Abundant Life in Grief: Jesus With Us

``This is the truth of the abundant life that's laid before us. We get salvation. We get real forgiveness. We get eternity. We get the promise of God's intimacy and companionship. We get his peace, and we also have the reality that in this world, we will have trouble. We live in the now of God's present abundance, but also in the not yet of eternal paradise. God is available to us now. God can change our circumstances now, but he has not yet returned to redeem everything. And until that day, there will still be pain and loss and very hard things even in an abundant Jesus filled life. It can be a struggle to live in that tension, the now and the not yet. [00:49:18] (55 seconds)  #NowAndNotYet

We have a God who weeps with us, who sees our grief and responds to us. God is abundantly present with you however you grieve. Or if you are angry with God, know that you are not shamed by God for your anger. You are not less in the life of faith because of your anger. And if you cannot yet trust that God knows what you need and that God will provide for your needs, that is okay. [01:00:38] (30 seconds)  #GodWeepsWithYou

He invites you in. He calls you more than a subject. He calls you a friend. You get to step into a room with the one who knows all and is all, the one who carries every burden and every joy, and whose greatest desire is to be with you and to share with you. That's what prayer is, the abundant life giving connection with God. [00:34:03] (24 seconds)  #PrayerIsFriendship

No. Because those thoughts are not the truth. They're very human, but they're not the truth. God's invitation is open to us that we might always depend on him more and more and grow in the love and knowledge of him. An unanswered prayer is not a mark of shame. It does not mean that god has not heard us. It does not mean that god has not wept with us. It does not mean that our faith was more or less sufficient than anyone else's. It just means that we still live in the now and not yet. [00:56:00] (36 seconds)  #UnansweredPrayersNotShame

Prayer is like stepping into a private conversation in a throne room with a king, but a king whose full attention you have, and you can say anything that you want to or that you need. You don't know what the king knows. You don't have access to all the knowledge he has, but he's going to listen to you anyways. He wants to know what you have to say. He's going to take your doubts and hopes and dreams into consideration even though you have the wisdom of a little child in comparison. [00:33:32] (32 seconds)  #ThroneRoomPrayer

There's an acknowledgment here of the supremacy of God's love for our fellow human. The sisters have deep affection for their brother. We're gonna shortly see how devastated they are that he is ill and that he's going to die. And yet they don't claim it in this short note. They point to God's love for their brother. This is an approach of such confidence that the ones we love, God loves even more, and we can call on that. This is something we can declare in our private prayers and also before others. We don't have to convince God to care about what's going on in our relationships. We don't have to convince God to care about loving the people that we love or the strangers that are on our hearts to pray for. We can trust that God already cares even more than we do about the people we are praying for. [00:37:53] (53 seconds)  #GodLovesWhoYouLove

Jesus says that they are going to Lazarus anyways and that it will be to help their belief. Jesus' priority is not physical safety. It is the eternity of his friends and followers. So often we say, we want to be like Jesus. But here, Jesus is holding his even his life open handed in order that belief in God might be better demonstrated for his friends and his followers. His ultimate concern is the eternity of those around him, not his own comfort. [00:40:30] (37 seconds)  #EternityOverComfort

Mary also meets Jesus with an angry rebuke. A humble rebuke, she's at his feet, but a grief stricken statement nonetheless. If you had been here, have you ever had that cry in your heart? God, where were you? Mary just says it aloud, and Jesus grieves with her. Our savior cries. He weeps. This is a painful scene, but it is one that speaks to the intimacy of our God. He is not impersonal. He is a compassionate companion. We do not grieve alone when we have Jesus. [00:46:44] (41 seconds)  #JesusWeepsWithUs