Listen

Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha replied, “I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

She replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, God’s Son, the one who is coming into the world.”

John 11:23-27

Think

These verses contain one of the most profound and powerful statements in scripture. They also continue a broader theme in John’s Gospel, in which Jesus calls back to the Hebrew name of God that the writer’s audience would have known well – “I am.”

Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life…” He then promises that everyone who lives in him and believes in him will not die.

Living in Christ is one of the most difficult and rewarding parts of being a Christ-follower. Apprenticing our lives to the way of Jesus and following him costs a great deal. For Lazarus, it meant death. For Mary and Martha, it meant loss. It will cost each of us different things.

We are to model our lives to the way of love, the way of Jesus. We are to advocate for the oppressed and the rejected. When we follow Jesus, our lives will look radically different. We will daily die to our own selfish and sinful ways, and be resurrected into a new way of being.

Dan Miglets-Nelson

Pray

Dear Jesus, help my unbelief.

Help me to look for you and follow you as you call me into the daily act of death and resurrection.

Make me new, today, so I might better serve you.

Amen.

Go

Live today as a follower of Jesus, trusting in the promises of God.