Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was.

I did a double take when I read these verses in John:11:5-6 the other morning. It was because of that little word "So" that appears at the beginning of verse 6 in the New King James translation. It has been omitted in the KJV and in many other versions, but it's there in the Greek. The word has the same meaning that we usually give it: "therefore, consequently, accordingly, these things being so, et cetra." I began to meditate on why the Son of God, loving Mary, Martha, and Lazarus as He did, would reveal that love by waiting two more days before going to see them, and I think I've arrived at the answer, or at least one that my finite understanding can grasp and comprehend.

Had Jesus gone immediately as Mary and Martha implied that He should have (John:11:21, John:11:32), Lazarus would not have died, but neither would Mary and Martha have experienced death to their relationship with their brother. In other words, there was more death going on than just that of Lazarus, and it was the perfect will of God for it to happen because where there is no death, there can be no resurrection.

We would like to think that the abundant life that Christ came to give us (John:10:10) is somehow an enhanced state of the life that we are already living, but it really is not. He wants to give us an entirely different kind of life, and it's resurrection life. At the same time, we normally fall into the error of thinking that the only way that we can experience that life is by physically dying, when in reality God wants us to live it while still walking on planet earth.

Yet if the only way to have resurrection life is through the experience of death, then the Lord must constantly allow us to find ourselves in circumstances where he does not show up "on time" to heal our sickness. He must allow us to "die" in the midst of our sickness so that He can do the greater thing in resurrecting us to a new life that we could not even imagine before.

I've seen this happen over and over again in my own life and in the lives of others, and quite frankly there is usually no understanding of what's happening. In a few cases we can see it in retrospect, as did Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in John:12:1-3, but we are not skilled at seeing it while we are still in the midst of our death throes. Furthermore, where there is a rudimentary understanding of this principal, the idea is "I'll accept my death here so that I can hurry up and be resurrected." Unfortunately, I don't think that Lazarus was laying in the tomb listening for Jesus voice telling him to "come forth."

When I was a much younger man, I had a deep desire to go to New Newfoundland as a missionary, but God closed the door. As a matter of fact, He closed the door on going anywhere as a missionary. There was a death happening, and it was mine. It wasn't just, "Maybe he'll open the door sometime in the future," rather, "I guess I'll just have to be content serving God here in Rumford, Maine for the duration." It wasn't long after that when God directed me to go to Bible College and then to Ecuador with my family.

We loved it there, but there is never a time when God doesn't want to take us out of living naturally so that we can live "resurrectionally." So (there's that word again), after a little less than a year I was sent back to the US by an insecure young pastor who thought that I was a threat to him. We spent two years living out of suitcases and not buying furniture thinking that God would send us back out immediately until finally there was a death to that desire. Result: "We'll just serve God right here where we are in Baltimore and forget ever going back on the mission field." Six months after we had purchased a house with that course of action in mind, God spoke to us very clearly that it was time to prepare to go back overseas.

I see this principal happening in many areas of the Christian walk, not just with respect to "Christian service." For example, an individual struggles to find a job that will allow him to "get ahead" and can't find one. His prayers don't seem to make it past the ceiling until he accepts his financial death and then in short order God opens up something that not only gives him the ability to succeed personally, but that allows him to help others as well.

Sometimes a young person will have no focus other than to find a mate, and God just doesn't allow it, or they have a relationship that God allows to fall apart. There's a death going on, and it won't be until that young person really and truly dies to the possibility of ever marrying that God will be able to raise them up into the relationship that He has for them. At times it's a marriage that literally falls apart with no visible sign of reconciliation. Until that marriage becomes dead, neither party will ever know the power of resurrection life working in the marriage.

Occasionally  pastors seem driven to build their churches and only succeed in seeing increasing apathy and dwindling numbers. Their own frustration mounts until they finally accept that perhaps they have the ministry of Isaiah, preaching until everyone leaves. When that death is finally accepted with no expectation of anything changing, Jesus is free to build His church (Matt:16:18"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.).

The issue is that it is the love of God that calls for death so that resurrection can result. It is His supreme desire for us to experience something that has never even entered into our hearts (1 Cor:2:9But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.") that allows us to be faced with a tomb in which we have buried our hope for happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction. It is His compassion that keeps us from living in the sickness of a life that is less than what it could be once He raises it from the dead.

While we may know what the will of God is in a given situation, we do not know how He will bring it to pass. Who would have ever thought that God's desire for the redemption of mankind would be wrought through the cruel death of His own Son? I wonder if there is not some miraculous resurrection that is waiting to happen in my life if I will simply accept the death that He is trying to produce in me. I wonder if there is not some miraculous resurrection that is waiting to happen in the life of any believer that will really lay hold of what it means to be crucified with Christ (Gal:2:20"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the [life] which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.). If we do, the world cannot help but notice.