John 11.1-16

I recently made a commitment to read through the second half of the book of John with a friend. We are using N.T. Wright’s ‘For Everyone’ series as a guide. The idea is to deal with a chapter or so each time we meet together. I’ve been excited about it. This week has been my first week to engage with this portion of the scriptures and the material. It has been a blessing. I thought I’d put a few of my cursory thoughts up on here.

John 11.1-16

We are starting with John 11. It’s the story of the death and raising of Lazarus. This story has always been intriguing to me from the standpoint that Lazarus was one of the few people to have to die twice. Poor guy. But aside from that, it’s a marvelous foreshadowing of Jesus’ own resurrection. It really fits perfectly within the book of John.

One of the more dramatic elements of the first 16 verses of this chapter is Jesus’ IN-action. He learns about Lazarus’ plight, but doesn’t leave right away to ‘save the day.’ As N.T. Wright puts it… it’s a reminder that ‘his timing is not our timing.’ It’s actually something I’ve been working through in my own life recently.

I started working at my current church in 2007. It was my first ever Lead pastor position… so there was (and continues to be) a lot of on the fly, on the job learning. It seems that there was the expectation that this church would just start to take off because of my arrival. Truth be told, I was hoping this church would take off as well.

Four years later, and we are just now starting to get some traction. We are just now starting to see some things pay off. And it’s not huge gains yet, we are up about 5% from where we were last year. Last year was the worst, though. We ended up taking the first attendance loss since I’ve been here. It was really discouraging and led me to ask some unhealthy questions. Maybe I’m not the right one for this position. Maybe this church needs a different type of leader. Maybe I can’t grow a church.

I heard a sermon recently where the preacher made the comment: ‘Everything in the middle can seem like failure.’ It was a moving reminder to me that it’s easy to get discouraged in the middle of the story. I’ve found that it’s easy for people in churches to get discouraged in the middle of the story. That sometimes we need to wait for God’s perfect timing. Sometimes it seems like he arrived too late. But that would be because our vision is blurred or insufficient.

This passage urged me to trust in God’s timing. Not my own. Not in someone else’s timing. God’s timing. This passage also served as a reminder to continue to trust in Him with the ‘middle of my story.’ In those times when everything looks like failure… to continue to obey and trust that God will work and move in His own time and in His own way…