The Wading Pool

Lazarus was dead, and then he wasn’t dead anymore.  This man named Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave, and out he came.  So everybody was all about him, right?  Everyone wanted to get closer to Jesus and closer to Lazarus, right?

Wrong.  Not only did the religious leaders want to kill Jesus (who was really messing up their money-making scheme), but they wanted to kill Lazarus, too!  Seems his resuscitation was causing more and more people to believe in Jesus!  We can’t have that, they thought, so let’s take the guy that was dead, and is alive, and kill him again.

It hit me that, so often that’s what happens to new believers.  The religious among us, those who are “mature” in the faith, watch the enthusiasm and dedication of new Christians, those who were dead and now are alive, with smirks on our faces.  We tell them “oh, just wait, you’ll calm down.”  We tell them to be careful, they might “turn people off from Jesus.”  We want them to effectively be dead again.

Didn’t Jesus say that we were supposed to be a city on a hill that can’t be hidden?  Aren’t we supposed to go and make disciples of all nations?  How, pray tell, will we do that without talking about Jesus?!!  The disciples did that, right?

Uhhhh…no.  They were thrown in jail for refusing to shut up about Jesus.  They were threatened with beatings and death, but they did not back down.  They were unabashed Jesus freaks, and the religious among them wanted to kill them.  Why?  To shut them up.

We are living in trying times, in what the Bible calls the “last days.”  Don’t you think it’s time that we start to live like it, Christian?  Isn’t it about time we start to be bold about the gospel, and quit worrying about the silly things that consume our days?  Perhaps we need to encourage each other, instead of trying to put out the flame of excitement and joy that has been ignited!

Maybe it’s time we start considering “one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the Day approaching.”  (Heb. 10:24-25)