Three Strikes But NOT Out ...

There are rules in a game.  There are rules in the physics of the universe.  It is how we understand things are supposed to function.  From a baseball perspective, if you break one of the rules you are cheating, and will be penalized up to and including forfeiture of the game entirely.  From a physics perspective, if you break one of the rules … we re-write the rule.  As it turns out, science is less precise than baseball.  Every time a rule of physics is broken, we consider this a break-thru, where our understanding is said to have increased, and we set about trying to figure out how the rule was misunderstood in the first place.  A long time ago and in humanity’s usual arrogance, the common thought was that our sun rotated around us, just as our moon does.  The earth was thought to be the center of our solar system or perhaps the universe itself.  But as our powers of observation increased, and we began to realize just how little we know, our understanding changed to recognize that our earth rotates around the sun not the other way around.  Ergo, knowledge expands.

But then this begins to beg the question; is a rule really a rule?  From a physics perspective, it is only a current state of thinking.  From a physics perspective, we have to admit we don’t know everything, and what today we accept as a rule, tomorrow we have to adjust to a new reality.  So for everything we “know” about physics is actually just a matter of perspective.  Now from a baseball perspective, a rule is a condition or behavior that we all mutually agree is a rule.  The rule is a rule because we say it is.  We can make new rules, change old rules, or alter ones currently on the books.  All it takes is a general consensus from the leagues, the owners, the players, and the fans that this is the right thing to do.  Breaking a rule though, will always be considered cheating, and therefore bears some level of punitive response.  We use umpires to judge whether a rule has been broken when the situation presents a very close call.  Is the pitch a ball or a strike.  Is the runner safe or out on base.  We leave the arbitration of these calls up to the umpires, the referees, the disinterested judges of the sport to determine.  But determine they must do, there is no half ball, half strike pitch.  It is either in or out.  There is no half safe / half out runner on base, it is one or the other.  The call is left to the perspective of the umpire, whose job it is to negotiate close calls.

So what kind of game would it be, if after the third strike, the hitter was NOT out?  It would be … the game of souls.  The message of the gospel was given by God to man to preach to His followers, and to the world.  The message itself was like one of those physics rules, where the more we study it, the more our knowledge is increased, and we learn to adjust our thinking to the reality of God’s love.  Over time, we begin to realize just how little we have scratched the surface of how much we know about God’s love.  The basics remain steadfast, but the depth of it seems nearly un-knowable.  But the commission by God to preach this gospel was not offered as a casual directive we are free to ignore at our leisure.  It was more like one of those baseball rules where we all agreed to follow God, because He loves us, and do what He tells us to do.  We can break that rule, but it usually comes with us hurting ourselves in the process.

So when the Angel of God tells Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome the sister of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene the devoted follower of Jesus to go tell His disciples that Jesus is arisen and will meet them in Galilee.  Heaven, the Angel, and God kinda expected them to follow that agreed upon rule.  But the ladies struck out afraid to hit the ball.  They were too afraid no one would believe them.  Strike one.  But Jesus loves us way too much to end the game on one strike, so another pitch must swiftly follow.  Peter recalls the immediate actions for the second pitch opportunity to John Mark in his gospel in chapter sixteen, picking up in verse 9 saying … “Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.” 

Since the word of the Angel was not enough, Jesus decides to make a personal appearance.  To measure the depth of His love, other gospel accounts include the words of Jesus to Mary not to touch Him yet, because He had not yet ascended to His Father to see if His sacrifice was enough to purchase our redemption.  Imagine this.  The most important work in the history of the universe, where Jesus must be so entirely eager to know if it has worked.  He delays knowing.  He delays in order to reach out personally to Mary Magdalene.  This honor does not go to Peter, or John, or any of the other disciples.  It goes to the woman with the broken heart.  It goes to end her weeping, and begin her praising.  It goes ahead of His own needs, as it has always been.  This first preacher of the gospel, this first missionary to the church itself, is a woman who used to be a prostitute.  It is a woman who had in her life 7 demons possessed inside of her.  A woman we would all shun for her past.  A woman many of us could never really accept, forgive and embrace as our own.  Too afraid of our own unbridled passions to recognize the changes Jesus has brought about in her life.

We the upstanding Christians of the modern age, would rather debate the scriptural integrity of woman in ministry on par with men.  And yet God slows the entire work of redemption, to commission a woman with a horrific past, to be His first emissary to the church and the world.  Peter does not record for us the conversation between Mary and Jesus but he does record what comes next.  Mark continues in verse 10 saying … “And she went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept. [verse 11] And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not.”  Foul ball.  This time the message was not encumbered by fear of unbelief, but it was met by it.  The people who should have known the most, remembered the most, failed the most.  The church failed.  The whole church, short the three women who knew, and among them Mary who had seen.  The women were the church at this point, as the men … believed not.

The gospel was still confined to the three women who first heard it.  It had not spread.  Twice the commission was given, the first time not at all, the second with no acceptance.  In the spiritual game of baseball, there must be one last attempt made.  Mark continues in verse 12 saying … “After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country.”  Jesus ascends to His Father, and finally realizes His sacrifice was enough to cover our sins, enough to redeem us from them, and enough to change in us the desire for them.  But the gospel was still not going anywhere on earth.  So for a third pitch, He decides to spend some quality time with 2 disciples who were journeying from the upper room to Emmaus.  Jesus picks 2 disciples to reveal scripture and himself to.  In Jewish tradition 2 witnesses were all that was needed to assert the truth of a thing.  The angel picked three but only Mary Magdalene had spoken up with no success.  Now Jesus was teaching personally 2 disciples, both men in case there was too much cultural bias to believe a woman with a sordid past.  So for this third pitch, there must have been a home run right?  Mark continues in verse 13 saying … “And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them.”

The church failed again.  This time 12 men, down to 11 with the loss of Judas, were hearing 2 of their own preach the gospel of love and life.  And the nine men left refused to believe.  Those nine guys knew these two guys.  They spent the better part of the last three years with them.  And nothing.  Strike Three.  After three full chances to accept this pitch this church should have just struck out right?  It is after all three strikes by people who of all the ones on planet earth should have known better.  You would understand if you told some random Roman guy walking down the street that Jesus, a recent torture and crucifixion victim was now risen, and the Roman guy was little skeptical.  That you would expect.  But to tell the church of Jesus, to tell the very disciples of Jesus, the ones who later refer to themselves as the Apostles of Jesus … and nothing.  Just an invisible satanic umpire echoing beyond what they can hear … strike three.

Again the church failed.  The men failed.  They refused to believe a woman.  They refused to believe two of their own.  This could have easily been the end of the game.  In baseball it is.  But in the game of souls, the true Umpire is not looking to count how often we fail.  He is looking to help us stop failing.  The mission is not to end the game and watch us rail in the pain we cause ourselves.  It is to help us play differently.  To help us think differently.  To change who we are from the inside out.  Sometimes that takes more than just three chances to get it right.  The ones who get it in 3, are blessed.  But those of us laggards who just keep piling failure on top of failure, find ourselves contending with a God who just keeps pitching His love to us until we finally understand.  To lose at this game you have to leave the stadium, go off the grid, and tell God “no” every time He keeps on trying to lure you back on the field.  The style of Jesus is not to count strikes, but to create home runs.

So Jesus does what He must do to fix His church.  He makes a personal appearance.  Mark concludes this section in verse 14 saying … “Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.”  Jesus had to call a little time out with His own disciples.  Peter says He “upbraided” them for their lack of vision, their lack of belief.  Jesus gives the fourth pitch Himself, to make sure it goes according to plan.  When humans seem incapable of believing, Jesus can make them believe.  When humans lack the vision to see the divine, Jesus alone can open their eyes.  This is the whole point.  It is not our job to guard His church, it is His job to do that.  Only He can.  The church failed three times.  It took Jesus to fix it.  It takes Jesus to fix you. 

The pattern of sin and unbelief in your own life are like one of those physics rules we don’t fully understand.  They are lethal to us, but we don’t see it.  They are a spiral downwards causing pain to ourselves and everyone we love, and everyone who loves us, but we refuse to acknowledge it.  In truth, we don’t really want to understand our sins, and Satan is all too happy to keep it that way.  But Jesus knows the truth, and Jesus is The Truth.  We are not bound by the physics rules of sin.  Jesus breaks those things we could not break ourselves.  Our knowledge is increased in that Jesus expands that knowledge.  When we start wanting other things besides our sins, we begin to realize how much better our life is without those sins we were once chained to.  But that vision may seem like a mystery now.  It is only clear, after how Jesus transforms our hearts, and how we love.

There are no three strike rules in place with Jesus, but there are home runs He wants to hit on our behalf.  While Satan screams for the justice we deserve, our God quietly fixes the flaws in us, accepts our punishment for us, forgives us, and brings us home to him no matter how sordid our past has been, or how many demons he has to relocate to do so.  The only outcome to any spiritual game, the only physics rule that cannot be broken, is that the love of God is greater still and will find a way to bring you home.

 

Bleeding and Dying No More [part three] ...

In this series, perhaps the World Series of establishing the identity of Jesus Christ, the first three events had happened in fairly quick succession.  In the space of only a few days, Jesus had commanded nature, and bent time and space.  In this first act, He established Himself as our world’s Creator, and the Author of physics (not its slave).  Next, the infinite power of His Love, commanded an entire host of nearly 2,000 demons to leave a tortured possessed man with a single command.  In this second act, He established that no amount of enemies could stand before His Love, they were compelled to heed the voice of the Son of God who they acknowledged despite what the Pharisees were saying about Him.  In the third act, a woman whose desperation led her to lift her self-imposed limitations and imagine a cure was possible if only she could secretly touch the hem of His garment, and her crazy scheme worked.  But in the third act, Christ wanted this woman to know that she and her terminal disease were important to Him.  He called her His Daughter, blessed her, and sent her home safe in the knowledge that she would never be unimportant to Him.  Now we resume an examination of his fourth and final act to establish and affirm His identity.

Peter recalls to John Mark in his Gospel in chapter five how the fourth act would proceed.  Jesus was still en-route to the home of Jairus to heal his daughter.  Jairus remained a part of the ruling class of Israel, part of the Sanhedrin that was already deep into conspiring to see Jesus killed.  Jairus maintained his association with the very group of men bent on killing Christ.  Justice would demand a life for a life.  Justice would demand that someone bent on killing Christ, should himself suffer the fate he intended for Jesus.  Even if Jairus was not personally a part of the group intent on killing Christ, he had done nothing to distance himself from them until this day, when he submitted in humility before Christ in order to see his own daughter healed from yet another terminal illness.  Justice is and remains the battle cry … of Satan.  It is Satan who cries for justice in the hallowed courts of heaven.  It is Satan that demands that we pay for our sins, for a penalty must surely be paid.  Those who demand justice, echo the demands of Satan.  Our God is not interested in ensuring equality, fairness, and justice; for His Love offers so MUCH more than mere equality and fairness.  His Love is willing to forgive what otherwise Justice could not forgive.  His Love is willing to serve that which does not deserve service.  His Love is willing to reclaim, re-create, and restore that which by self-decision had abased itself beyond comprehension.  There is no Justice in our redemption … there is only Love.

But the decision to humble himself before Christ must have been a hard one for Jairus.  When his daughter fell ill, Jairus must have done what all of us do, what the woman who was just healed did.  He called in the doctors, and physicians.  Money was no object to Jairus, he would gladly spend it all to see his daughter healed.  But alas the best of human wisdom is still often not enough.  And his daughter’s condition got worse instead of better.  Unlike the Roman commander, who “knew” Jesus could heal with a simple command, and did not need to be there to see it done … Jairus had made a different request.  Jairus had asked for Jesus to come to heal his daughter.  The faith of Jairus in Christ was there, but not as great as that of the Roman, who did not have to personally witness what Christ did, the Roman was content to hear the words from His mouth, and to know it would be done.  Jairus needed to see.  But the time Jairus had spent in seeking a cure outside of Jesus Christ, had proven to be time wasted.  Is it any different for us?

How often, in our desire to be redeemed, do we seek a cure for our sins, outside of the transforming power of Jesus Christ?  We look to find spiritual growth in the things we do.  We read the Bible.  We study our weekly lessons for church classes.  We attend services.  We sing our songs of praise, and pray our prayers for blessings (for us).  We give what we can afford to give, be it time or money, to those who are “less fortunate” than ourselves.  In short, we are like the rich young ruler of scriptures, who when he encounters Christ, states that from his youth he has “kept all the commandments” of our God.  But what we spend little time contemplating in our spiritual lives, and spiritual “accomplishments” is “why” we do what we do.  The list cited above is not a bad list.  In point of fact, the transformed heart does all of these things, but it does them for a different reason, and it experiences a different outcome.  Those who pursue doing these activities “in order to see themselves rid of sin” do not see their goals achieved.  It is not our actions that rid us of the desire to sin … it is our surrender to Jesus Christ alone.  It is only the power of Christ who can remove within us, what we cannot remove, no matter how many spiritual things we attempt to do.  It is not our power that can remove our sinful desires, it is the power of Christ alone.  When we seek another remedy for sin, outside of surrendering to Christ, we see only continued failure.

When however, like Jairus, in desperation, we finally decide to humble ourselves and admit we cannot do what must be done … taking our sin, and our sinful desires to the feet of Jesus Christ … we finally experience what His power alone can do for us; whether our disease is in a terminal state, or whether we have already died in it.  Jesus can revive not only those who are spiritually wounded and suffering from a terminal disease, He can revive a heart that has experienced spiritual death and up to now has wanted nothing to do with spiritual things.  The transformed heart, learns to love like Christ loves.  The transformed and resurrected heart learns to love others like Christ loves others.  In so doing, the transformed heart looks for truth in the pages of Truth, and studies through the lens of Jesus Christ leading.  The transformed heart gladly goes to church because it longs for the joy of association and the opportunity to serve others, not to be served.  The transformed heart sings songs of praise, not just in sanctuaries dedicated to that purpose, but in the car, on the street, at the office desk, and in the home; because it CANNOT keep silent.  Gratitude overflows and leads to continual praise.  The transformed heart prays only for others, because it knows its own needs have been far exceeded in being met.  The transformed heart gives everything it has to others, and holds nothing back for itself, because it cannot afford to pass up an opportunity to give.  And in humility it never claims to have kept the commandments, but rather re-directs any notion of goodness, back to the source of Christ, for nothing within it is good without Him.  Why we do what we do matters.

But alas, the time Jairus (and us) spent in looking for a solution outside of Christ was time wasted.  And in this case, it was too much time wasted.  Peter recalls to John Mark beginning in verse 35 saying … “While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further?”  Game over.  You waited too long, wasted too much time, and failed.  It was too late.  She died.  There is no further point.  Once you were dead, you were dead.  Half the Sanhedrin did not believe in any form of resurrection even at the end of all things.  Jairus and his household may have been of that inclination.  But whether he was or not, the time to heal a terminal disease was done.  Might as well, let God move on to other priorities, help those who still have time to be helped, help those who have not wasted ALL of their time just yet.  Death was a bell that could not be un-rung.  In all of the scriptures Jairus was deeply familiar with, there had never been a story of the dead coming back to life.  They ALL slept, awaiting the final day of God’s Kingdom being established on earth.  There may have been ghost stories from witches who derived their power from Satan, but demons impersonating dead men, were still a far cry from an actual dead person getting a second chance.  So far, death was an absolute ruler over the fate of mankind.  It did not matter whether you were good or bad, faithful or not, everyone died.  So the game needed to be called for an expired time clock.  Death had claimed the players, and there was nothing left … or was there?

John Mark records the reaction of Christ in verse 36 saying … “As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.”  This was asking the impossible.  Jesus, was asking Jairus, to do something to believe something, that there was no precedent for.  He was asking Jairus to believe in spite of the facts, in spite of scripture, in spite of his beliefs, in spite of his education, upbringing, and tenants of his job.  This was not a combination of scripture and God.  This was a request to believe only in Jesus Christ.  The interpretations of the Sanhedrin where it came to the Messiah were largely mistaken.  They had confused the second coming and final establishment of God’s kingdom with the first coming where the lamb would be slain.  They had scripture all jumbled up.  And in none of scripture was there hope of an early resurrection, and nothing about the Messiah doing one of those.  So the request of Christ required faith in only one thing … in the person of Jesus Christ standing before him right then, and right there.  Is it any different for us?  To have faith that Christ can do for you, what you have been unable to do, takes faith in only thing … in Jesus Christ.  It is not your understanding of scripture that can see you rid of your desire to sin, it is Jesus Christ alone.  Your doctrines will not do it, but your Savior will, if you let Him.

Then Jesus did something that is at first a little hard for us to understand, Mark records it in verse 37 saying … “And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James.”  Jesus dismissed the crowd.  Even within His own disciples, only three were selected to see what was about to occur.  The obvious question was “why”.  The gospel of John we studied earlier offers us perhaps a little insight here.  John’s gospel highlights several occasions where the crowd was bent on forcing Christ to become their earthly king.  He had to use miraculous powers to escape those crowds or they would have succeeded.  The people at this time, and in our own, often look only at Christ through the lens of what is in it for them.  They seek Christ, like we seek Santa Claus and Bill Gates, to see what they might do for us.  We want, we want, we want.  Our prayers are like laundry lists of what we need God to do for us. 

Knowing He could heal, nearly the entire nation sought a health upgrade, and they got it.  Dealing with a matter of life and death, or more precisely, that death was no longer a barrier, might encourage a revolution against Rome where people would gladly kill themselves on Roman spears and swords, expecting to be raised up by their newly crowned Messiah.  If death itself could not stop their army, they would indeed be the greatest force on earth, and all the world including Rome would have to submit.  Even His own disciples harbored some of these feelings.  So the group of witnesses had to be smaller, in order to see this blessing occur.  Our inclination to selfishness necessitated a restriction of the vision of the power of God, as it does today.  How many believers today, if endowed with the ability to heal the sick without exception, would be able to withstand the temptation to take the credit for themselves, to accept the celebrity our society would heap upon them, to become a leader in the eyes of the nation, and in some ways be worshipped as a demi-god?  How many believers today, could refuse the praise of those impacted, and remain humble, dependent, and ever seeking ONLY the will of the Father as Jesus did.  Our inclination to selfishness, necessitates the restriction of the outpouring of the true power of the Holy Spirit.

Peter then recalls his own personal witness to what transpired next as John Mark continues writing in verse 38 saying … “And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. [verse 39] And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.”  There are several things to note here.  First the perspective of God is not like our own.  We see death as a barrier from which there is no return, Jesus and God see it only as a nap, or night’s sleep, like we take every day.  Time passes while we are unconscious, but when we wake up, we pick up where we left off, and resume doing what needs to be done.  From the perspective of Christ this remains true of death.  Adam is still sleeping.  Adam has no concept of the nearly 5000+ years that have passed since he fell asleep in death.  He is napping.  When Christ returns he will be woken up, and resume a life he is familiar with, but without the stain of sin any more.  When we sleep, we are unconscious.  We are not still living in some sort of ghost like state, we are simply asleep, unaware of time, or any other concerns.  The declaration of Christ is not just trying to get the crowd here to feel better about the girl’s condition, it is about getting all of us to understand better what death itself is actually like.

The second thing to note here, is that if death is actually not the end of our existence, if there is actually life possible after our earthly sleep of death … then what kind of life would that be?  Satan encourages us to sin like there is no tomorrow, because we only have “one life” and time is short.  But what if he is only half right?  What if time is truly short here, and our opportunity to make a difference, to lead someone else to the real eternal life is wasted?  A life after this one, intended to be permanent, and lived in loving others can actually begin here through the power of Christ.  But to waste that, is to waste the chance to help another see what you have seen, and learn from Christ, what you have learned.  If we spend all of this life focusing on only our own temporal needs, when in our next life, none of those things truly matter, do we not waste our lives entirely?  Whether you live 10 years, or 20, or 80, it is a drop in the bucket next to eternal life.  Would it not be better to live whatever time you have left fully, and intensely, with the primary mission of bringing others with you into the next life of eternity with Christ?  To connect them with the same Jesus who is saving and transforming you, is the ONLY goal that counts with whatever time you have left here.  To love others, like Jesus loves others, is truly living.  Everything else, is such as waste.

The perspective of those grieving people was a lot like our own, we do not see past the limits we have set for ourselves, past our ideas of the facts as John Mark records in verse 40 saying … “And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying.”  The people in their grief, “laughed Him to scorn”.  They took their limited vision, and assumed that Jesus was making an alternate medical assessment of the condition of the child.  They could not see something broader, perhaps nor do we.  Jesus was talking about life and death, and what is truly important.  And what we see is limited by our own ideas of the facts, history, and certainty in our knowledge.  But we are wrong, misguided, and will not see what Jesus is truly saying.  So Jesus does what must be done, undeterred and non-responsive to their criticism and ridicule, He simply escorts all of them all out of the house. 

Even though Jesus is in the right, even though Jesus alone understands life and death better than anyone there, He does NOT force others to accept His own thinking.  He does not compel them to change what they believe or what they say.  He does not laugh back at them, and call them out for the fools they truly are.  He does not humiliate them for being wrong, and not understanding what He is saying.  But how often do Christians treat each other this way?  How often in our certainty about scripture and its interpretation do we use it as a weapon to punish those with less knowledge than ourselves?  How often do we “defend” ourselves against ridicule and scorn, by inflicting ridicule and scorn on those who “deserve it”?  Jesus does not react this way, ever.  He never “gets even”.  He never looks for justice against those who keep wrongly inflicting their own pain and ridicule on Him.  Instead He continues in acts of Love, undeterred by those who do not understand it yet.

Peter continues the story in verse 41 saying … “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. [verse 42] And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment.”  Perhaps Jesus took this girl by the hand before He offered that command, because without directing it specifically at her, the entire fallen mankind might have arisen at that moment in time.  A single command had only recently expelled nearly 2,000 demons at once, so we know what He says carries great weight in a world beyond our vision and self-imposed limitations.  The girl of course, did what Adam did when Jesus had breathed life into him, she arose.  Jesus was not calling this girl back from the paradise of heaven her disembodied soul would have surely preferred to stay in.  Instead He was doing what He had already explained, He was waking her from the sleep of death, and from her nap.  She had no concept of the passing of time, of the weeping and wailing that had been going on for her departure.  She was asleep.  And now through the power of Christ, life had entered her again, and she was awake.  For the first time the 5 souls in attendance had their self-imposed blinders lifted.  They were astonished.

John Mark concludes this series in verse 43 saying … “And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat.”  What was being done, was to be witnessed by 5 people in person, and recorded not for them (they saw it), but for us.  The identity of Jesus Christ should have been firmly affixed in the eyes of three of His disciples, but all the more so for you and I.  What had just transpired was concrete proof that for those who believe in Jesus Christ, not even death was any kind of barrier to what He can do for us.  Our Creator has the power to re-create what we have by choice killed.  Our Creator can call life back into us, no matter how badly we have driven out every spiritual impulse in our lives.  But it is our Creator alone who can do this for us, not the power we mistakenly believe we have.  The dead girl was not a partner with Christ in her own resurrection, she was only a beneficiary of it.  Jairus did not “do” anything to see his own daughter raised, he was only a witness to it.  The disciples and closest followers of Christ, were not participant or partners in this ministry, they were only as witnesses.  A grieving mother, a hopeful father, a curious set of dedicated believers; all had different perspectives on what occurred and differing points of view.  But what was solely consistent was that Jesus Christ did ALL the work of raising the dead back to life.

It is exactly so in our Christian experience.  Our Lord Jesus Christ is the one who plants the seed of faith in us, we do not even do that much.  Jesus is the one who does ALL the work of bringing us back from spiritual death to spiritual life in Him.  We do nothing but let Him.  The dead girl could not refuse the command of Christ, nature could not refuse, disease could not refuse, the demons could not refuse the command of Christ; and our desires to sin will be unable to stand before the commands of Christ if we are but willing to let Him utter them on our behalf.  None of the opposition to Christ were working with Him to see change, all were working against Him.  But change occurred because He commanded it.  Your sinful nature is not going to just go away on its own.  Your love of sin, is not just going to be erased by the power of your will, or ability to deny yourself that which you love.  But a single command of Christ, can knock that desire out of your life for good.  A transformed heart, can lead you to focus on new priorities, until acts for others become “normal” and acts for self are never needed again.

The identity of Jesus Christ should be most affirmed in your mind and in mine.  The revelation of this gospel is a revelation of Jesus Christ to you and I.  It is an unveiling of the truth to us.  The stories are not mere history, they are predictive for our lives.  They are applicable in our here and now.  Disease is not our master, nor are the rules of nature and physics, we serve the Lord who is over all of them.  Not even death is a barrier to our God of Love who sees infinitely beyond the night’s sleep of death we may take, or the brief nap we enjoy between our last day, and His first day at His second coming.  What matters, is how we love.  What matters is who we love, in that it is others, and not ourselves.  We waste time when we love ourselves, and we enjoy life when we spend it loving others.  The identity of our God is a deep association with a love for others.  He won His world series.  We should enjoy that victory, and let Him win one in our lives, for us, that we too can benefit from …