The Example of Lazarus & Time and Attention

Imagine yourself standing outside Lazarus's tomb, and Jesus has just arrived. Lazarus has been dead for 3 days now, and “he stinketh.” What does Jesus have to do in order to raise Lazarus from the dead? If Jesus only restored his life, Lazarus would still have pneumonia, and would simply die again. And if Jesus only healed the pneumonia, Lazarus would be nothing more than a pneumonia-free corpse. Jesus did both. He removed what caused Lazarus’s death, he removed the pneumonia, and gave him life, got his heart pumping again. He does the same for us: at His Crucifixion Jesus removed what causes us death — our inherited sin nature; at His Resurrection He gave us new life, His own.

Time On Our Hands?

In the Age of Knowledge, God wanted man to become aware of his need for God. In the Age of Grace, God wants man to have that need met. In the Age to come, God wants man to learn to live in dependence and freedom, without any constraints from the law, and all that that means, by first starting to rule and reign over our selves.

There are really only two things we can give to God: Time and Attention. And even these He has to reveal and make us able to relinquish to Him. It is because our time and attention are so valuable to God that they are also the battleground where we fight the world, the flesh and the devil. We feel the pressure to be producing more now, to prove our spirituality, to earn, gain and keep the blessing and gifts God has given to us. Ask the Lord to reveal to you any area where you are spending too much or too little time. Then depend on Him to make through you whatever changes may be necessary to make the most of the time you have. Remember, God has so much time on His hands that He is spending every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day doing nothing but thinking, and planning, arranging and rejoicing over every circumstance in your past, present and future.