When a person is on life support, there is a machine that breathes for them. As long as they are connected the machine, it will continue to pump air into the body and breathe for the patient as long they are attached to each other. Now if the patient wakes up and tries to start breathing on their own, a serious problem that occurs. The machine, you see, needs the patient to be totally dependant upon it for it to work. Self sufficiency will turn into chaos. possibly even death. Amazing in that scenario how fighting to live could actually cause the opposite.
I know Easter weekend a lot of attention is put upon the greatest act to ever happen in history: the science defying incomprehensible miraculous act of the resurrection: the raising of dead things; the act that continues to be the focal point of intellectual academic debates; the anthem of followers of – as they were originally called — “the way;” the hope millions hang our hearts on daily.
But look deeper and you’ll see that it was also and act of dependency and surrender in order for there to be a resurrection.
If the savior of the world would’ve chosen to help rewrite his father’s plan for humanity, it probably wouldn’t have included the horrific sacrifice needed for billions and billions of sins past present and future. By depending on his father to keep his word, it allowed him to rely on the plan before him without trying to call for help as he requested in the garden.
Whatever may be dead in your life, business, marriage or dreams, YOU could be the main obstacle to a resurrection taking place in those areas. The reason why we are so wired to help get ourselves out of trouble or to get what we want from a situation is really a simple: we don’t fully trust God as we should to raise up dead things.
Like the machine that helps the patient breathe, if we’re “awake” in our situation, leaning to our own understanding and our own power, we can actually prolong the miracle we’re waiting for. To throw in a little Ebonics, the “deader” something is the greater the resurrection.
Even as Christ let his boy Lazarus remain dead longer than the people wanted, his plan was to demonstrate a greater display of power than what was comfortable for those waiting. God’s desire is not to make you happy, but to make you HIS. And that requires surrender; so the dead things in your life can experience a resurrection.
You’ve been trying for years to change your wife? To no avail, and it has made the marriage a bumpy road for the both of you. That habit that you can’t overcome? No self help book is giving you the tools to see the top of the mountain.
On the cross, Christ committed his spirit into His father’s hands. His will in the garden was given over to the sovereignty of the great physician who exists outside of time… with a redemption narrative Hollywood can’t even produce. There would’ve never been a resurrection without Christ’s surrender.
Easter was a good reminder: stop trying to fix all of the broken things around you, including you.
Commit your wife into Gods hands. Commit your son into Gods hands. Commit your money into God’s hands. He only resurrects dead things.
Surrender things. Giving it up doesn’t make you weak…it makes you wise. Watch God bring it back to life!
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