Christ the Creator in John 11 Part 2
By Dr. Rafat Amari

Jesus passed up the first opportunity to heal Lazarus in order to show His ability to raise the dead (and to show his ability to begin from dust).  He did this so we might worship Him as God.  
 
When the sisters of Lazarus asked Jesus to come to Bethany to heal their brother, Jesus said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God  might be glorified.” 
 
You or I might have dropped everything to be with Lazarus and heal his body, but Jesus remained where He was until Lazarus had been dead for four days.  Jesus chose to bypass the opportunity to heal Lazarus before he died.
 
Jesus rejected this opportunity for healing, even though it would have solved a family crisis, in order to allow the situation to deteriorate to the point where another type of faith could emerge-where Jesus would be observed creating life again from dust.
 
His decision shows that He is prepared to begin His transformation from any state we have reached.  He’s not limited to working with simple problems, or intervening at only specific stages of the illnesses and crises that afflict us.  Nor is His ability restricted to a specific time period.
 
Jesus exercises unlimited and absolute power which He has enjoyed since the beginning of time.   
 
In his patience and his wisdom, he waited until the patient had reached the most extreme situation, when all creatures had abandoned hope of his recovery, the state of putrefaction as occurred with Lazarus’ body in his tomb.  In this situation, no prophet or angel would dare to lift the stone from that stinking body; The situation in which  everybody would agree that anybody who approached this handful of dust and shouted out an order for the spirit that animated the body to stand before him, must be the Creator.
 
Thus we, in our spiritual lives, must not despair when circumstances seem to mock any possibility of obtaining those great answers for the unsettled issues that we have buried in our lives.  Sometimes Jesus leaves us in a situation where we cannot see a solution, so that we can witness his intervention in our lives at a stage when the only solution is for the hand of the Creator to be displayed in order to bandage, to heal and to bring life.  Then the Lord Jesus intervenes in our lives to show that he is God.
 
Our circumstances may not be as severe as those of Lazarus, but when the Lord Jesus intervenes in our lives, He still shows that He is God.  We notice it most when He allows us to reach a state where we gradually see we are losing our loved ones, perhaps through illness or the harsh circumstances.  When we come to believe the time has passed when Jesus could possibly reverse  our plight, then we see the work of the Creator proceeding in our lives.
 
However, to continue walking with Jesus is a privilege as we see progressively greater and more significant things.

Copyright 2006 by Dr. Rafat Amari. All rights reserved.