Don't Be Dead Any More

I am basically going to just transcribe the words straight from my journal, which might be a tad rambly and/or incoherent, so let me give you a little bit of context first. A few weeks ago, I heard probably the best sermon of my life on this passage from John 11. You can read the whole chapter here, but the following is the part I'll be focusing on. Y'all, this has changed my life, which is exactly what the Gospel should do whenever you truly encounter it. I hope it changes your life too.

³⁸Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹"Take away the stone," he said.
      "But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."
 ⁴⁰Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
 ⁴¹So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."
 ⁴³When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
      Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

Roll the stone away to expose the death in your heart, no matter how ugly it is or how bad it smells. No matter how offensive it is, roll the stone away because it's the only way you can walk out of death and into new life. Come out of your death. Come out into the light no matter what you look like or how badly decayed you are.

Come out of death and show everyone freely that you were dead - talk about the sins it's "not ok to talk about." Expose them to the light so they can end - you're not dead any more. And then end them. Stop living as one who is still dead! Walk out of the tomb.

What are your tombs? What's dead inside of you? What stones is Jesus trying to roll away? Are you resisting the exposure of your death because you think you'll be embarrassed or that others will be offended by it? They're involved too.

God says to those around you that they are to remove your grave clothes. You don't have to do anything but come out of the grave. That's it. Jesus has already called you back to life. Just take the step out and let your community take off your grave clothes. Then get to living without even a hint of death around you. You're finished with that.

Stop living as though you're still dead. What in the world could possibly be stopping you? As you work through this, write down any "buts" that come to mind, and let Jesus deal with those. Just one chapter before this story of Lazarus in John, Jesus says, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). He didn't come to die so that you could stay dead inside, but rather, He has called you into abundant life and made a way for you to live it. So get on it.

It Doesn't Depend on Me (Thank Goodness)

Well thankfully Jesus doesn't depend on me blogging regularly to get His work done or we'd all be in real trouble. Especially me. I won't go into what sparked or caused such a lengthy absence. I'll just say this: The Gospel has been relevant, alive and active the whole time I've been inactive. Hallelujah.

I want to pose some questions to you all today that were posed to me at church this morning. We were reading the story of Jesus at the banquet in Luke 14. Now in this passage, those slimy Pharisees are trying to trick Jesus into doing something bad. Again. And not only does he outwit them (again), he then starts pushing all their buttons, trying to get at the heart of their actions. And he gets onto the topic of status, saying:

"When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.' Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (vv. 8-11)

I don't know about y'all, "humbling myself" has always made me feel self-righteous, and it just occurred to me today that that cannot possibly be what Jesus wants from us. He's going for two things here:

1. This whole scene is very rat-race-ish to me. There's a lot of jostling and fighting for position, for status. Everyone wants to best seat in the house - the seat of honor. And while that is a foreign concept to our society, don't we all do this? We are all seeking approval, acclaim and honor for something from somewhere, and the fight we are in to get to the top is killing us. It's not helping us at all. It's just making the whole thing feel worthless, and we're getting burnt out.
2. He's not asking us to "take the high road" or "be the bigger man." When Jesus tells you to humble yourself, he's telling you you've gotten too big for your britches. Later in the same chapter, he says, "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind" (v. 13), and then he tells a story about a man who was hosting a banquet and how the people who were invited to the party all made excuses as to why they couldn't come, and how the master of the house then invited all the infirm and derelicts off the street instead, and the people with the stupid excuses were off tending to their stupid excuses instead of eating roomfuls of delicious food.
   
   And what he's saying is that his parties are full of the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Some of us just haven't realized yet that we fall into those categories. We're still trying to do it all on our own without any help, and in that case, of course we're too busy to make it to the party. That's a lot of hard work! 

If we could just see ourselves in light of who God is, we would realize that we are the sick, we are the poor, we are the lame and blind and crippled. And we are invited to the party. Humbling ourselves isn't letting someone merge in front of us on the highway, and it isn't volunteering at a soup kitchen once a month (although there's nothing wrong with those things). It's recognizing that God is GOD, and we are absolutely not. It's understanding that we are no better than anyone else, and that our status in this world is ultimately meaningless, effectively eliminating the jostling. And when we humble ourselves in those ways, He has promised to lift us up. 

Our problem is that we have a million excuses as to why we're not broken. "Look God," we say, "I just got this new job! See? I'm doing fine. I don't need you to feed me. Plus, I'm too busy working to buy my own food. Please excuse me from your bounty." Or perhaps our relationships get in the way: "Oh, sorry God. I just got married, so clearly I'm doing great. And I'm far too overwhelmed trying to keep my spouse's approval to be available for your little get-together. Please excuse me from your community."

But if we would stop making excuses to get out of God's presence and provision, if we could own our inability to do it all ourselves, then we could feast at the banquet and be personally ushered by Jesus to a place of honor.

So my questions are as follows:

• How/Where am I jostling for position? How do I stop?
• What does this look like practically? 
• How can I humble myself, trust solely in Jesus for my worth and honor, yet still work hard and apply myself, using the gifts He has given me to do the work He has for me to do?
• What excuses am I making up for not doing these things?

Feel free to join in the conversation in the comments or on your own blog (and send me a link if you do it that way).