Discovering What's Next

There were three days left in my Bible study, and I had no idea what my 22-year-old daughter in Christ and I would study now.  I had scrolled down a screen full of possibilities but hadn't really settled on anything.  Frustrated, I simply clicked the X and wandered down our gravel drive to pick up the evening mail.

I don't know about you, but I'm the type of woman who needs accountability when it comes to studying God's Word.  Plop 66 books in my lap, and I can read them, but those randomly-read words rarely lead me to life-altering action on my knees before the Lord.  And honestly?  I'm more apt to read less than more...or some days, not at all.  Give me, instead, a book designed to guide my study of those same words along with a good Bible Dictionary and commentary or two, and my spirit consistently grows like a well-watered sunflower in a hot Louisiana summer.

I find I can commit more easily to devoutly studying part of God's Word for six, eight, ten weeks at a time.  Then, after that period of time, I recommit to doing the same thing over again with another study of another part of Scripture.  Breaking up my study into pockets of time like this keeps me in the Word year-round because I'm constantly having to recommit myself to starting anew when the assigned "weeks" of my present study are up.

At the end of June, though, I had no idea what to study next.  Imagine my jaw-dropping surprise when I slit open a padded envelope and an entire Bible study complete with book, workbook and DVDs dropped on my kitchen's gathering table.

More importantly?  The study was about Lazarus, the Bible character I had been compelled to study on my own just the week before as I pondered how Jesus' love doesn't always look like love in my own life.  I've never had a Bible study thrown at me in such a literal way or at such a needed juncture, but by God's divine providence, I began a 10-week study of Joanna Weaver's newest book Lazarus Awakening: Finding Your Place in the Heart of God. 

Weaver is best known to me for her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.  Here, though, she looks at the story of Lazarus' death and resurrection as recorded in John 11 & 12.  While the first two chapters were difficult for me to sink my teeth into, by Chapter 3, the study came alive for me, and the accompanying DVD showed me a woman who was not a ravishing beauty with great speaking ability, but a woman who is ordinary--like me--and whose love for Jesus radiates off her face as she speaks.

In the study, Weaver shows how like Lazarus, we are all sick with the deadly illness of sin and in need of a resurrection, but to achieve that, God desires a relationship with us.  To accomplish that relationship, often, God will withdraw everything from our lives that detracts from Him so that we will pursue the one best thing--Him--versus the many good things.

Weaver continues with this theme by discussing how humanity perceives love as the quick meeting of our needs, but trouble can be a blessing.  She uses one of my new-favorite quotes from Charles Haddon Spurgeon to illustrate the point:

If you want to ruin your son, never let him know hardship.  When he is a child carry him in your arms, when he becomes a youth still dandle him, and when he becomes a man still dry-nurse him, and you will succeed in producing an arrant fool.  If you want to prevent his being made useful in the world, guard him from every kind of toil.  Do not suffer him to struggle...supply all his wishes, avert all disappointments, prevent all troubles, and you will surely tutor him to be a reprobate and to break your heart.  But put him where he must work, expose him to difficulties, purposely throw him into peril, and in this way you shall make him a man, and when he comes to do a man's work and to bear man's trial, he shall be fit for either.  My Master does not daintily cradle His children when they ought to run alone;...but He lets them tumble down to the cutting of their knees, because then they will walk more carefully by-and-by, and learn to stand upright by the strength which faith confers upon them. (p. 58-59).

God restrains Himself from meeting all our wants in order to produce what Weaver refers to as "enduring love" for the Lord in our hearts.  And yet, to grow in our love and relationship with God, we must stop dwelling in our own tombs, caught between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit.

The best chapters in Weaver's study delve into "tomb living" or how once Jesus resurrects us to new live and the stone is rolled away, we still choose to live in defeat, fear, and wrapped in our graveclothes that trip us up and drag down our ministry and the ministry of others.

In one passage, Weaver calls us well-seasoned Christians to help set free those around us by helping them on their road of sanctification, of becoming like Christ. She argues we Christians often keep new Christians firmly bound in their grave clothes by how we treat them: "We bind people through our attitudes toward them.  We bind them when we hold onto their faults instead of lifting up and encouraging their attempts to change.  We bind people when we don't forgive them.  We bind them when we gossip to others about their faults.  Whenever we treat people out of our smallness instead of the Lord's abundance; we keep them bound" (p. 126).

Ouch.

Maybe it's time for some of us to lay down our expectations of where someone should be on his journey as a Christian and should, instead, walk alongside them, helping them become all they can be in Christ.

Whether you are a new Christian or a more well-seasoned one, Lazarus Awakening will speak hope and wisdom into your heart.  It's not often a book receives my wholehearted recommendation, but this is a "keeper" on my bookshelf, one that has both convicted me and comforted me through a rough season of change in my household and difficulty in my church life.

When Love Doesn't Look Like Love

Near my bed sits a yellow legal-sized piece of paper, crudely-formed ABC's strung together to read, "I Love Mommy Because."  Numbers fall down the page's left margin beside a list of whatever my youngest son could dream up that fit the bill.

I've held onto this love letter for almost two years now.  On those days when my children just don't get how everything I do is an act of love for them, I pick up this page and remember back to my oldest son sobbing on my sofa while younger siblings peeked around corners or stood on the steps below to hear his complaints about how this mommy didn't love him as much as she loved the twins.

Even the walls listened that day as I snuggled him close and began to list everything I had done that week because I loved him--I washed his clothes so he wouldn't go naked, I forced him to drink his milk so he would have strong bones, I allowed him to go to Oma's house so he could have be loved by his other family, I drove to the library and checked out more books so he could open up entire worlds through reading...

When the tears stopped, he went merrily along his way as if nothing had happened, and I wondered if he had internalized anything I'd said.  But a few days later, the yellow love list appeared, a testament that the son who had been listening in the wings had understood.

Much like my children know I love them, I know God loves me.  Sometimes, though, if I'm really honest with myself, God's love doesn't look like love to me. In fact?  It looks and feels a lot like pain and maybe even a little like punishment, even when it's nothing of the sort.   

While my Bible study had nothing to do with the story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus this past week, that's where I found myself stuck....on the tiny, insignificant word So:

"Now a man was sick, Lazarus, from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, and it was her brother Lazarus who was sick. So the sisters sent a message to Him: “Lord, the one You love is sick” (Jn. 11:1-3).

It's the word "so" that demonstrates Mary and Martha's faith in Jesus and in His ability to heal.  "So" can be translated "therefore" or even "consequently."  According to Thayer's Greek Lexicon, it's a word "indicating that something follows from another necessarily."

In other words, Because of X.....then Y.  Because Lazarus was sick (X).....the sisters sent for Jesus (Y).

That use of "So" makes perfect sense, demonstrating the sisters' faith in Jesus' power over illness.  Please come...

But Jesus didn't.  

In fact, after Jesus heard the message, Scripture includes a really odd phrase "Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus" followed immediately by the words "So when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was" (Jn. 11:5-6).

In the Greek, it's the same word found in verse 3.  "So"--consequently.

Because Jesus loved Mary and Martha (and maybe even Lazarus?) (X)....he didn't go heal Lazarus (Y).

Imagine Mary and Martha waiting...expectantly waiting, turning with eager anticipation each time they heard footsteps in the dust outside the house.  Or perhaps their faith was even greater and they waited expectantly for Jesus to simply heal from afar as He had done earlier with the nobleman's son (Jn. 4:46-54).  Either way--the waiting for a miracle that just never happened must have been heartbreaking....Lazarus' death seeming to be such an unnecessary disappointment.

Honestly, someone having the power to help but choosing not come to my aid when I call to them for help--that just doesn't look like love to me. 

But that's what Scripture says: He loved; consequently, he waited.

Jesus explains His actions to the disciples by saying, " I’m glad for you that I wasn’t there so that you may believe" (Jn. 11:15).  In essence, Jesus was telling them that He loved them enough to allow pain and heartache in their lives, all so that their faith would be strengthened. 

When Jesus finally made it to the three-day-dead corpse of Lazarus, Mary and Martha both seemed to question His love, each woman repeating the same phrase, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died" (v. 21, 32).   

Even in their grief, though, they spoke faith in Jesus' ability.  That had not changed.  But Jesus loved them enough to desire to show them even more of Himself in order to increase that faith.

When Martha is disturbed at Jesus' request to open the tomb, Jesus says just this: "Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" (v. 40). 

This act of love in showing His power over death did more than a simple act of healing could ever do.  What's more, it not only increased Mary and Martha's faith but increased others' faith as well.

Understanding God's love versus man's love requires us to stop and view things from God's point of view.

• As painful as our sufferings may seem in our humanity, in God's economy, NOT healing a person can be an act of love. 
• In God's economy, the sufferings of this life that seem to last an eternity are actually less than the blink of an eye in comparison to the true eternity. 
• In God's economy, it's not just about me and my faith being increased.  It's also about those around me and their faith being increased as well.  

No matter what our emotions tell us, let us constantly look at our circumstances as proof of God's love for us, saying as Paul did, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor. 4:16-18)

Don't Make Your Wilderness Into Your Grave

We've all experienced a season in the wilderness.  Maybe we've even experienced more than one.

In our memories, it is a dark place of uncertainty, struggle, difficulty, and often pain.  It is not a desert we ever would have chosen to walk through, even if what it led to was worth the trip in retrospect.

There we stood in the wilderness--day after day, month after month, maybe even year after year....struggling to lift one foot in front of the other as we slogged up sandy dunes taller than we had ever climbed before.  Each dune was so tall that when we slid down to the valley between them, we could see neither where we were headed nor where we had been.  Some days, in the deepest core of our wilderness, even when we mastered another summit, all we beheld from that height were equally-high mountains of sand as far as the eye could see.

We lived in the wilderness, a barren desert with no entrance to retreat back through and no visible exit.

Why am I here?

The Israelites surely must have asked this very question as they camped in the wilderness with Moses after leaving behind the slavery of Egypt and aiming towards their Promised Land.

We all know the story, how an eleven day journey transformed into a 38+ year wandering in the desert after the people lacked sufficient faith to possess the Promised Land.  Thirty-eight years of pointless wandering in circles, all the while transforming their wilderness into a graveyard as tens of thousands of people died to fulfill God's judgment.

God said to that unfaithful group: "your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness" (Num. 14:29-33).

God's desire was not for the Israelites to wander aimlessly in their wilderness for 40 years.  He longed for them to have faith in Him.  He longed for them to obey Him.  Instead of grumbling and disobeying God in their lack of faith, God wanted them to understand that yes, they were meant to go through this difficult time in the wilderness, but to also understand that He. Was. There.  What's more, He. Was. Enough. 

God was with them in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.  God was with them in the daily manna.  God was even with them in the evening quail after they grumbled about the monotony of manna.   

All the while, He was striving to prepare their hearts in that wilderness.  He was working to bring them to a Promised Land of plenty that He had prepared for them.  

As Moses told the Israelites, "And he [the Lord] brought us out from there [Egypt], that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers" (Deut. 6:23). 

The Lord brought them out of Egypt so he could bring them in to the Promised Land.   

He didn't merely bring them "out" in order for them to remain in the wilderness.  He desired to bring them "in" to a land where they could be fruitful.  And yet, instead of believing God....instead of obeying God, their disobedience kept God from bringing them "in" to the land of promise.

What cuts me to the quick is that last verse in the Numbers 14 passage above: "And your children....shall suffer for your faithlessness" (v. 33).

The children suffered for the faithless disobedience of their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers.  Innocent children.....suffering needlessly for their elders' sin.  

This is not a mere history story.  It is not a "let's point our fingers at those stupid Israelites" story either.  No.  This lesson applies even to those of us this side of the cross--to those of us adopted into Moses and Abraham's spiritual family.  

Jesus told His disciples to expect difficulty in their lives if they chose to obey and follow Him: "A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also" (Jn. 15:20). He promised them trials to test them, to sanctify their souls. In short, He promised the child of God seasons in the wilderness.

God will send you and me through the wilderness. If for no other reason, He will be saving us from ourselves by working to sanctify our souls.  It's just a matter of when.  

When those seasons come, though, we can rest in peace knowing that as we struggle through the difficult days, God does not intend for us to remain there in our wilderness until all that's left are our sun-bleached bones. The wilderness need not be our grave.  

God only leads us "out" into the wilderness to "bring us in" to something far greater, to somewhere that we can bear fruit!  It's simply up to us to seek Him in our difficulty so that our hearts do not turn bitter and defiant.  

Otherwise, in our disobedience, we not only doom ourselves to pointless wandering in our wilderness, but we doom our children to all too many years of that fate as well.



Image: Stone marked grave in Libya