Killing Your Lazarus

John 11:4 reads: “When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” “This was Jesus’ reply to Mary and Martha who sent a message to Jesus that Lazarus was ill in Bethany. Jesus was not bothered and he did not go to Bethany. Eventually Lazarus died. He told the disciples that Lazarus was just sleeping (John 11:11) and the disciples thought Lazarus was literally sleeping (v.12). So, Jesus had to tell them in simple words: “Lazarus is dead” (v.14). For Jesus your disappointment, loss, false accusations, betrayal, suffering and sickness are not complex things but very simple. We are “complex” and Jesus is simple and straightforward because He is the way, the truth and the life! After four days of Lazarus’s death, Jesus turned up. A disillusioned Mary told Jesus: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (v.21). You may be telling Jesus:” I can’t process this. I don’t know how to go about with this situation in my life.” In times as these, the very fact that God has knowledge about your hair (Luke 12:7), the words before you speak (Psalm 139:4), the thoughts before you think (Psalm 139:2) and the prayers before you pray (Mathew 6:8) assures us that God is not hiding from you. And we don’t need to search for God because He is already there. He already found you when you laid yourself down at the feet of Jesus atop mount Golgotha. Reformer Martin Luther said:”I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.” If you hold on to God you will slip off. But if you let God hold you, you will not slip off. Lazarus was dead and so he could not hold onto Jesus. But Jesus held him and death slipped off Lazarus. It was either death or life – Jesus; not both.
You were dead and Christ gave you life like Lazarus. Now your new life – your Lazarus, that is – has to die. This is the second death you have to go through as a follower of Christ. The process is: more of Christ and less of you. You twist the process and your life, both your spiritual life and natural life, is at stake. It does not matter whether you just got saved or you got saved a long time ago. There is only one way – to leave aside everything and stick to what Christ lays out for you. You do that by reading and studying the Word and letting the Word transform the way you think and ultimately your character by the power of the Holy Spirit. Without the Word you will go nowhere in your walk with the Lord.   As a new creature in Christ, there are many things to be looked after and taken care of. Things which did not make sense before seem to make more sense now. That is a mysterious phenomenon for a new believer because the very same things are different now – a striking confirmation that the old is gone and the new has come. However, so much as the joy kindled by a newborn baby in a family tends to fade with time, the joy of the walk as a child of God tends to fade. So, Paul wrote two powerful words to the Thessalonians: “Rejoice evermore” (1 Thessalonians 5:16). It is not an easy task to rejoice always but look at what David said in Psalms 16:11: “You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” So, the question if you want to rejoice is: Can you trust God no matter what? Many are afraid to rejoice. That is very un-Christian. Are you one of them? You should not be afraid to rejoice. The Thessalonian church was in the midst of jealous unbelieving Jewish mobs (Acts 17: 5) who had just one thing in mind: to make the lives of the believers miserable –intense  persecution. Besides, according to 2 Corinthians 8:2 they also faced extreme poverty: “How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality.” But they were rejoicing because they were sure of the riches Christ has. You have to stand alone with no one supporting you except Jesus. That is what your second death is about.
Jesus is saying to you:”If we have to walk together, you have to listen to me. My way is narrow. It is not a comfortable road. If you say that we are walking together, we cannot be on different types of road. Be real for I am real.” It was Jesus who raised Lazarus. So, ultimately it is God who can enable us to grow. However, there is something we must do for God to help us grow.  We must choose to follow God. When we read the story of the apostle Paul, we feel excited and get a lot of encouragement. But remember that it was not at all exciting for him. How comfortable has been your life since you accepted Jesus? Are you excited? Check carefully. Know that you have chosen Christ not for Christ’s sake but for your sake. God has not changed. He requires of us that we put him first above everything. You will lose when you choose God. That is the harsh reality. Are you willing to face it? The lordship of Jesus in your life will be determined by asking:”Did Jesus or I get priority?” Abraham did it when he took his son Isaac for sacrifice. Like any father he was emotionally and mentally attached to his son. But when God told him to sacrifice his son, Abraham made a decision. It must have been very hard for him. He made the decision at the spiritual level not at the emotional and mental level. When you made a decision to follow Christ, you made a decision at the spiritual level. Abraham’s decision also shows us that if we don’t allow our will to be continuously surrendered before God, our walk with God is of no use at all. Revelation 21:7: “He that overcomes shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.” You are called to overcome. That process of overcoming is a lifelong process. We already started the race when we made a decision to follow Christ. How we finish our race is what God is looking at. The only way to reach that is to kill your Lazarus.