Christ the Creator according to John 11
Dr. Rafat Amari
We find great value in worshiping Jesus and having fellowship with Him.
When we have fellowship with Jesus, we hear His plan to accomplish what we thought could never occur.
Walking with Jesus brought privileges that were not available to any group in the company of any other being in existence. As we walk with Him today, we hear His plan for our lives-a plan that no one has ever thought of approaching before.
And as we walk with him today, we hear the program and plan of life regarding an aspect of our lives that nobody has ever thought of approaching before, since it is one of difficult nature and circumstances which there is no point in approaching, where nobody has the ability to create changes , and where nobody has even thought that something could happen.
This may be true in our realm, but Jesus has a plan which He demonstrated when He raised the decomposing body of Lazarus. He woke Lazarus and brought him back to life. This means that Jesus is the personality that has the thought and the plan regarding those aspects that despair and failure have removed from the arena of life.
Jesus is the only one who possesses a voice capable of addressing any dimension which is impossible for us to obtain. Think of it. We have the privilege of having fellowship with Him, of walking closely with Him, letting Him take charge of our lives. This makes Him the constant subject of our prayers and our worship. It enables us to hear His program for that which may be forgotten and buried in our lives.
It would have been impossible for Jesus’ disciples to approach a situation like the death of Lazarus. Even if the disciples had lived at any other period of history or walked with any other earthly or angelic personality, they could not have called Lazarus to come forth. It's something only Jesus could do.
Similarly, if we walk outside that powerful fellowship with Jesus, there is nothing which can make us hear His creative promise. When we walk with Jesus, we have a spiritual life which awakens to the supernatural. We see things that nobody imagined could happen in our generation.
We can experience a rich spiritual life when we enter into deep and daily prayer and fellowship with Jesus. This is what Jesus directs people toward when they keep close to Him in prayer and fellowship. Even the dead things in our lives have a purpose, and the creative voice of Jesus brings that purpose within our hearing.
There is nothing which logic, power or human ability can suggest that will restore life-nothing apart from the order and the will of Jesus. Neither human habit nor aptitude can bring it about.
A person who is in contact with Jesus in a love relationship of constant prayer, moves in contact with and in response to the purposes of Jesus in the dead and the remote and the one whom people have stopped thinking about. He hears Jesus’ program to bring restoration from the most extreme state and the most difficult situation..
What a unique privilege the disciples had to hear that voice calling them to journey to the resurrection of a person who had been buried for four days. How privileged they were to be witnesses to something which had never before happened.
When Jesus told His disciples, “ Let us go to him,” meaning Lazarus, He gave them the opportunity and the sublime privilege to see the fulfillment of the promise to resurrect that which was old, dead, and lost. To walk with Jesus is the privilege to walk with the one of the greatest sublimity, where we hear the timely promise to resurrect that which is old, dead, and lost. Where we hear the practical creative promise directed towards dead and buried aspects of our lives and the lives of our neighbors.
It’s difficult to imagine, but we can have the privilege of enjoying the highest fellowship with the living, creative, Jesus Christ. He beckons us to move according to His program, power, and will, and not according to the routine of our own capabilities. Like the disciples, we too can hear practical, creative promises directed toward the dead and buried aspects of our lives and the lives of our neighbors.
Picture the disciples on their way with Jesus to the grave of Lazarus. You would think they would be excited about what Jesus was going to do. But that wasn’t so for one of the disciples. Thomas failed to believe Jesus would raise Lazarus, simply because Thomas had never seen anything like this happen before.
Thomas treated Jesus’ words and His desire to raise a worthless buried body as something to be tested in the crucible of human experience. Nothing like this had ever happened to Thomas before to justify his believing that it might happen now, even if Jesus Himself was leading the way.
Thomas had no idea they were moving toward something that had never happened in his experience. He was soon to see the creation of life in a putrefied body, which truly was something worthy to believe in.
We see how this worked in Thomas’ life and we ask ourselves, “how can we be part of a journey based on a creative promise that something is going to happen that has never happened before in our experience?”
It is as though Thomas had enough faith to believe what the prophets experienced. But he backed away from believing he could experience what he didn’t expect to happen. He displayed a clear lack of faith that Jesus’ words could be fulfilled. Thomas moved without purpose on a journey that bore a clear promise that something would happen which had never happened before.
Thomas was known as “Doubting Thomas.” You may remember that later he said he would not believe Jesus was resurrected until he saw the prints of the nails in Jesus’ hands. A doubter gives little credence to the words of Jesus, even though Jesus has accomplished all that He has said He would.
When Thomas embarked on a journey to Bethany with the rest of the disciples, the journey was intended to be an opportunity to reveal the identity of God the Creator. For Thomas, however, the journey turned into an exhausting and incomprehensible trip. Jesus wanted the journey to Bethany help change Thomas into a person who expected the unusual, rare, and impossible, but for Thomas it became just an ordinary journey. This is the problem faced by the person who does not have enough faith to believe in the promises of Jesus.
Jesus had included Thomas in the circle of disciples who heard the promise of the impossible and unprecedented resurrection. Thomas should have rejoiced in the revelation that was supposed to change him into a man enthusiastic to walk with the Creator. But he made the journey with doubt and suspicion. What could have been an incredible spiritual experience became mundane.
Are you a little like Thomas? Have you seen and heard Jesus’ promises to do the impossible, and yet you have difficulty trusting Him? Jesus is waiting to do great things for you. Through prayer, fellowship with other believers, and reading the Bible, you can learn to trust Him and follow the footsteps of the Creator toward the impossible.
Copyright 2006 by Dr. Rafat Amari. All rights reserved