Pressing On

with THE WORD

A study of the Scriptures to discover who God is, what He is like, and how to partner with Him now.

Filtering by Category: John

Filtering by Tag: relationships

Round 2: A 911 call to Jesus

Thankfully, I have good news.

My wife’s hysterectomy went well. She is resting and recovering at home. God has certainly been answering the prayers lifted up for a successful surgery and good pain management. Now we wait for the pathology report to find out if the cancer had spread beyond her uterus.

We hope and pray for - what we define as - a good outcome: that the cancer was contained and that the surgery removed it all. However, as I am reminded by the post below, our plan for healing isn’t always the same as what God has in-store for us. So, we continue to trust. We continue to wait. We know that He hears our prayers…but we will leave the answer to those prayers up to Him.

A 911 call to Jesus
originally posted on July 5, 2018.

We’ve all been there.  At some point in our lives, the situation is so bad that we feel like we have no where else to turn.  Maybe it is a diagnosis, a car accident, or even a prolonged illness…but we’ve tried everything we know to do to cope, and the only thing left is to hope that God does a miracle.

That’s where we find the people in this story from Jesus’ life.  Two sisters and their brother, all loved by Jesus.  They have an established relationship with each other.  By all indications, Jesus has even stayed at their house, possibly several times.  But something bad has happened to their brother, and the sisters can’t do anything else about it:

John 11:1-3
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 perfume 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.”


Let’s stop here and think about logistics for a moment.  How did they get in touch with Jesus?  According to the text at the end of chapter 10, Jesus wasn’t in Bethany.  Instead, he was a couple days’ journey away.  Martha and Mary couldn’t text or call to ask Him to come to Bethany or to even find out exactly where He was at the moment.  Someone had to physically make the long journey to go to the last place Jesus was known to be, and then go searching for Him from there. 

How time-consuming and risky!  They would have no guarantee of Jesus still being where He was before or that the messenger would end up asking the right person who knew where Jesus and His disciples had gone to next.  Going to this effort only underscores how sick Lazarus really was.  Mary and Martha must have believed that their brother would not live without some sort of divine intervention.

But also keep in mind that Jesus had performed long-distance healing miracles before.  Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurion without even entering the house.  Jesus then publicly praised the centurion for his faith in Jesus’ authority.  You can read about it in Luke 7:1-10.  Surely, the sisters thought, if Jesus was willing to heal a complete stranger, who was the servant of a leader in a foreign army that was occupying Israel…then without a doubt Jesus would heal a fellow countryman that He knew and loved, right?

We don’t know how long it took, but the messenger did eventually find Jesus:

John 11:4-5
When Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.

The messenger and the disciples likely thought Jesus’ statement meant that Lazarus wouldn’t die.  I’m sure they all took some measure of comfort from thinking this.  However, as the story continues, we will see that Lazarus did die from his illness.  Jesus was still right, though – Lazarus’ sickness did not end in death, but death was part of God’s plan this time.

We need to stop here and wrestle with a few observations, even if they are uncomfortable:

·       Sometimes, God allows really bad things to happen to people, even ones He loves.
·       Just because God healed someone else doesn’t mean healing is coming in the same way for us.
·       God performing healing miracles is more about the glory of God than it is about our preference for comfort.

We trust that God hears us when we pray.  We trust that He loves us.  However, just because those two things are true does not mean that He will swoop in and respond in the way that we think He should fix everything. 

Keep Pressing,
Ken

She didn't get it

Jesus is making the Samaritan woman an incredible, no-strings-attached offer:

John 4:13-15
Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.  But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again.  In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
“Sir,” the woman said to Him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”

She wants Jesus’ living water for 2 reasons:
·       so she won’t get physically thirsty again
·       so she won’t have to come to the well to draw water

She didn’t get it.  She didn’t catch that Jesus’ metaphor was about giving her eternal life.  He wasn’t talking about physical thirst.  However, Jesus doesn’t get upset with her for not immediately grabbing on to spiritual truths.  Instead, He goes on to address her real thirst problem:

John 4:16-19
“Go call your husband,” He told her, “and come back here.”
“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said.  “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.  What you have said is true.”
“Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet.”

I find this portion of their dialogue border-line hilarious: I see that you are a prophet.  What an understatement!  But let’s step into her sandals for a moment.  The re-occurring fault in her life was just called out by a complete stranger.  This part of her life is very likely why she comes to the well alone and at the hottest part of the day – to avoid the all-too-knowing glances of others in her community.  A relationship history that included five husbands plus another lover would raise eyebrows in our modern society…but in ancient times?  Practically unthinkable. 

Broken relationships are not a new, modern problem – she’d had many husbands and was now living with someone else (either that, or she has a relationship with someone else’s husband…).  And yet…don’t miss this…Jesus knows this about her and still offers her eternal life.

But why does Jesus tell her to go get her husband?  It seems kind of random in the story.  The request doesn’t appear to fit the conversation to this point.  However, we need to keep in mind the historical context:

From Dr. Constable’s online notes:
Jesus’ instruction to call her husband was proper, because if He was really going to give her something valuable, her husband needed to be present.  This was necessary to avoid any misunderstanding about the reason for the gift – especially in view of Samaritan/Jewish tensions…The woman wanted Jesus’ gift, so she admitted that she had “no husband.”  She probably hoped that He would now give it to her.  Instead, however, Jesus gave her a shocking revelation.  He knew about her marital relations intimately, but He related what He knew tastefully.  He commended her twice for telling the truth about her present marital status, but He also unmasked her past.

While she’s still focused on quenching her physical thirst, Jesus shows her that she’s been looking to the wrong wells for intimacy, and that His living water will satisfy her deepest need.  By asking for her husband, Jesus shifts gears to her personal relationship situation.  Jesus did not ignore her sin, but He gently pointed out that her life choices have still left her thirsty.  Her real thirst is for relationship (see Eve’s curse, Genesis 3:16) and she’s been trying to quench it through intimacy with multiple men.

Sometimes God tries to talk with us about spiritual, real-life things, and, like the Samaritan woman, we don’t get it.  We tend to stay focused on our physical needs.  But thankfully, He is patient with us.  Even though it may sting, God reveals how we’ve been trying to fill our deepest need with people or things that do not satisfy…but then He offers to fulfill that desire with Himself.

Keep Pressing,
Ken

A 911 call to Jesus

We’ve all been there.  At some point in our lives, the situation is so bad that we feel like we have no where else to turn.  Maybe it is a diagnosis, a car accident, or even a prolonged illness…but we’ve tried everything we know to do to cope, and the only thing left is to hope that God does a miracle.

That’s where we find the people in this story from Jesus’ life.  Two sisters and their brother, all loved by Jesus.  They have an established relationship with each other.  By all indications, Jesus has even stayed at their house, possibly several times.  But something bad has happened to their brother, and the sisters can’t do anything else about it:

John 11:1-3
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 perfume 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.”


Let’s stop here and think about logistics for a moment.  How did they get in touch with Jesus?  According to the text at the end of chapter 10, Jesus wasn’t in Bethany.  Instead, he was a couple days’ journey away.  Martha and Mary couldn’t text or call to ask Him to come to Bethany or to even find out exactly where He was at the moment.  Someone had to physically make the long journey to go to the last place Jesus was known to be, and then go searching for Him from there. 

How time-consuming and risky!  They would have no guarantee of Jesus still being where He was before or that the messenger would end up asking the right person who knew where Jesus and His disciples had gone to next.  Going to this effort only underscores how sick Lazarus really was.  Mary and Martha must have believed that their brother would not live without some sort of divine intervention.

But also keep in mind that Jesus had performed long-distance healing miracles before.  Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurion without even entering the house.  Jesus then publicly praised the centurion for his faith in Jesus’ authority.  You can read about it in Luke 7:1-10.  Surely, the sisters thought, if Jesus was willing to heal a complete stranger, who was the servant of a leader in a foreign army that was occupying Israel…then without a doubt Jesus would heal a fellow countryman that He knew and loved, right?

We don’t know how long it took, but the messenger did eventually find Jesus:

John 11:4-5
When Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.

The messenger and the disciples likely thought Jesus’ statement meant that Lazarus wouldn’t die.  I’m sure they all took some measure of comfort from thinking this.  However, as the story continues, we will see that Lazarus did die from his illness.  Jesus was still right, though – Lazarus’ sickness did not end in death, but death was part of God’s plan this time.

We need to stop here and wrestle with a few observations, even if they are uncomfortable:

·       Sometimes, God allows really bad things to happen to people, even ones He loves.
·       Just because God healed someone else doesn’t mean healing is coming in the same way for us.
·       God performing healing miracles is more about the glory of God than it is about our preference for comfort.

We trust that God hears us when we pray.  We trust that He loves us.  However, just because those two things are true does not mean that He will swoop in and respond in the way that we think He should fix everything. 

Keep Pressing,
Ken