehension of God that blinded them with unbelief to what Jesus wanted to demonstrate that day about the truth of how He felt about them.

I too have a number of obstacles in my own life that God very likely wants me to step up to move out of His way. He is starting to make me more aware of what some of these things might be even now. Early this morning I was awakened and sensed God addressing me intimately to answer some troubling questions I had in my spirit. He pointed out clearly that the distance I am feeling between us right now has nothing to do with how He feels about me but has everything to do with my inattention to Him and my willingness to be so easily distracted by the enticements and entertainments of this world. He invited me to get up and spend some extra time with Him today like I used to do. Unfortunately I struggled for maybe two hours but was not able to get past the obstacle of my desire to remain in the comfort of my bed even though I wanted to keep listening and dialogging with Him. Was that sin? Well, I do think I missed out on connecting with Him at a level that could have taken me much deeper.

I sense other obstacles too that prevent the glory of God from being more clearly seen in my life. I have inhibiting fears of what those around me think about me, more than most might realize. I have fears of changing too fast even though I am dissatisfied with my current condition. I too often give priority to selfish interests that bring me pleasure but that prevent God from providing deeper satisfaction like what my heart craves for. There are so many things that create obstacles that need to be removed, and yet I feel almost paralyzed just as the people in this story demonstrated to take the initiative and get busy moving the stones and unwrapping His presents.

God, save me from my own pervasive selfishness and fears and the many lies about You that still inhibit my own heart from living in abandoned joy for Your love for me. The more I see inside myself the more selfishness and fear and weakness I perceive. Save me from myself, from my fears and emotional wounds and cause me to see in Your face the real truth about You and how much You really care about me.

Help me to cooperate with Your methods and plans to save me and transform me into a new person. I throw myself on Your mercy; I trust in Your kindness and faithful love and ask You again to come in and heal the damage that still infects so much of my heart and blocks me from trusting You more readily. Fulfill Your promises in Ezekiel 36 to me and do it for Your reputation's sake, not mine.

When I Cause Him Trouble

2011-07-25T11:23:00.001-05:00

But some of them said, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?" So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb.... (John 11:37-38)

I have previously suggested that the real reason that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus had nothing to do directly with His feelings of loss over Lazarus but rather was caused by His awareness of the unbelief and depression and despair that was controlling the minds and hearts of so many that He had come to save. It was the persistent and pervasive atmosphere of doubts and unwillingness to trust God that brought pain and sorrow to the heart of Jesus that day.

As I ponder these verses again today I see this conclusion reinforced in the comments of some of the Jews who had come to console Mary and Martha. I recall the intense resistance and hostility displayed toward Jesus by the Jews just two chapters previous to this involving the story of the blind man they refer to here. It is amazing how hostile and unreasonable and even illogical these people became in their quest to maintain their unbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence. They were constantly trying to blame everyone else for the absurdity of their own thinking and trying to shame or intimidate everyone around them into agreeing with their twisted and self-serving perceptions.

Now once again these very same people possessed with the spirit of antagonism and unbelief infiltrate into the crowds of people coming to share the grief being experienced by two of Jesus' best friends. Implicit in their suggestion in this verse they are trying very hard to reinforce the feeling that Jesus does not really care about them or their pain like they have come to trust that He does. These religiously influential people are hell-bent on seeking to maintain their dominance over the people at all cost and they do everything they can to dilute and undermine the growing confidence of the people in the kind of God Jesus is representing to them.

This radical new notion of a God full of compassion who does not bas His government on fear and coercion but focuses on truth and love is a lethal threat to their whole system of control and dominance. In verse 48 this is explicitly what they express as they are backed into a corner after they are exposed by the wonderful sign that Jesus performs in the case of Lazarus. This event was not just about Jesus bringing relief to the hearts of a couple of His best friends; this miracle was the pivotal point in the ministry of Jesus that completed the hardening of the hearts of many of the religious leaders as they confirmed themselves in their wickedness. They had persistently resisted repeated appeals to their hearts by Jesus over several years and had refused to renounce their perverted beliefs about God and now they were moving past the point of no return.

Was Jesus intimidated by this knowledge of their hostility towards Him? Not at all. The disciples had assumed earlier that Jesus had left Judea because He was afraid for His life and went to minister where there was much better potential. But Jesus was never guided by His emotions or intimidated by the threats of His enemies. The reason that He did anything or went anywhere was because He was always listening and responding to the guidance of the Spirit from His Father, not because His emotions were determining His choices.

Jesus certainly experienced the whole spectrum of emotions just as we all do. But unlike most of us He never allowed His emotions to usurp the rightful role of His reason and conscience to determine the direction of His will. It is a lesson I need very much to learn myself and am just now becoming more aware of it. How often I allow emotions subtly influenced by my own selfishness to unduly influence my choices rather than relying on reason and listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as Jesus did. But even though Jesus always maintained the proper balance of His mind it does not mean that He was immune from feeling strong emotions Himself.

The emotions that Jesus experienced however, were for very different reasons than what we often assume. Just as people around Him that day assumed incorrectly that Jesus was crying because He was so sad about Lazarus, so too we can misinterpret the emotions of Jesus because we fail to come into sympathy with the perspective of heaven about the real issues involved. Whenever we allow our own emotions to interpret for us our circumstances while failing to seek heaven's perspective of what is going on, we are most likely to misinterpret what is going on and as a result make more faulty choices that only complicate things.

Jesus was seeking to draw Martha into seeing her situation from a different perspective when He engaged her in conversation when they met alone outside the village. He did manage to turn her attention away from her own feelings long enough to begin to take hold of the reality He wanted her to perceive and experience. But Mary seemed a bit further behind and most of the people involved in this story were far from seeing things the way they really were. And if it were not that we already knew how the story turned out it is very likely that we too would fall into the same mindset as most of the people in this story.

This story was recorded for our benefit so we don't have to follow in the example of those people who were so steeped in unbelief. It is our tenacious unbelief that brings the most grief to the heart of Jesus even today just as it troubled Him so much back then. It is not our physical problems that bring concern to the mind of God for these are merely incidental as a part of the process of life, even though we find that very hard to digest. But from heaven's perspective it is our unwillingness to move from doubt and rebellion and hostility against the truth about God into a relationship of trusting that He always has our best interest in mind that is the biggest problem. God could fix our external problems in a heartbeat. However, He often does not do so immediately because it could circumvent our facing the real issue of the condition of our own heart. God is willing to allow us to suffer emotional agony or even physical pain for a season if it will eventually lead us to face the real issue of how we feel about Him, so that we come to see that our unbelief is the problem in our relationship with Him, not how He feels about us.

These Jews were trying to keep the lid on the truth that God really does care deeply about all of His children. For very perverted reasons they did not want people to begin to warm up to the idea of a loving, caring Father whom each person could relate to intimately. They wanted to maintain a religious atmosphere of fear and control and hierarchy and everything that Jesus was telling people and demonstrating was a direct threat to their whole system of control by fear. It was this threat from a compassionate, caring Jesus that was the greatest fear of those who had a vested interest in keeping God looking very dark and dangerous, and they would stop at nothing to stifle, distort or shut down the testimony about God that Jesus had come to deliver.

You and I still face the very same issue today. Will I choose to believe in a good, loving, caring God who has my best interest at heart when circumstances seem to scream the very opposite? How will I interpret events in my life that I am so used to blaming on God? Will I allow these messages of love and grace that I am reading to challenge my long-held assumptions about how God feels about me or will I succumb to the temptation to maintain unbelief that God is as good as Jesus made Him out to be?

I find myself facing these questions more and more as I work my way through the good news about God as reported by one of Jesus' best friends. I want my own thinking to be healed and my own heart to learn to trust Him far more than I do now. I want God to transform me to trust Him just like Jesus did all the time. I want to be a real Christian, not just one who professes to believe but fails to be changed from the inside out.

It is all too easy to sidestep this vital issue of belief. It is too easy to rely on old patterns of thinking that view God as one who cannot be trusted all the time to do what is good. False ideas woven into cultural Christianity have left deep damage and scars in my soul and I want to experience the authentic genuine healing that will bring me to live like Christ. After all, that's what the very word Christian means in the first place – to live and think and relate to others just like Christ did. How strange that we have lost touch with that word.

The more I meditate on how Jesus viewed things and how He related to various situations the easier it becomes to view things differently myself. Yes, I feel even more ignorant and selfish the more I perceive the real truth about Him. But that must not deter me from continuing my quest to know Him even more. Growing awareness of my own sinfulness is not a problem so much as it is an awakening. It can actually be a sign for hope even though it feels like I am hopeless. The only hope is looking at Jesus. As I keep cooperating with the healing plan that Jesus wants to accomplish in my life He is responsible to do the transforming inside of me.

As long as I am willing to keep in relationship with Him and allow Him to draw me closer to His heart, the results are His responsibility. He has promised that He can transform and change me into thinking and acting like Him. Like Abraham I choose to trust that God has the power and ability and desire to do what He says He can do. And if I read my Bible correctly, that kind of thinking is called righteousness by faith which happens to be a good thing in heaven's perspective.

To See or Not To See

2011-07-24T09:58:00.001-05:00

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, and said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to Him, "Lord, come and see." (John 11:32-34)

One of the tools for inductive Bible study is looking for clusters or repetitions of a thought or word in the context. A few days ago I noticed the significance of the phrase she saw Him and pondered that for some time with great benefit. Now I notice that there seems to be a cluster of references to the idea of seeing together in these three verses and beyond.

Seeing requires certain things to be in place to accomplish effectively. Seeing requires eyes that function properly as well as surrounding light to illuminate what is to be seen. Quite interestingly a couple verses later the Jews conclude from Jesus' response to seeing Mary weeping that He must have loved Lazarus. “See how He loved him” they say. But in the very next breath they try to deepen people's doubts about Jesus by harking back to a previous miracle that was hotly discussed among them when Jesus had recently healed a man blind from birth.

All of these things have to do with seeing. I believe this was no accident on the part of John the writer of this book. In this story there was an over-abundance of darkness like an oppressive cloud around the minds of all the people involved except for Jesus. It is interesting to compare this story with the end of the story about the healed blind man in chapter 9 where Jesus talked about blindness and seeing. The main reason that Jesus wept in this context was not because He was sad about Lazarus' death but because it disturbed Him so much to see His close friends so blinded by unbelief and darkness and unwillingness to trust Him.

Emotions have a way of blinding us to many things. I have just finished reading a book that has really helped to open my own eyes to this issue. It talks about God's original design for the hierarchy of our mind and how sin has reversed God's intended order to keep us in darkness, fear and headed for death. When our feelings become the dominate controlling factor in our life rather than reason, conscience and a true perception of God, then the result is always damage to our mental health and all sorts of problems can take us down.

It appears to me from the stories about them that Martha was not as prone as Mary to allowing her feelings to dominate her perceptions. She was not so easily clouded by her emotions to have what Jesus had been seeking to teach them obscured in her mind. Even though her emotions were very intense at this time, she was able to keep her reason engaged enough to express faith in Jesus in spite of how she felt. However it seems that Mary, who was likely one far more emotionally influenced, could not perceive as readily as Martha and as a result she struggled to hang onto her trust in Jesus' heart for her even though she had had many more dramatic experiences with His saving power. Jesus was saddened that His friends were still so easily overcome with darkness and doubts when He had invested so much into their lives to help them to be prepared for just such a crisis. He was saddened but not offended.

Jesus was also overcome with emotion Himself as He perceived the bigger picture that no one else could see of what was really going on in the hearts of all the people present. He knew the hypocrisy of the Jews who were pretending to console Mary but really were seeking to reinforce her despair. He saw the double-mindedness of many present who would soon clamor for His death just a few days later. He felt the effects of the suffocating mass of lies circulating through humanity and especially promoted by religion about He and His Father. These misrepresentations kept people in fear and darkness and afraid to trust God when things looked hopeless. All of this awareness pressed on the heart of Jesus and was the true reason that He wept. It was not about Lazarus at all that He wept because Jesus knew what He was about to do for him. It was about the condition of the hearts of those present and the blindness of the whole nation of Israel who were so resistant to embracing the love that Jesus had come to share with humanity direct from the throne of heaven that broke His heart and troubled His emotions..

Yet the good news is that darkness cannot remain long in the presence of light. Though it may return again and again to try to deceive and depress us, darkness is no match for light when we allow the true Source of light to come into our lives.

The Word was the source of life, and this life brought light to people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.

The real light, which shines on everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into existence through him. Yet, the world didn't recognize him. He went to his own people, and his own people didn't accept him. However, he gave the right to become God's children to everyone who believed in him. (John 1:4-5 GNB, 9-12 GW)

She Saw Him

2011-07-23T09:51:00.002-05:00

When she had said this, she went away and called Mary her sister, saying secretly, "The Teacher is here and is calling for 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." (John 11:28, 32)

To say that Mary was hurting would be a serious understatement. But I believe she was feeling much more than sorrow at this time. There are many other emotions that swirl around a person's life after a death of someone very close to them. Some have outlined what is called the grieving process. This process often involves anger, blame and other emotions that many of us are quite uncomfortable facing but are very real.

Given the circumstances and sequence of events in this story it is very likely that Mary was probably feeling strong urges to feel angry at Jesus even though her heart did not want to experience that feeling. Having these intense and conflicting emotions would naturally cause a person to also experience guilt on top of all the other emotions. After all, Jesus was Mary's best friend who had repeatedly saved her from a desperate life of sin from which she had no escape. Mary felt deeply indebted to Jesus and loved Him with an intensity like no other person at that time. But now she found herself experiencing feelings that were very negative about Jesus and it must have caused her much consternation and confusion.

Feeling negative emotions about a person we are supposed to love creates internal stress. Having mixed feelings toward someone who has saved our life can create shame and guilt for even having such thoughts. All of this can add to the already heavy weight of emotion that naturally results from someone dying and can make one wonder what is going on.

Mary had been coming to learn one of the most vital lessons that any of us can ever learn. After repeated relapses into a life of prostitution and being rescued by Jesus over and over, she finally began noticing that if she could just remain close to Jesus and focus on Him that it was much easier to stay out of slipping back into her own weakness and being overcome with temptation. This is why she was so intent on remaining in the presence of Jesus and sitting at His feet when Martha blew up in frustration at her demanding that Jesus send her into the kitchen. It was not that she did not want to help her sister but that she had been learning that the only really safe place for her to maintain stability was to stick as close as possible to the one who had the power to rescue her and transform her.

Mary shows up repeatedly in the Bible as the one who seemed to spend the most time at the feet of Jesus. This was no accident but was something that she learned the hard way. But she was learning the lesson and was discovering that if she could just stay in the presence of the one who truly loved her and had the power to save her that she would be safe.

But this time Jesus had seemed to let her down. She and her sister had sent a message to Him about their brother's sickness but He had seemingly ignored their request and now their brother had died. This brought a whole new set of temptations to Mary that she was now struggling to deal with. Why would her best friend act in such a strange way if He loved her as much as she was sure He did? Everything was so confused in her mind and the suggestions of some of the Jews who had come to 'console' her were not helping matters any. Without Jesus present to bring sense and clarity into her life, Mary was devastated and distraught. She did not know how to cope with her emotions and she was not strong enough to rise above them at this point.

Her sister who had a different personality and likely less charisma than Mary seemed to be able to hang onto a bit more faith even though she too was devastated. Martha was more of a thinker and less prone to being swept along by her feelings. She did not have the kind of emotional damage that Mary had and was able to view things differently than Mary. But right now Mary was stuck in a dark place inside and nearly everyone around her only seemed to be reinforcing that darkness.

When Martha quietly slipped in and whispered to Mary that Jesus wanted to meet her outside of town, it was like an electric shock in her world. It was the kind of jolt that could push Mary out of her deep stuck place and gave her a glimmer of hope that somehow Jesus could do something even though she had no idea what or how. All Mary knew was that Jesus had repeatedly rescued her again and again from hopeless situations and that the best thing for her to do when things got desperate was to get into the presence of Jesus. And the fact that Jesus wanted to see her was the best word that had come to her in a long while.

As I was reading this yesterday some words seemed to jump off the page at me. ...when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw Him, and fell at His feet... I have learned that the Bible writers do not often just through things in for filler. When something is mentioned in a story like this it can hold enormous significance and I love to open up that door and explore what might be hidden behind it. When I read these words, she saw Him, I sensed a reference to the deep and intense brew of swirling emotions going on inside of Mary's heart that all suddenly burst open like a ruptured dam or a volcano. Mary was finally back where she knew she needed to be and she didn't lose a moment to instantly throw herself at the feet of Jesus where she had so many times found relief, comfort and hope.

Just seeing Jesus was enough to disrupt all her emotional turmoil and challenge the doubts and anger and shame and despair that seemed deadlocked in her mind. Seeing the compassionate face of Jesus and suddenly re-experiencing the emotions now so familiar whenever she looked into His eyes reignited her own passion for Him and she could do nothing other than throw herself at His feet and express the agony of her soul.

While she did not have the ability at this point to dialogue with Jesus like Martha had just done, Mary did what any of us can do when things don't make sense and our emotions seem out of harmony with the relationship we want to have with Him. She threw herself into the only place that she knew had potential for bringing her relief and where she had found salvation so many times before. When she saw His face she wanted to get back to being at His feet.

Not long after this Mary was again at the feet of Jesus feeling very intense emotions and also very awkward. Mary was a very emotional person who had a magnetism that had often gotten her into seriously compromising relationships. Now with her dark reputation as a woman of the street still influencing what other people thought of her, she still felt compelled to come into His presence again, this time to publicly offer Jesus the greatest gift she could come up with to show Him how she really felt inside. Again she found herself the object of scorn and shame and humiliation from those around as she expressed her intense emotions for Jesus while pouring super-expensive perfume over His feet and wiping up the excess with her long hair. With her emotions overflowing in tears nothing could prevent her from pouring out her heart to Him no matter what it might cost her.

It seemed that Mary was always violating social rules and creating problems because of her personality and impulsiveness. She repeatedly found herself in compromising relationships and situations with men, but her deep craving for affirmation and her need to feel valued and loved kept driving her back for more. When Jesus entered the picture He offered her an alternative source of value and affirmation that was not exploitive but honored her as a precious daughter of God in spite of her sins. This was stunning, surprising, even confusing to her until she began to experience the transformation that always takes place inside whenever a person encounters this kind of love. Now she had so much passion and appreciation and gratitude for what Jesus had done in her life that she could not stop herself from once again violating the strict conventions of social behavior to pour out her heart in an abandoned act of love for her Savior at His feet.

Mary came to the place where she realized that life simply was not worth living unless she could experience the presence of Jesus. Eventually she learned that she could live in His presence without having to physically have Him there because He provided a Spirit, a Comforter as He called it, to keep Him close to her all the time whether or not He was there in body. Mary learned the lesson that I want to learn much better, that the only safe place in life is as close as I can get to the feet of Jesus.

When she saw Him she threw herself at His feet. Mary knew what it was to seek the face of God.
And whenever she caught sight of that face the truth and love and power she found there was always able to set her free from the power of sin and shame and hopelessness in her life.

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

(2Ch 7:14 ESV)

Thin Permission

2011-07-20T10:58:00.001-05:00

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. (John 11:32-33)

Mary said the very same words that Martha had expressed but with one very important difference; she did not go the next step and express confidence that Jesus could do something to salvage this terrible situation. She stopped short of expressing a word of confidence that He might do something for her.

I have a growing conviction that Jesus needed human permission in the supernatural realm to be allowed to perform the miracle that He planned to perform on behalf of this family. The rules of engagement in the supernatural battle between good and evil have very specific requirements, many which we seem to be largely unaware of most of the time. But these rules are strictly enforced and applied by the supernatural beings involved in this conflict. Jesus was at the very center of this battle during His life here on earth and especially as He neared the time of His great sacrifice.

It is noted by the gospel writers that at times Jesus was unable to perform healings in certain places because of the unbelief of the people there. This is another very strong clue as to the restrictions of the supernatural laws governing the actions of both the divine and the evil forces. Jesus came to recapture this earth's governorship back from Satan who induced Adam into handing it over to him. Jesus came as the new Adam, the new representative of this earth in the councils of heaven. Of course Satan challenged Him at every single step of this contest and would not allow Jesus to do anything on this planet outside of what was allowed under the rules of engagement.

Raising a dead person back to life after they had begun to decompose was a very major event that would come under the closest scrutiny in the supernatural realm. This had never happened in all of history before and Jesus was to make an assertion about His authority through this miracle that would have repercussions throughout all eternity and especially among the religious community of His day. Satan had largely seduced the religious establishment into using force, fear, intimidation and deception as the main methods for maintaining control over people rather than following the methods God had laid out for their ancestors. Satan had hijacked religion to serve his ends, to deceive and discourage anyone seeking to know God and Satan had thus painted God's character in the darkest colors possible.

Jesus came to this earth for the purpose of reintroducing the clear truth about what God is really like and how He relates to people, especially sinners. (see John 18:37) Jesus also came to contend the authority that Satan had usurped from Adam and to legitimately wrest this earth away from his demonic control and abuse. This would be a fight to the death and Jesus knew it, but He never once flinched or was deterred in His plans to redeem humanity.

Without knowledge of this much greater context, Mary and Martha could only see what was going on in their own lives. But they had the advantage of having been instructed and mentored by Jesus Himself because they had chosen to welcome Him into their home and treat Him as one of their family. This had given them the potential of being used by Jesus to bring to the greater conflict one of the most telling blows against the tyranny of Satan's kingdom. Satan has relied on death and all things surrounding death as the primary means of maintaining control over people's lives and hearts with fear. Heaven does not rely on fear but rather on love as its basis of operation so the whole conflict between good and evil can be delineated by the stark difference between these two tactics.

As Jesus approached the village of Bethany to bring life and hope into the situation of His friends, from the supernatural perspective He needed to have human permission from someone involved in the situation to be able to complete His intentions for them. Jesus had spent many hours prepping both of these sisters and sharing with them vital truths that they needed to understand and grasp in order to partner with Him in His plans for them. Now the time of testing had come and both of these women were under intense pressure from opposite sides of the conflict to influence how they would perform and what choices they would make. They had enough information and experience with Jesus to cooperate with Him in His plans, but it was entirely up to them individually as to what they would do with what they had learned.

I find it interesting that it was Martha, not Mary who in this time of extreme pressure who was the one who gave Jesus the permission that He needed to continue His plans for them. I believe that if Martha had not added the words that she did after expressing her frustration with Jesus that He would have had to look elsewhere or possibly could have been prevented from going through with His plans for them. Some may disagree and find the idea strange that God cannot simply do whatever He desires to do in our lives. But it is a fact of reality that each one of us is the pivotal player in deciding which power will dominate and have permission to operate in our lives. God fiercely defends our right and freedom to choose even when we use that power to defeat His purposes and His good plans for our lives.

I am sure that Jesus was disappointed when Mary failed to express the same confidence in Him that Martha had expressed. Mary said the same exact words to start with which reveals that likely this sentiment had been the dominant idea over the past few days. In fact, I suspect that this phrase questioning Jesus' motives was the main focus of most of those who had come to purportedly console the sisters. Satan often seeks to get us to use sympathy to keep us stuck in depression and despair. In such situations it may be very surprising to learn that sympathy can often be a method of the enemy rather than a blessing to the ones supposedly being comforted. Sympathy often is used to reinforce lies about God rather than for bringing genuine hope and comfort to the grieving, hurting ones.

Obviously both sisters were hurting deeply and were full of questions about why Jesus had not come to save their brother from death. But Martha was the only one that went beyond the questions and handed Jesus the 'permission slip' so to speak that was vitally needed for Him to proceed. Mary could have chosen to do the same, but from the context it appears that she may have slipped so far under the influence of the negative Jews seeking to reinforce doubts about Jesus that she could not bring herself to trust Him that much in her pain. If this is true it is very sad, but Jesus already had the permission He needed from Martha to move ahead and He was in no way going to censure Mary.

Why does the text say that He was very troubled in His spirit? I believe it was because of this pervasive atmosphere of dark depression and unbelief being reinforced by these Jews intent on turning the hearts of Mary and Martha and many others away from their trust in Jesus. Their focus was on sadness and death and the elimination of all hope. They had a great deal of animosity against the ministry of Jesus who was bringing hope and light and life into the hearts of people listening to Him. His ideas were seriously undermining their ability to keep people in fear and bondage under their severe religious domination. The Jews were becoming very afraid of losing even political control and their methods for keeping their power were being weakened by what Jesus was doing. They were determined to reinforce the reign of spiritual terror and political fear that they had so carefully cultivated for generations.

This was the dark, foreboding atmosphere that caused Jesus to shudder and that disturbed His spirit. This was a concentration of the very darkness that He had come to dispel. And seeing His dear friend Mary being consumed by this very spirit and being sucked into despair produced by this darkness only added to His sadness and agitation.

It was the pervasiveness of unbelief that troubled the heart of Jesus. After three years of ministering to these people, teaching them the truth about His Father and seeking to bring light into their darkened minds, the fears and dark assumptions about God still remained deeply entrenched in nearly everyone's thinking. It is a titanic struggle to overcome the darkness created by the mass of lies about God that Satan has crafted for centuries. And it takes much time and enormous effort to counteract these lies and overcome the darkness with the advancement of real truth.

What is it at the core of this conflict? It is the implied question contained in the statements of both Martha and Mary. Does God really care about us and our problems? Jesus, do you care or not? If you really care about us why didn't you come when we needed you the most? Now there is nothing you can do about Lazarus when you finally arrive. Why don't your actions align with your claims that you genuinely care about us?

This too was the very issue that the Jews wanted to reinforce with Mary and Martha as seen in the next few verses. They wanted to convey very strongly to everyone that Jesus didn't really care about them as much as they thought He did. They were doing everything they could think of to strengthen suspicions about Jesus and the claims He was making about God. The God they presented to the people was not a caring God but an exacting God demanding stern obedience by using intimidation and threats of punishment against those not conforming perfectly to His demands. This is the picture of God that Satan has always sought to get people to believe and is the view of Him still held by most people today. A God of fear and threats and punishments is not a God our hearts can believe really cares about us at the deepest level. The popular portrayals of God all throughout history and still prevalent yet today is more descriptive of the character of Satan than of the real God in heaven.

Did Jesus really care about Martha and Mary's feelings? Was He concerned about their pain and suffering and grief? Of course He was. But the way He handled their situation seemed to demonstrate the opposite until the rest of the story transpired. It was not until the whole picture was revealed that they could look back and see that He really cared for them far deeper than they had ever imagined before. Their joy and faith were then so overwhelming after Jesus accomplished His plans in their suffering that their previous despair was nothing by comparison.

This story was written for our benefit. We are going to face similar circumstances where it seems that God doesn't care, that He is ignoring our cries for help. But this event was intentionally allowed by Jesus for this very purpose, to encourage us when all the evidence seems designed to drive us into despair. It is trusting in God when nothing seems to make sense that is an effective faith. It is choosing to grant God permission to act in our lives in the ways which He sees best that allows Him to do things for us far beyond our wildest dreams when it all comes out in the end. It is this kind of relationship, the one Martha chose by believing in Jesus in spite of her emotions, that transforms our sorrows into joy.

The Sovereign LORD has filled me with his Spirit. He has chosen me and sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to announce release to captives and freedom to those in prison. He has sent me to proclaim that the time has come when the LORD will save his people and defeat their enemies. He has sent me to comfort all who mourn, to give to those who mourn in Zion joy and gladness instead of grief, a song of praise instead of sorrow. They will be like trees that the LORD himself has planted. They will all do what is right, and God will be praised for what he has done.

(Isa 61:1-3 GNB)

Sequence for Life

2011-07-17T13:24:00.001-05:00

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 11:25-26)

I just finished reading a sermon about the theories of why Jesus had to die. It was well thought out and stimulating and insightful. Upon finishing that article I opened my Bible to meditate again on this story of Lazarus and the first thing I read were these verses again. In the context of what I just finished reading these verses suddenly take on even more significance.

What I am starting to see now is a two-stage process of being returned to life that Jesus may be describing here. First of all Jesus refers to the fact that He Himself is both the origin of life, the only valid Source of life that exists, and also that even where death is present Jesus, as the originator of life can bring life back even when it has been taken away. There is no limitation on God's part as to His ability to produce life, and death from God's perspective is not an insurmountable enemy like we tend to view it.

But just because God has all the capability and power and desire to bring life into places of death, it does not follow that this is what is always going to happen. After explaining His own role as the ultimate life-giver, Jesus next exposes one of the most vital elements of the mix by talking about belief. And why is belief in Jesus/God so important?

It has to do with the issue of love and the nature of what true love is and how it operates and exists. Most people have not understood the truth about love and confuse it with amorous feelings or even lust. But true love is radically different than what most of us have ever experienced that we termed love. True love is totally selfless, but more than that real love values our freedom to reject or accept it more than anything else. Without this freedom to spurn love, to turn away from love and even to abuse it if we choose, love itself cannot exist or be experienced.

God is love itself. Everything God does, thinks or acts out is an expression of true love. Because of this reality and the nature of love itself, God has the greatest regard for our right to make our own choices. God is fiercely protective of our right to choose because He wants us to be able to respond to His love. Belief is a word intimately involved in this formula for life, for what we choose to believe about God and His intents, His character and His desires concerning us makes all the difference in the world as to how much God is allowed to do in saving us. If we choose to really believe in God's true love for us, enough to submit ourselves without reservation to everything He asks us to do, trusting that He has our best in mind all the time, then God is given permission in the supernatural realm to do all sorts of things in our lives that He is prohibited from doing without our vital permission.

On the other hand, if we choose to cling to lies about God circulated by His enemy and allow those lies to prejudice us against God and turn away from His offers of love and discipline, then God cannot finish bringing healing and life or restore us back to wholeness as He longs to do through the plan of salvation. He is limited by our own choices to barricade our hearts against His attractions of love for us and ends up watching us self-destruct as we wither away disconnected from the only Source of power that available to keep us alive.

It now is making more sense to me why Jesus put these elements in the sequence that He did in these phrases. Here is what I see Jesus saying to Martha and to all who are willing to pay attention.

I am the resurrection and the life – Jesus is the great and only power source that exists for anyone to remain alive, both for those who are currently alive and hope for those who have died.

he who believes in Me – Anyone who chooses to lay aside their fears and turn away from the lies about Him will be reconnected with this vital source of power, of life, of love.

he who believes in Me will live – The result of choosing to connect with Life in Christ is the establishment of something like an umbilical cord through which regenerating life is allowed to flow into our lives and even into our physical bodies as well. A person upon connecting with Jesus through trust in Him begins to come alive. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

even if he dies – Even if a person's physical body dies that vital but hidden umbilical cord is not lost though it may for a period be inactive while they sleep in the grave. That person's eternal existence after the resurrection when they receive a new and much better body is guaranteed. Their choice to embrace the Source of Life as their dependence and trust His heart in implicit obedience brings them into vital connection with the presence of Life and frees them from the doom of eternal death to live with Him forever even if they fall asleep in death here on earth.

everyone who lives and believes in Me – All who have ever come into existence, who have been endowed with the power of choice and have chosen to turn away from the lies about God circulated by His enemy and have chosen to trust His love and His ways in their life are brought into this class of people Jesus refers to here.

will never die – Those who choose to be part of the above-described group will never experience the second death that comes from rejecting God's offer of life. This is the death that heaven calls death, not like the sleep that occurs when we die today.

This belief is not just a mental assent kind of belief that Jesus is talking about here; this is a deliberate choice to trust in God's goodness, fairness, righteousness, mercy, forgiveness and dangerous purity. Why is it vital we believe in God's dangerous purity and holiness? Because coming into close proximity with the intensity of God's powerful presence without being first brought into harmony with His purity is a disastrous idea that always results in death.

To believe in God and in Jesus is not just an intellectual decision though that is important. Jesus is talking about coming into harmony with the will of God for us, submitting our will to be molded within His will, surrendering our resistance to Him and allowing Him to flush out our rebellion and sinful, selfish desires, replacing them with character traits and a disposition in full harmony with the source of Life. To live forever in the presence of Jesus requires a belief that goes far beyond theory, a belief that is totally transforming in every part of our thinking and living. But it is also a work that only God can accomplish as we allow Him to dwell within us by our trust in His heart.

Too many have assumed that being saved for eternity is little more than a legal issue that can be settled by intellectually accepting a 'substitute punishment' born by Jesus on the cross. But this is a very dangerous shortcut that has deceived millions and causes many to miss the most important issue in the controversy between Christ and Satan. The belief Jesus is talking about here in His conversation with Martha is a fully surrendered trust where we allow God to have full access to all of our being and our thinking and existence. It really is an all or nothing proposition. If we want to have life we have to embrace it fully in Christ. Anything less will end eventually in death.

The final part of Jesus' statements to Martha is the most important. Do you believe this?

Do I believe this? This is the great pivot point for my and everyone's eternal destiny – our personal and powerful ability to choose our own destiny for ourselves by how we choose to relate to Jesus' offer.

Do You Believe?

2011-07-16T11:26:00.002-05:00

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?

2011-07-15T10:43:00.001-05:00

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

2011-07-14T09:46:00.002-05:00

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

2011-07-13T10:36:00.002-05:00

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.

Come Out to Meet Him

2011-07-09T11:04:00.000-05:00

Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him, but Mary stayed at the house. (John 11:20)

But at midnight there was a shout, 'Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' (Matthew 25:6)

At first this may seem very strange, to put these two verses together in such close proximity. But then again is it really? If we were to look at these circumstances through the eyes of heaven as Jesus always did, then in reality it was with intense anticipation that Jesus approached Bethany that day.

But darkness, gloom, sadness and great disappointment shrouded the emotions of those in Bethany. In addition there was a background of fear produced by the threats and hatred of the Jewish leaders against Jesus. All of these dark emotions obscured a correct view of reality as Jesus saw it and prevented people from sharing in the perspective they could have had in faith like what Jesus enjoyed. A most wonderful and joyful event was just about to transpire and nearly everyone was assuming that the very opposite was unavoidable.

Not only was Lazarus about to be reunited with his best Friend and his sisters but joy was about to energize the lives of everyone who believed in Jesus. But ironically the Jews who had come to purportedly console the sisters but with ulterior motives to insinuate doubts and questions about Him, would react quite differently. After the performance of this crowning miracle of Jesus' ministry just before His sacrifice, these men would so harden their hearts against the light of this unmistakable sign of His divinity that they would not only determine to kill Jesus but would also seek to bring about another death for Lazarus. Now how insane can that be? Lazarus has just been delivered from the grip of death and these men in the name of religion wanted to send him back to the grave again because the testimony of his very life weakened their grip on political power.

Indeed, Martha made the right choice when she decided to go out to meet Jesus alone. Without consciously realizing what she was doing she was in fact going out to meet her Bridegroom, the very one who had come to earth to save all who would respond to the wooing affections of God. In her intense pain and sorrow and surrounded by dark suggestions of the Jews seeking to implant evil thoughts about Jesus in her heart in her most vulnerable moments, Martha chose to leave that negative atmosphere and go out of the village to meet Jesus. Yes, she made the better choice this time to move into the presence of Life Himself rather than continue to grieve and mourn and sink into deeper darkness and depression among others feeling the same way.

Previously it had been Mary who had chosen to break out of the mold of the expectations of society to remain close to Jesus clinging to His every word and soaking up God's affection for her. Martha had become so incensed with Mary's refusal to cooperate with her expectations that she had publicly shamed her and even demanded that Jesus rebuke her sister only to be gently rebuked herself. Yes, Mary had chosen the best option that time even though to everyone else it seemed out of place.

But Jesus' words to Martha in that encounter had accomplished their intended effect and Martha's heart had changed. Now she saw the importance of coming close to Jesus even if life didn't make sense and her questions remained unanswered. It was Jesus Himself that was most important, not conforming to the customs and expectations of society. This time it was Martha that chose to break out of the mold and seek out the presence of Jesus while Mary in her intense grief and pain remained back home among those who only reinforced the temptations toward doubt and bitterness.

I perceive a vital lesson for my own heart in these verses. There are times when I cannot see any answers that address the deep pain in my own life. No matter how I try to figure things out, how much biblical knowledge I may have or how long and hard I pray, it sometimes seems that things only get worse and more confusing. My heart is tempted to throw in the towel, to give up trusting in this invisible God who seems to let me down when I need Him most. Doubts press in on every side and my friends send me mixed messages about what God thinks about my situation. I don't know what to do or which way to turn and I am tempted to simply take the path of least resistance and try come up with my own solutions while turning my back on Him.

But I have been learning that when there seems to be no answers, the most important thing I must do is to simply come into the presence of Jesus and press closer and closer to Him even when it feels irrelevant or absurd. Everything screams that I need to work more on fixing my problems, yet something inside keeps prompting me to focus on spending extra time in the presence of Jesus and giving Him the benefit of the doubt.

As I meditate over the next few verses detailing the interchange between Jesus and Martha my own heart is warmed with increased affection for Him. Martha makes a choice contradictory to all that she is feeling and expresses as much confidence and faith in Jesus as she can muster. Even though her 'friends' from Jerusalem are insinuating that Jesus has let her down and that He does not come through when things get really tough, Martha chooses to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt. Because of her expression of confidence in His heart for her even though she could have expressed many angy, painful feelings and questions about Him, Jesus took up her words of faith and drew her out to connect even more deeply with His heart.

Because of her choice Martha had the privilege of holding communion with Jesus that Mary missed. Because of her choice to prefer His presence over that of the mourners and commiseraters back home, she was able to begin to experience hope much sooner than anyone else in this story including Jesus' own disciples. Jesus responded to her words by making her an offer that was far better than what her own heart had dared to express. But in the process He also reinforced her confidence in the Word of God and in the truth about the resurrection lifting her mind above the despair and pain that was currently blinding her mind. By connecting her back to the sure foundation of the Word of God and reminding her of the truth about life and death, He laid a foundation for a further revelation about His own purpose for coming to this earth. Through her willingness to dialogue with Jesus in her pain Martha created an opportunity for Jesus to voice some of the most promising words in Scripture that millions have since benefited from.

The Bridegroom was coming to town, but unfortunately the bridal party with Him failed to share in His anticipation of what was about to happen. The Bridesmaids also were in a stupor of grief and misapprehension of what Jesus was all about and so Jesus worked with what He had and took advantage of the small opening that Martha's words offered Him to inject joy and hope into the darkest day of her life.

I can't wait to unpack the next few verses because I have already seen some very exciting insights waiting to be explored there. I too want to change the way I think about Jesus, to embrace hope and encouragement and new life while surrounded by insinuations and distortions about what God is all about. I want to spend more time in the presence of Jesus and turn away from the dark views of God promoted by religious people or the world. I want to dialogue with Jesus personally and give Him opportunities to share His heart directly with me and lift me out of my depression and sadness and fears. I want to learn the lesson of going out to meet Him in my own life and turning my back on what is familiar and expected. I want to spend my time in the presence of Jesus so He can convey to me the truth about reality and His love for me as He knows it instead of what I assume.

Consolation or Comfort?

2011-07-07T08:03:00.001-05:00

and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, to console them concerning their brother. (John 11:19)

Throughout the book of John whenever the term 'Jews' is used it usually is in reference to the Jewish leaders who entrenched themselves in opposition to the ministry of Jesus. With that understanding this verse seems to indicate a subtle reference to something going on beneath the surface besides just an honest desire to bring comfort to a grieving family.

Mary in particular was well known around that region for her rather colorful lifestyle. She had spent years in prostitution and I have long felt that she had a very magnetic personality. Based on the stories of these two sisters I also imagine that while Mary was very attractive her sister was much less so. Martha was more of a thinker and certainly had her own struggles to enter into the kind of saving relationship with Jesus that she needed, but she did not deal nearly so much with the kind of temptations that Mary faced because she did not have the same attraction for men as Mary.

In contrast I think that Mary was a very feeling oriented person. She responded to various situations much more from her heart and emotional reactions much more than with logic and Jesus related to her differently because of this. Yet Jesus was intent on drawing both of these sisters into close relationship with Himself as well as their brother. He spent many wonderful times relaxing in their home with His disciples forming bonds of deep friendship with this family. But this did not go unnoticed by His enemies in nearby Jerusalem where Mary's reputation and Jesus' close friendship with her family became a point of great interest among those seeking any way possible to undermine His reputation and influence among the people.

I also feel that it is entirely possible that Mary was also well-known among the religious leaders for more personal reasons because some of them may have taken advantage of her weaknesses themselves. It is quite possible that the woman dragged before Jesus to be stoned was this very Mary though that is impossible to prove from biblical text. The motives of the leaders in that story indicate a deep jealousy of Jesus and a desire to hurt Him in every way possible. And what better way to attack Him than through threatening one of His dearest friends and exposing her publicly while seeking to use His love for her to embarrass and trap Him with a 'sting operation' purportedly to clean up the morals of the people.

In that story it also seems clear that the Jewish leaders seeking to trap Jesus by dragging this woman (very possibly Mary) before Him for public execution for adultery well may have set her up for this very purpose. And in setting her up it is also very likely that one of their own had enticed her into committing this act with their participation, for there is no mention in that story about the man involved even though a strict observance of the law of Moses required that both the man and woman be punished. This convenient oversight belies the strong potential that they did not want their diabolical schemes directed against Jesus or their own lusts and hypocrisy exposed.

Now when Mary and her sister were hurting deeply and their faith in Jesus was under extreme stress because of the unexplainable delay of Jesus to come to their aid in a crisis, these Jews saw an excellent opportunity to exploit Mary in yet another perverted way, so they gathered around her to supposedly bring comfort and consolation to her. Again, I feel that many of these men internally had their own desires to take advantage of Mary and were controlled to a great extent by their own passions and lust while maintaining a pious exterior to keep up appearances and appear to be holy before the people. But all the while Jesus could see clearly the ugliness, hatred, lust and wickedness in the hearts of these men who claimed to represent God before the people.

What I see really taking place here was an intense competition between two representations of God, two belief systems about the truth about what God is really like. It was because religion in general and God's chosen representatives on earth in particular had miserably failed to represent Him anywhere near properly that Jesus came to this earth to do the job personally. Religion had degenerated into a mere external system of traditions, formalities and distortions thereby nearly completely obliterating the real truth about the love and compassion and mercy of our heavenly Father. As is often true today, those who most claimed to represent God exercised the greatest influence to distort and damage His reputation. This is one of the most effective schemes of Satan as he has sought since the beginning of sin to cause as many as possible to believe destructive lies about God while those claiming to believe in Him drive others away who might be attracted to the real truth about Him.

In this story these very men with lust in their hearts and hatred against Jesus piously show up in Mary's house to purportedly bring her consolation. They certainly found it attractive to hang around a woman with such charisma that stimulated their own perverted desires, but their motives were anything but noble. As can be seen in subtle references throughout this story, these men very likely had ulterior motives in their supposed consoling. What they really desired was to reinforce the already strong temptation to doubt Jesus on the part of these sisters. These men moved in like vultures to exploit the pain and weakness of these women just when they really needed encouragement and more faith. Rather than coming to strengthen their trust in the integrity and goodness of Jesus, these miserable comforters who had not long previously possibly sought to get Mary killed in their attempts to discredit Jesus now show up appearing to show sympathy for her. But what they really wanted to do was to amplify insinuations about Jesus' motives and infer that He did not really care for people nearly so much as people thought He did.

I believe this highly charged atmosphere of doubt and unbelief that oppressed the whole village of Bethany at this time was one reason Jesus did not enter into the village but remained outside when He arrived. The following dialogues that take place were at a distance from where all the 'consoling' was going on, for Jesus was not welcome to draw near to those who had such animosity toward His spirit. That is not to say that He did not want them to be changed in their attitudes toward Him or did not desire their salvation. But Jesus respects the choices of every person and when people harden their hearts against the truth about God that Jesus came to reveal, He has little choice but to leave them to the results of their choices while doing everything possible to rescue those being deluded by their influence.

I did some research on the Greek word translated here as console and discovered that it is generally used mostly in to human to human situations. It does not appear very often in the New Testament and is different from the word used more often for the kind of comfort that God seeks to bring to our hearts. For me this is an indication that John selected this word to distinguish between the intentions of the Jews surrounding Mary and Martha in contrast with what Jesus desired to do for them. An English word that might fit even better in this spot might be 'commiserating' rather than consoling. And the questionable motives behind the actions of these Jews seems to lend to this conclusion.

Jesus had desires for these sisters far beyond anything anyone around was thinking about. Martha came the closest to guessing what Jesus had in mind when she met Him outside of town upon His arrival. That is a most interesting exchange that I look forward to unpacking and is in stark contrast to the mixed motives of the Jews who had quite the opposite intentions in their hearts. Jesus came to bring life and joy and peace while these Jews focused on death and doubt and distrust. As the saying goes today, with friends like that who needs enemies.

Is It Bad Enough Yet?

2011-07-02T08:03:00.001-05:00

So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days. (John 11:17)

Jesus had just returned to the region of Judea where He had not long previously left because the Jews wanted to kill Him. The disciples were confused by His actions and had in an impulse of fatalism exclaimed that they might as well go with Him and die there too. Jesus had deliberately ignored the urgent pleas of some of His best friends to hurry back in time to heal Lazarus so long that it was seemingly too late. Then when all hope seemed to be gone He showed up with a sense of anticipation only to find that Lazarus had long since expired.

From the perspective of the disciples and His friends Mary and Martha, all of this seemed totally out of character with the Jesus they thought they had come to know. It was not like Him to spurn the cries of the hurting and distressed. It was not like Him to hesitate when someone needed healing, except when it involved their own unbelief which definitely was not the case in this instance. And although Jesus never effectively been intimidated by the threats of His enemies, He generally had always tried to steer clear of aggravating their angst against Him by moving out of the way until things cooled down.

But things had not cooled down this time and the disciples were baffled as to why Jesus would risk His safety by going back to where people were so hostile toward Him. Yes, Jesus was going back in response to the request of His friends for Lazarus' sake, but even the way in which He dealt with that seemed confusing at best. None of this made much sense at all to any of His close friends and everything He was doing seemed to be only playing out for the advantage of His enemies.

From Mary and Martha's perspective it was even more distressing. They had invested much in getting to know Jesus at a very intimate level and felt that they had a special bond with Him closer than most others. They felt that Jesus had a special affection for them because of the many hours He had spent enjoying their hospitality and relaxing in their presence. Given their history with Jesus they felt that their level of faith in Him should be enough that they could expect Him to take care of their crisis, so they had confidently expected Him to answer their prayers in a timely manner.

But Jesus had not come through for them the way they expected. Jesus had not moved to eliminate their fears and cries for help and things had gotten worse. Lazarus was seriously ill and Jesus was nowhere to be seen and it was not long before he was taken away from them in death. But there still remained hope for awhile. They knew that Jesus had raised others from the dead within hours of their dying and so they hoped that maybe He would show up soon enough to bring their brother back to life before all hope was gone and his body began to decompose.

But this was the very point of issue that sometimes we miss in this story. The Jews had a belief that when a person died there was sometimes potential for them to be revived if it happened before the body began to decompose. In modern times we now understand the potential for a person to appear to be dead because they quit breathing but are still revivable. Throughout history stories have circulated of people who were prematurely buried only to wake up later trapped in their graves or tombs and it was discovered that they had violently struggled to get out only to truly die because of their entrapment. So in the mind of the Jews all the previous miracles where Jesus had raised people from the dead could be discounted as not necessarily miraculous because none of those raised had been dead long enough to be certain they were not revivable.

This is the reason Jesus chose to stay away long enough so that Lazarus would be certifiably and totally dead. The Jews believed that if a person was dead for three days then there was no longer hope of their being revived or resurrected. It was this window of hope that the sisters were clinging to believing that if Jesus returned quickly enough after Lazarus slipped into death that He could still bring him back to life. But after four days all hope was gone and their grief became subject to the intense temptation to become bitterness and resentment against Jesus.

This temptation was intentionally amplified by some of the friends of Mary and Martha who lived in Jerusalem but did not share their affections for Jesus. This family was well known in the region and many who were bitterly opposed to Jesus now saw an opportunity to use this occasion to discredit Him more effectively. They moved in like vultures on these hurting sisters to exploit their situation and highlight the unanswered questions that were unavoidable in the way Jesus had handled their situation. They suggested insinuations about Jesus and planted doubts in the minds of those around to try to amplify the negative assumptions that might be made about Jesus' motives and credibility. They were hoping that this was the ultimate chance to really expose Jesus as a fraud and they quickly moved into position among the mourners presenting themselves as ones desiring to console the family.

Jesus was fully aware of all of this taking place. But unknown to His enemies they were actually moving themselves right into an ambush set up for them by God Himself. By attempting to exploit the pain of some of Jesus' best friends they were actually setting themselves up to become exposed themselves. But all of this was as yet unseen by them when Jesus arrived.

Mary and Martha must have wondered how long Jesus would hesitate to do something to address their situation. When Lazarus was sick they knew he needed the presence of Jesus for his restoration and they confidently sent a message to Jesus fully expecting Him to come to their aid. But He did not and things only got worse. They must have begun to question each other saying, Is it bad enough yet? How long will He wait to help us? When will things turn around for us? Is He so intimidated by the threats of the Jews that He is afraid to come back to help us? Where is God when we need Him most?

His disciples may have had parallel questions of their own. Jesus' actions seemed to contradict what they thought they knew about Him and they could not predict what He might do next. They were forced to choose whether to trust His judgment and decisions without explanations or to turn away from following Him. They decided to continue their journey with Him but with open misgivings about the potential outcome.

Do these questions sound familiar? I have certainly resonated with them during some intense periods of trouble in my own life and I am sure it will happen again. I can distinctly remember watching things worsen in my situation, praying earnestly for deliverance only to meet with seemingly no answers from heaven. I began to ask myself, How bad do things have to get before God intervenes? I thought God showed up when people got to the end of their rope and I thought I was there. But when I looked around it seemed He was nowhere to be found. How bad do things have to get before God shows up to rescue me?