A Holy Capacity to See
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jeremy_1_12-12-2025_134818: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Rebuilding Faith.
These are 10 minute Bible messages for people with questions and doubts. We're continuing a story in John chapter 11 that we began last week as Jesus's dear friend is sick. His name's Lazar. Jesus finds out that he's sick and he waits two more days,
Bring out your dad. He does want nine. Infant. I'm not dead. What? Nothing. Here's your nine infant. I'm not dead. Yeah, he says he is not dead. Yes, he is. I'm not. He isn't. Well, he will be stewing. He is very ill. I'm getting better.
jeremy_1_12-12-2025_134818: And by the time Jesus shows up, Lazarus is already dead. And then we begin to see the tension of this, the grief of this, and the confusion of what is Jesus doing and why is Jesus acting the way he is? This is John chapter 11, beginning in verse 17. When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave [00:01:00] for four days Now, he stressed last week.
Why four days was important. They would've thought within the first three days that he could be resurrected, but at this point they're all moving on. They're not expecting anything. Bethany was only a few miles on the road from Jerusalem, and many of the people had come to console Martha and Mary in their loss.
So at this point, he's been dead long enough. You have the community that has gathered from neighboring areas, neighboring cities, right? So they're coming in from Jerusalem to mourn with them, which indicates this was a prominent family in that community. There are people literally coming in to be with them, to sit with them.
In their grief, death is a painful reality and they're joining them in carrying this load together, especially when you had hoped as Martha and Mary had that, that someone like Jesus could have done something and you had put hopes in that, and then [00:02:00] none of those hopes have come to fruition. Your brother has died.
Verse 20. When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask. Now notice she believes that Jesus could have healed Lazarus.
So there's a little bit of frustration, a little bit of tension there of like if you were here, I believe you could have healed him. You could have kept him from dying. She thinks he has the ability to do that, but she also seems to be indicating that she thinks Jesus can do more than that. Right. There's this, underlying tension here that, that maybe there's something else.
It sounds like she's holding onto a glimmer [00:03:00] of hope that maybe there still might be something despite all the odds, despite what everything looks like. Maybe Jesus could still do something, but she knows that it's day four and it's not likely, and this position that Martha is in. Really sums up the way a lot of us interact with God.
A lot of us, this is the way we feel when we interact with God, especially. In our prayer life, when there's those things you, you really want God to do, you really want God to show up, but you also, no, that's probably not likely. It's probably not gonna happen.
You mock my pain. Life is pain highness.
Anyone who says differently is selling something.
jeremy_1_12-12-2025_134818: And so you hesitate. Do I even ask, do I even pray for those things?
Do I even open myself up for that kind of disappointment? Especially if you've ever prayed for healing. If you've been in the same context as Martha and Mary, when, when you are literally pleading with [00:04:00] someone's life, that's where this gets really raw and really vulnerable when you bring these requests to God.
There's a story a few years back that really illustrated this well, and December of 2019. There was a 2-year-old girl named Olive who died in her sleep, and her parents posted about this. They were members of a church named Bethel and they posted that they were praying for Resurrection for their daughter.
And you can understand why grieving parents would, would go to any lengths that they thought possible, and they believed that God was going to resurrect their daughter. And so they got thousands of people, both in their church community and around the world to join them in praying. For this resurrection of their daughter.
And each day they would go to social media and they would post an update, you know, no resurrection yet, we're still praying this is a good day for resurrection. [00:05:00] And they had people, day by day tuned in to see whether or not God would show up. By day six when no resurrection had happened, they finally wrote a post acknowledging that, that they're moving on, that they don't think that this is going to happen.
And so at that point, a profound disappointment was also added to the profound grief that they were going through as well. And I remember watching this in real time, realizing like, yeah, they're, they're praying for something that we believe God can do. And yet you also realize like this is a vulnerable thing to pray for.
Now, there's numerous articles written about this story because it became, uh, pretty big in, in the headlines. And there's one article written by a guy named Adam Lee, and he had a fascinating insight as he reflected on them praying for the resurrection of their daughter. He said this, the only fatal error in religion is [00:06:00] putting your beliefs to an unambiguous test.
That's the vulnerability here. When you put God on the line and you put your faith on the line, that if God doesn't show up, now you've got this problem. And that's what happened in this heartbreaking story of this little girl named Olive, that then everybody was left to wonder why did God. Not show up.
Why didn't God answer? There's a tension here that anyone who has followed Jesus for any amount of time, you've probably felt this tension to some degree, and Martha is feeling this tension as she's talking with Jesus. Verse 23, Jesus told her, your brother will rise again, which is a masterpiece of ambiguity because if I'm Martha, I'm like, okay.
When. Like, what are we actually talking about here? Now, Martha takes this to mean the end of days, like at some point down the [00:07:00] line, he's going to be resurrected again. Verse 24. Yes. Martha said he will rise when everyone else rises. At the last day, Jesus told her, I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live even after dying.
Anyone who, or everyone who lives in me and believes in me, will never, ever die. Do you believe this, Martha? Yes, Lord. She told him, I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come into the world from God. Now notice that Jesus is shifting Martha's focus here from an abstract belief in resurrection at some future point to a personalized belief that Jesus is the one who holds the power to do it.
So he is redirecting it from a concept that's out here and saying, no, no, Martha, do you believe in me that I am able to [00:08:00] do this? This is why he asks her, do you believe? In this, do you believe that I can do this? He's not asking, do you think I'm about to raise your brother back? 'cause she's clearly not seeking that in this moment.
But he's saying, do you think I have the power? Or do you, you put that somewhere else? Are you connecting me to this power of resurrection? I believe this is what Jesus often tries to do with us as well, to take our beliefs from these abstract concept concepts and to move them to him so we're not just believing.
Yeah, God can someday do something, but Jesus can do this and Jesus will be involved. And this is a shift that even in our own tensions, even in our own confusions and disappointments, we've gotta figure out how to make this shift as well. The author Richard Beck has said it like this, faith is a matter of perception.
Faith isn't forcing yourself to believe in unbelievable things. [00:09:00] Faith is overcoming attentional blindness phrased differently. Faith is about enchantment, or rather a re-enchantment, the intentional recovery of a holy capacity to see and experience God in the world. You see, faith in Jesus isn't about agreeing to a list of doctrines and creeds and these abstract ideas.
It is the practice of putting your faith in the person of Jesus and figuring out how do we follow him in the midst of what we're going through today. I'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith.
