Taking the stone away

At the magnificent miracle of the raising of the dead man Lazarus, (John 11:39) Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Before the great and mighty miracle was to take place, Jesus needed someone to move the stone guarding the tomb away.

It is interesting to me that the Savior who has the power to raise a man from the dead has to have someone move a stone away from the grave.  I'm sure that if Jesus wanted to, He could have spoken the words and that stone would have been cleared out of there. Later in the chapter he tells Lazarus to "come forth". Then He asks the men around him to ‘loosen him and let him go'.  The disciples didn't only take away the stone, but they also unwrapped Lazarus.

It's apparent to me that God is showing us that we play a very important role with Him.  I doubt that there's a man alive on this earth who has ever been converted without the Lord using us "human instruments" in some way to help Him get the job done.

God could easily convert men without us; but that's not His way, He actually wants to use us, to involve us in the work He does. 
Like the tomb, though, there's another stone that must be rolled away before any great work of God can be brought about. That's the stone of indifference. There are a lot of Christians out there who just don’t care.  DON'T BE ONE OF THEM!!  Let Jesus involve you.

The flashlight

I mean it, sometimes it takes more activity to accomplish a simple job than a job should take.  This week I wanted to change the oil in the car.  It was a bad idea right from the start.  First, I couldn't even find the filter.....is there anyone out there with a Chevy Cavelier who knows what I am talking about?  I looked all around the engine, then on top of the engine and finally under the engine till I finally found the thing only visable from underneath the car.  It was totally unreachable by hand. The devil himself must have engineered the place for that oil filter. Anyway, I get under the car and then realize I can't see, so now I need a flashlight.  I got up from underneath the car to go get a flashlight and, of course, the batteries were dead, bringing to mind the little ditti that says, "a flashlight is a great place to store dead batteries". I cannot change the oil filter if I don't have new batteries so I start checking every drawer in the house for two 'C' batteries and am pathetically reduced to stealing the batteries from one of the Grandkids toys to make the stupid light come on. Finally getting my act together, I get back under the car to unscrew the filter and find out that I can't get it out without a special tool.  Thank goodness I put the Jeep out on the street before I jacked the car up to do this oil change.  I head over to Auto Zone and the man at the counter gives me a special wrench just for my car. I go back home, get underneath the car and find out that it doesn't fit the existing filter that is now on the car.  Why me Lord! Why Me! I finally took the car to Radford's and left it with Bill. 
There really is a good lesson to this sorry episode......well, beside the fact that I know I'm no mechanic.  My point is that after all the work it took to get that flashlight working, it still only helped me to see. It did nothing to get the job done.  It only solves a vision problem, it does not fix what is broken. As I thought on this (and the steam and humiliation subsided) I found a spiritual truth in it for me.  The other day when I was reading my Bible, I came to Rom 7:7, "The law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, "Do not covet." (NLT)
  There are places in the Bible that also help me to see; things like the 10 commandments, the Beatitudes, parts of the book of Galatians and so on, they are there to help me see.  When I read certain portions of the Bible it tells me not to do some things.  We call those things sin.  The Bible tells us not to do them.  If God doesn't tell us what is proper behavior we would never know how we are to act. When I agree that I'm to act in a certain way and I don't, I experience guilt. It's because of the guilt that I realize the great forgiveness of God.  It is the heavy guilt that calls my attention (shines the light), Helps me to see the wonderful grace of God.  The guilt becomes my flashlight it doesn't fix the problem.....it only shows me that I have one. The solution is for us to ask the "guilt-remover", Savior, Healer, God of Mercy, Jesus Christ, to come and "fix the problem". Ahhhh..........