Christ the Creator according to John 11
By Dr. Rafat Amari
Faith comes from watching Jesus work. As we walk with Jesus, we have the privilege to see our faith growing progressively greater and more significant.
Jesus told His disciples, “ I’m glad for your sakes that I was not there with Lazarus, so that you may believe.”
The living faith that we exercise in Jesus is often in proportion to the power that comes to lift us out of our lowest estate. Often faith in the abilities of Jesus and His identification with God, the Father, are never created in our lives without seeing Him work the way only God can.
Thus the direst state that the beloved can reach, even if it is a painful state, is God’s most powerful opportunity to show the power of the One who alone is able to revive our loved ones. If the body of the beloved had not putrefied and almost turned to dust, we would not have recognized the identity of the Creator, who ordered the great stone to be rolled away.
Jesus was preparing the disciples to believe that he was the Creator by leaving his dearest friend until he almost turned to dust. All that was so that they might believe.
Many things are allowed to stay dormant in our lives until the One passes by who can revive them, , namely Jesus. Every person has aspirations for spiritual vitality, but those aspirations often remain unfulfilled until Jesus passes by in response to our prayer. Like Lazarus’ body, our souls are in a state of decay due to the spiritual death and separation from God which we experience. Like Lazarus’ state before his resurrection, the elements of spiritual death and corruption are at work within us because of our sin and our lack of fellowship with God.
We suffer from corruption because we were born into spiritual death; because we were born with the fallen nature of Adam. There can be no hope for us any more than there was hope for Lazarus, unless the one Person passes by, who is able to raise us to life again as He did for Lazarus.
Faith is to come to know the true God through seeing him approach the impossible aspects of my life and the lives of my loved ones. Then I can see Jesus Christ, the one person ever seen in history doing the works that can only be expected from the one true God like raising a stinking body from dust to new life. That transforms faith from being simply a mass of doctrines into a personal revelation of the nature of the Creator, through watching him doing the work of the Godhead.
Most of us believe that God exists. However, proper faith according to the Word of God is for the soul to see its Creator at work, in the readiness of Jesus Christ to move towards a soul that is suffering from corruption. This is the soul’s opportunity to see the power of its true Creator making it holy and saving it from the bondage of sin. It is this that stirs faith in Jesus our God and Savior. Jesus becomes the constant companion of the soul. Life becomes an opportunity to see the practical interventions of Jesus Christ in the life of the person who has been saved. Although invisible to our physical eyes, he becomes visible to the eyes of our hearts after we have accepted him as our personal Savior, and his hand becomes tangible every day and every minute of our lives. He strengthens, comforts and guides the soul with his Word and his Spirit, the Holy Spirit who represents the perfect presence of Jesus, since he is the Spirit of Christ.
Life becomes an arena in which we see Jesus, our Savior, coming in response to our prayers to touch what no one apart from God can touch. Our lives become replete with experiences of His divine work, solving our problems, unraveling our complexes, healing our illnesses, and raising our friends and our loved ones from their spiritual death to life everlasting.
In this way, the soul grows in the knowledge of God. We learn to trust in His qualities, His power, His righteousness, His love and His loyalty to our souls as guardian, friend, deliverer and the mighty God.
Do you understand God’s plan for you? It’s not enough for us to believe in Him as a God who exists above the clouds. Many people who do not know God believe in that. Rather, He desires that we meet with Him and get to know Him practically-deep, down in our souls. Then we can see Him at work in the most difficult aspects of our lives. We see Him just as the family of Lazarus and the disciples saw Him when He raised Lazarus from the dust.
All this is done so we might see God before us, in Christ, and we might grow in love, adoration and attachment to Him, just as He is attached to us in the warp and woof of the details of our lives.
Faith is to experience the hand of Jesus in his character and his power, to see and experience his hand in practice as the Bible reveals his divine functions. The divine progress of Jesus includes my household and my life. Jesus takes the ship of my household as a strategic center for his creative works, so that I may grow in faith by witnessing his power in practice and by seeing him work in my life, my household and my society. I can allow Jesus to take my life and my household as an arena in which to reveal his person and his character. God can become a practical reality in my life, and not just a religious thought or doctrine.
You, also, can allow Jesus to take control of your life and make your household into an arena in which He reveals His person and His character. If God is not a practical reality in your life, He can become more than just a religious thought or doctrine. He can become your strength to get you through each day and make your life worth living.
Copyright 2006 by Dr. Rafat Amari. All rights reserved.