John 11:38 - 44

 John 11:38 - 44

Even the best of us are a mixed bag. All of us are part heroic faith while we still harbor genuine real doubts.  In verse 22 Martha said; “Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give You”. That is a statement of heroic faith. However when Jesus calls for the stone to be removed from the tomb entrance Martha said, “Lord by this time there will be a stench for he has been dead for four days”. Martha is at this point having more faith in death than in Jesus

We are all mixed bags of great and terrible, of faith and doubt, we have been anticipating God acting and believing that what is, is all that we will get. Thankfully God's grace and goodness is not wholly dependent on our faith. Jesus prays at the tomb not because He needs to pray to raise Lazarus, but He wants those around Him to know that He and the Father are working together, so that the Son can be seen doing what the Father wants. 

As a mixed bag of faith and doubt I don't have perfect faith. What I must have is faith in the perfect Savior. Faith and doubt often live together. Hopefully faith will be growing, and consuming doubt as we see the Lord at work. For those who believed but still doubted, especially Martha and Mary, much of that doubt was consumed in this miracle.  For Lazarus doubt would have been almost completely impossible. Can we be honest about our doubts and find in them a place to grow our faith? Unbelief is a different matter altogether and it's what we see in the next Passage.

“Lord, use my doubts as a place to grow my faith. AMEN”