🌿BREATHE TRUTH🌿
“Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them. Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested, “Lord, he has been dead for three days….Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” So they rolled the stone aside. —John 11:39-41
🌿LIVE THE REAL TRUTH🌿
Tombs are places to bury things. Things that have become lifeless, hopeless, loveless. We bury things when they loose their vitality and vibrancy. We bury things when we loose contact and connection. We bury things when we loose interaction and intimacy.
A dictomy exists in tombs.
We bury things we want to forget. But we bury things we love.
We bury things that bring us pain. But we bury things we want to remember.
We bury things we lost. We bury things that lost us.
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Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them. Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested, “Lord, he has been dead for three days….
Usually, once you put something in a tomb, you don’t take it out. There are reasons it is left there in the first place.
Tombs differ in shape and size, design and description, and serve multiple functions:
To close doors to the past
To conceal disappointments with the present
To cut off destructive behaviors that threaten the future.
Multi-functions, one purpose: to end a chapter in your life. Tombs are not designed as an unfinished chapter, but the completion of a chapter. Not built to be an open book, read and re-read, tombs are more like a finished, private diary now permanently locked.
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Tombs neither function as a garage to pack and park nor as a storage to stack and store. Tombs are not a limited parking space or temporary holding space.
Tombs are permanent marker, everlasting entities.
So what Jesus tells Mary and Martha to do seems inconceivable: Move the stone covering the tomb. Jesus presents to us a paradox of tomb management.
Remove the stone.
Relinquish the status quo.
Receive the Savior.
Rewrite the story.
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Remove the stone. No other way to open the tomb. When Jesus asks us to push it aside, He has a purpose. To retrieve what’s inside the tomb and retake back our story.
Relinquish the status quo. We have a vision of our story. Whatever we buried in the tomb, Jesus believes isn’t finished yet. Let go of the preconceived and the past.
Receive the Savior. Surrender your story to God. You may think your story is dead. Maybe that’s what you’ve been told. But here and now embrace Jesus’ words to reposition the stone. Surrender your story and see the Savior as the Real Author.
Rewrite your story. What once was forgotten, is now revived. What once was lost, is now re-found. What once was dead, is now alive. The Savior, Jesus, is calling you to roll the stone away from your tomb so He can rewrite your story.
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Jesus is about to do a miracle before Mary and Martha’s eyes. Jesus, who has the powers to resurrect the dead, has the power to roll the stone away from the tomb. But Jesus desires them to participate. Likewise, Jesus wants YOU to push the stone out of the way. Jesus wants to partner with you to rewrite your story. Flipping the paradigm, we see the “upside-down” paradox of tomb management:
(A reverse order of the above if you desire to rewrite your story……..)
Rewrite your story.
Receive the Savior.
Relinquish your status quo.
Remove the stone.
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Just when we think the journey is over and the tomb is closed, Jesus informs us otherwise. Don’t write yourself off. Don’t write your story off. Jesus can take what’s broken and incomplete and put it back together and complete it. The Real Truth is the ultimate Super Glue.
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Copyright 2019