SEVEN Series Minicast: Trusting God When His Timing Doesn’t Make Sense

When we give our lives in full submission to the Lord and say, God, I know your way's better.

Your way is better.

You had the plan at the start.

I know that you will be faithful.

And he is constantly, and this is the testimony of my life.

He has been faithful.

And he has constantly proven himself worthy of being trusted.

Hi Katie.

How are you?

Hi, Jake.

I'm doing good.

Good.

Thanks for being here today as we wrap up our mini podcast episodes for the seven series.

Thanks, thanks for thanks for being a part of this conversation.

I just got distracted by a fly.

Really bad.

It's really annoying.

Oh dude, that'd be so cool.

If you could just catch it, that'd be so epic.

Mr.

Miyagi with some uh I don't know.

So if you see me doing this, maybe it's maybe it's the fly.

I'll try to stay focused on you though.

Come on, lock in.

I'm locking in.

We're talking about John chapter 11 today.

John 11 · chapter mention

Uh, you know, as we wrap up this study.

There it was again.

Oh my gosh, it's so annoying.

Um get out of here.

Uh so uh tell us what's going on here today.

Uh you wrote our devo for it this week that's in our journals.

So kind of walk us through what's happening here in John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

Yeah, this is a huge chapter.

I was like, I'm normally like everybody's hype girl, like, whoo, this is a there's grief, there's waiting on the Lord.

There's some heavy topics that come up in this chapter.

So I was nervous about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm here.

Let's go, let's do this thing.

Yeah.

But um, yeah, starting in chapter 11, you have to step back a smidge into chapter 10.

And Jesus had made some guys mad, and they were getting ready to stone him.

And so he goes out of Jerusalem and crosses the Jordan, and that's where we find him at the start of chapter 11.

And here he finds word or he hears word that his a good friend of his, Lazarus, has fallen really sick.

Um, Lazarus' two sisters send word to him about this, and he does something nobody expects.

He just waits two days, he delays for two days, which is wild to me.

And I think we've all experienced part of that, and we'll touch on that more.

But oh my goodness, he waits two days.

Then he goes and grabs the disciples and he says, Our friend Lazarus has died.

We have to go to him.

And it's funny, we see a response from Thomas, and he says, Well, basically, let us go that we may die with him.

Oh man.

They knew, yeah, they knew they were walking into something dangerous.

Sure.

They knew that there was, I mean, last time they were in Jerusalem, it was a scary sight.

Like they were gonna stone him.

And so, but Thomas is faithful.

He's like, Well, let us go with him.

We don't understand it, but we're in.

Right.

That's so much of my life.

I don't get it, but I'm in.

Yeah.

And then as they head that way, um, Martha is um Lazarus' sister.

She comes out to meet them, and her first words to Jesus are, Jesus, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn't have died.

And I think that's so significant.

Her sister even comes out, Mary, and she also says, Jesus, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn't have died.

So here he is coming up to these two sisters in the peak of their grief.

At this point, Lazarus had been dead for four days, which is significant.

Like in the Jewish culture, it was believed that at day one, two, and three, the soul of the person still remained.

But on the fourth day, they weren't just dead, but they were dead dead.

Like, just to put it bluntly, they were dead dead.

So these here's these two sisters in the absolute peak of their grief, approaching Jesus and saying, if you had just been here, he wouldn't have died.

And I think that's huge.

But even in that, Jesus proclaims one of the big I am statements.

He says, I am the resurrection and the life, which is a wild statement.

And even looks at Martha in the face and he says, Do you believe this?

Can you imagine?

Can you?

I can't.

Yeah, I can't imagine that.

But he does.

That's that's that's what he did.

Carry on a little bit further, and um, that's actually when he meets Mary.

And then um, the shortest verse of the Bible, Jesus wept.

Yeah, Jesus was moved in deep emotion, and in this moment was over, I I believe overtaken almost by the the fallenness of war the world.

Yeah, that they have to deal with death and grief because of the fall.

Right.

And then from there, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead and does this crazy miracle, which then sets off another turn of events that ultimately leads to his death and resurrection, which is crazy.

So that's like the that's the flyover view of this story.

It's I think one of the most uh famous miracle stories.

I mean, like I remember like when I was a little kid and like just learning about Jesus and going to Sunday school, all this stuff.

Like, this is one of those stories that really sticks out in my mind, you know.

And I remember um talking to my Sunday school teacher as a little kid, and she was like, like Lazarus had been dead for a little bit, so he probably smelled really bad.

And I was like, Oh, I didn't I never thought about that, but I guess Martha even says that he goes, She's like, Lord, remove the stone.

Yeah, it's been four days, and it's gonna be an order.

It's gonna stink.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, but like just thinking about like the the the the level of power that Jesus shows here, like oh man, like who knows if it did stink, you know?

Like it even like even things think about like it uh Lazarus' flesh being livable, yeah, you know, like man, like there's there's such a such a miraculous healing here, um or uh resurrection and then probably healing of whatever thing was going on with the water.

And do you think his clothes think they said they walked out in his like his burial linens or whatever?

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

There had to be some.

Yeah, it had to be had to be something you'd think.

I don't know, but that's so cool.

So cool.

So yeah, so look at looking at this story, uh, there's a lot to unpack.

There's a lot of things to unpack, including that that shortest verse of the Bible that Jesus wept.

There's a lot of different thoughts on okay, why did he cry?

You know, what what and I think a lot of them have a lot of validity and probably um are probably all true to a degree.

Um, but tell us like in your time and study in this passage as you wrote our Devo for this week, that's in our journal and stuff.

What what really stuck out to you in your time meditating on this?

Yeah.

So I was kind of surprised at the things that stuck out to me the most.

Um, I got stuck on the sisters.

Mary and Martha.

I I have four sisters.

So I was raised in a house with six girls, if you include my mom.

Like, no brothers, it's just all these girls.

It was crazy at times.

But I just my heart goes to them because I know that sister relationship.

And we see we see a little bit of their sister relationship back in Luke when um Martha is the hostess with the mostest, like doing all the things for Jesus, and Mary's sitting at his feet.

And then Martha's like, Jesus, do something about my sister.

She's just sitting there, like, have her help me.

And Jesus actually reprimands Martha, saying, My sitting in my presence is more important.

So we see their sister dynamic, and that's funny to me because all sisters, we're all so different, like me and my four sisters, and there's not one of us that you would think, oh, you act just like this one.

Like, we're all so different.

Yeah, it's so funny.

But I think of them when I dive into the scripture because they sent for Jesus and they expected that he would come.

They had big faith, there's no question, but then Jesus delays for two days.

That's 48 hours of waiting on Jesus that they didn't expect to have to wait.

Like they knew he had to travel there, but they didn't have they didn't expect to have to wait 48 more hours.

And in their response when they first see Jesus, the fact that they both say the same line Jesus, if you had been here, our brother wouldn't have my brother wouldn't have died.

And they say it separate occasions, like Martha said it first, and then later Mary comes into the picture.

And when Mary does, she says she's weeping, she's at his feet weeping.

Jesus, if you just would have been here.

And I just find this relatable.

Like, if you've ever had to wait on medical testing in your life, if you've had to wait for Jesus show up in the midst of your grief, if you've had to wait for him, it is excruciating.

Yeah, it is tough, it puts your faith to the test.

My dad always says it's where the rubber meets the road.

Like the rubber meets the road means like, is your faith real?

Yeah.

Right?

Like, do you really believe what you say you believe?

And what I admire about these sisters is I believe they did believe it.

Like, while they might be questioning his timing, they certainly didn't question whether he could heal their brother or not.

Right.

They were confident in that.

And um, I just think that's really admirable.

I think it shows that probably as they were waiting on Jesus for those 48 hours, they were probably sitting together talking about it.

Like, where is he?

Yeah.

Because they they approached him with the same first sentence.

You can imagine they're like, if he was just here right now, yeah, we might not even be going through this.

Right.

But then Lazarus dies, and then they're still waiting.

Crazy to me.

I wonder if they're also thinking about in that moment the and I I've actually heard that this may be one of the reasons why Jesus wept.

They're thinking about um, or they forgot that he was able to heal from a distance, you know.

Um who is it, the the servant or is it the daughter?

I can't I'm I'm blanking on we we we did a a week on it, but um he tells the the Roman centurion to go home, your son has been healed.

That's what it was.

Yeah, yeah, and he just shows up and he's good, you know.

And so it's like, okay, I I gotta have heard an argument that maybe the reason why he was weeping was because they just forget, like, I didn't even have to be here.

Like, I'm in control of all of this.

Like, like maybe like like you you believed that if I was here that I could fix it, but I'm I'm everywhere all the time because I'm God.

You know, like you don't you don't recognize my power, you don't recognize who I am, even though you know that I can I could be here to heal him.

So you you just catch a glimpse of it.

Um yeah, so again, there's a lot there's lots of different reasons I've heard that are that are packed into that.

But anyway, um yeah, like the these sisters, like like I I agree with you.

There's there's a lot that a lot of instances in my life where I've I thought Jesus or the Lord was gonna work in a particular way.

You know, I had these expectations in my head of like he's gonna show up and he's gonna fix it this way, yeah, you know, um like because I think I know better than him, for one, you know, and two, just like the these these expectations of uh of myself of knowing what's good or what I need or what someone else might need.

But the reality is he's the one that knows.

And every single time I can look back with uh on times where I was like, God, where where are you?

It's like, oh, okay, that's where you were, that's what you were doing, you know.

Even if I don't, even if I still don't love it to this day, because I'm sure that they would have loved for Lazarus to have not been dead those two days, even though he came out, you know.

Um that there's a lot of grief, maybe they felt like they didn't have to go through.

But the reality is, like, Jesus wanted to show them his like the the fullness of his power in that moment, and even like give some validity to his own resurrection claims that he would have later is just letting them know, like, hey, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna rebuild this temple, man.

Like it's gonna be good.

So uh what what else?

What else, Katie?

Yeah, no, but you you kind of touched on it there, is that um what I think is cool is as as these girls were going through this grief, going through this mourning.

I mean, they were they were in the thick of it, they were in the ugly cry phase of this, right?

Um if you go all the way back to verse four, Jesus had a reason and a why the whole time.

It says, This illness does not lead to death, for it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

It's the same thing that he said about the blind man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, like he has a reason the whole time.

Do you think that blind guy wanted to be blind his whole life?

No.

God had a reason.

Yeah.

Like he's got it and he understands.

And I was um when I was 21, I was diagnosed with having a brain tumor.

I went through this period of waiting on medical tests.

It was like two years of random indifferent testing that I went through.

And the whole time I had this huge faith.

I'm like, I'm gonna be healed, I'm gonna travel the world.

I'm gonna read conferences talking about the fact that God took this tumor away.

Like I was convinced of it, Jake.

Yeah, I was convinced of it, and God never took the tumor away.

Like, I still have it in there, and yeah, and it causes some symptoms from time to time and different things, but and I've always like, Lord, take it away, God take this away.

And he never has.

And in in that moment, when I was like 21, 22 years old, I was so incredibly frustrated.

I didn't understand God's plan.

I didn't understand why I had to deal with this.

And um, hindsight, thank you, God, for what you've done through it.

Like it grew my faith, it grew my ability to talk about my faith, it made me understand Jesus, his timing, and his like how great and massive he is in our plans.

Like he's the orchestrator, yeah.

So I've learned all of these things through something that made me so mad.

So mad.

And I wasn't mad because I doubted Jesus.

I relate with Mary and Martha in this way.

Like they didn't doubt that Jesus could.

Right.

I was frustrated because I knew he could.

Yeah.

And he didn't.

Right.

Right?

Yep.

So like my mind, I relate with this, but the beauty is that in each thing Jesus had the purpose at the very beginning, literally in chapter four.

Which far before that, I'm sure, or verse four, but even far before that.

But he knew that there was reason for what he was putting these girls through and Lazarus and the waiting the whole time.

Yeah.

I feel like this is such a beautiful way.

Like, we've talked a lot about the series that the purpose that uh of the Gospel of John, John, John writes this in order to communicate like that Jesus is God.

This is just this is this entire text exists to to help us to understand that, okay.

That every gospel has its purpose.

But what I love about this is like, man, it it's showing that Jesus has an eternal perspective, you know, the and that that that shows that he is God.

And I I want to have that eternal perspective so bad.

I want to be able to look at all of the pain that I or other people go through and have an understanding of why those things happen from from God's lens or why he lets them happen, or maybe even sometimes might he why he even cause them to happen.

Um all for his glory.

And man, there was there was a podcast I was listening to not too long ago where there was a guy he he struggled, um, I don't know the exact disease, but he was we he was wheelchair bound.

And the guy he was talking with, um, they were just talking about their their faith journeys.

And he he mentioned like like do you like the the the podcast interviewer mentioned like do you wish that God would heal you?

And he was like, No.

And the podcast interviewer was like, wouldn't you rather like be able to get up and run?

And the guy in the this this was so profound.

He was like, I'll be able to do that in heaven.

That gives me a that gives like he was like, if you have an eternal perspective, if you see the universe in time and the way that God sees it, like you you will have an understanding that no matter what pain you're going through today, no matter what things that that that you wish were different today, like nothing, no, no, no, the highest of highs on this earth are gonna pale in comparison to the lowest of lows in heaven.

And he was like, it just makes me excited for heaven.

Oh man.

He's like, so no, I don't want to be healed right now.

I don't want, I don't want this to change for me right now.

I want to, I want to keep this so that I can I can be excited for the joy I'm gonna get to experience when I know that myself and everyone else that I know is gonna is gonna live in the fulfillment of the gospel in heaven with Jesus.

You know what I mean?

And man, like, like so that that's why like I love I love Jesus mentioning this with the death of Lazarus and with the healing of the blind man, like all of this is to glorify God, all of this, and one day we'll we'll understand even in a more fuller way of just how important these things were.

But right now, there's uh there's an element of trust with it.

Yeah.

I'm just like, okay, yeah, what's best.

And there can be attention, yeah.

Yeah, it can be hard.

Yeah.

Um, but man, when I think when we step back and we we man, this is this this might hit some people hard in the in the chest.

But when we surrender the idea of we determine what is good, rather than um we we get rid of that and say, okay, God, you determine what is good, even if it feels bad to me right now, because you are the author and the perfecter of our faith, because you are the creator of the universe, because you are in charge of everything.

If you say something is good, it's good, no matter how bad it might feel to me.

And man, like that, that there's there's a level of trust and faith in that that's so important.

And we see we see him working in the midst of those things, like raising people from the dead.

We see people, um, man, some of the most beautiful miracles I feel like I see it like in working in people's hearts uh at our church are things like um like my friend Bernice, who is battling cancer, has been battling cancer for a long time.

And her perspective has been every single person I get to talk to in the hospital is an opportunity for me to share the gospel with them.

And she's seeing she's seeing some progress, but man, like like I want that eternal perspective so bad, you know, to not sit and twiddle my thumbs and be like, God, if you just did what I want you to do, yeah, then things would be better.

No, he always has the end game in mind.

Yeah, and we're we think we do, and I think we make him laugh sometimes.

Yeah, he's like, Oh man, they only do.

She's so wrong.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, so good.

Katie, any of the thoughts on any of this?

Yeah, I mean, I could go on forever, but just the fact that in this moment, in these girls' lives, Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life.

He's doing the I am, I am God.

He is giving them the reality check of eternity.

Like, I girls, I got this.

Yeah.

I got this thing.

I don't just give life, I am life.

Like he's ex like exposing his divinity in this moment, which then leads to ironically, his moment of death and resurrection, which is just huge.

But but just like you said, Jake, everything, everything written in here, we get to see, we see the whole, we see the whole hindsight.

But living in it as we've I've lived in it before, it's really hard sometimes to see that eternal perspective.

But when we give our lives in full submission to the Lord and say, God, I know your way's better.

Your way is better.

You had the plan at the start.

Like, even if I have to go through grief, even if I have to go through waiting, like I know that you will be faithful.

And he is constantly, and this is a testimony of my life, he has been faithful and he has constantly proven himself worthy of being trusted.

Yeah.

So good.

Thank you so much for your time today, Katie.

Yeah.

I appreciate you.

Um we'll do this again.

Yeah, sure.

Sounds good.

Bye bye.