Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-11-22

At times all believers wonder – no differently than do secular folk – Why do the “good” suffer? Indeed, why do sinners prosper? Where is God? Why is it necessary to go through trials at all? Why did my spouse die? How can I survive this economy? Can a blessing please come my way?

God answers prayer, yes; but why is the answer so often No? Why does God seem to delay His answers… or seem seldom to answer a specific pleading?

… Why does an all-powerful God, who loves us so much – and which we hardly doubt – where is He when we cry? Why must we suffer anguish? We feel we are not selfish, but why, God, are You so often late??? Have you cried out with such questions?

I have friends who have been in that place lately, and so have I. Our souls cry out, even as we know the truths, and we know His word: we don’t need Bible college to know that He is sovereign. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, as Hebrews Chapter 11 states. “Trust and Obey,” the old Gospel song assures us. There are hundreds of Bible promises. “Father knows best!” Even that has spiritual application!

But yet we hurt. And wait. And listen. And, sometimes, our spiritual shopping-list seems to have been ignored.

Among many clues to these questions in the Bible, I think today of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, and a special friend, we read, of Jesus. Lazarus was sick… Jesus was sent for to pray healing over him… Jesus was “late,” arriving four days after his friend died and was entombed. Why, why, cried the women and many other followers, Why were you late, Jesus?

Jesus wept (the shortest verse in Scripture), we are told. He prayed to His Father that His divinity might be manifest in that moment, to assert (once again) to witnesses that He was indeed sent by God. He instructed mourners that the stone over the tomb’s entrance be rolled away… despite protestations that there would be ugly putrefaction from a four-day-old dead body.

But Lazarus walked out. He was whole and healed.

Jesus directed that the remaining burial cloths be removed. The Lord was, we see, not the only example of a resurrection recorded in Scripture… and neither the last. (Many are to come!)

The lessons are many. First, regarding timely prayer requests: Was Jesus “four days late”… or was He, rather, precisely on time? I urge you to watch the short music video below, enacting the scene but sharing the Truth better than I am doing.

And we ought to practice humility. Our agenda is not God’s; our urgency is not His. My comment about a shopping-list is too often how we approach the Lord. That is not communication as God desires.

Also there is the point about God’s sovereignty. Jesus’ timing was perfect… but we need to learn that Jesus did not raise everybody from the dead. He might have healed everyone He met, but the Bible does not claim that. He loves us, but His ways are not our ways.

Do you begin to see the “problem” we sometimes have with prayer? The problems can be with our approach, not His hearing. The ultimate lesson is to have faith. “Be still and know that I am God,” He tells us.

I was persuaded, years ago, to have an all-in belief in Divine Healing, close to the “name it and claim it” theology we hear discussed. Then one day I realized that an evangelist I fervently followed… wore glasses. And his wife talked about sharing Jesus… during her physical therapy sessions. Hmmm.

My late wife underwent heart and kidney transplants despite praying that she be supernaturally healed instead. A year later she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, was “prayed over” but underwent surgery, after which the doctors “couldn’t explain it,” but there were no traces of cancer cells.

God is sovereign. Why do we always need reminders?

I take away one more lesson from Lazarus. He was from Bethany, but he is also a Metaphor, if you will forgive me. Lazarus was dead… and before Jesus shows up in our lives, we too are dead in our sins.

And others might pray for us… but only a personal encounter with the Savior will bless us.

Also: instead of thinking of yourself as a Mary or Martha or an onlooker… imagine yourself as Lazarus. He was not only dead by all the ways they could measure. But, remember Jesus ordered that the bandages and burial cloths be removed? Let us think about that: we often, and in many ways, are encumbered, and bound, by our sins. Burial cloths, in a way of thinking, restraining us.

Death accompanies such restraints – sins – on our lives. Jesus looses and frees us from them. And like Lazarus, we may be born again.

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Video Click: Four Days Late