I Thank You for Hearing

When Jesus was ready to resurrect Lazarus, He said to God: Father, I thank you that you have heard my prayer.

This is amazing.  He had not prayed out loud.  There is so much to be gleaned from this.  Prayer was His way of life.  He could speak anytime and say thank you for hearing me.  He was always in the Father’s will.  Any request was a prayer that was of the Father’s will.  

What a beautiful lesson and example for us.  The world looking on accused Him of blasphemy for speaking of His relationship with the Father.  They even said that He was of the devil.  This has a powerful message.  We have a relationship with the Father, too.  We are children.  Do we REALLY believe that?  Can we walk through our day and say, “Thank you for hearing my prayer?”  His biddings are His enablings, therefore, they are His will and have His blessing.  

The path of Jesus was the “seek first the kingdom of God…” path.  It isn’t like His life was broken into pieces that He called work, church, social, etc.  His life was all about God’s will.  He had just as many pieces of life as we do.  He just did not allow them to fracture His life and its purpose. 

I wonder sometimes if our lives have become too complicated?  Too much to do.  Too many places to be.  Tight schedules.  Projects, plans, people’s expectations…our own expectations.  Could the life of Jesus have been this difficult?  Or are we missing something that explains His ability to be so focused and yet so calm?  Is it the "I thank you for hearing" awareness that Christ had?  

Think about it…He gets the word that Lazarus is sick and dying.  He delays.  That is not what we would do  He delays the trip because He knows that if He is there, Lazarus will not die.  Beautiful.  In the death of Lazarus we can see that He wanted us to learn resurrection lessons.  He wanted us to have a visual aid of triumph over death…even before Christ trumped over death.  He was living, moving, walking in faith.  Wow!  That says so much about living in alignment with your purpose.

I am searching and sorting through ideas this morning because I think that there is so much that we have not understood about all the examples Christ has given.  I think we have seen the stories and put them into the human perspective instead of the spiritual/heavenly perspective.  We are trying to understand heaven’s ways by making them line up with the earthly instead of making the earthly experience line up with heaven’s way.

I think that this is what Christ did.  In that, however, He did not minimize the beautiful things of earth…like a wedding celebration or meals with others.  However, the raging storms, He slept through and rebuked.  He knew they had no power over Him.  Maybe this needs some meditation and prayer.   We try so hard to fix everything (storms) so that our peace is maintained.  This is believing the lie that our peace comes from externals.  If we buy that, we are always giving our power away to that.  If we never have to face disturbance, we will not have to walk in faith, we will not have to experience death to the things we hold too dearly and by which we are expecting Christ to do what we want instead of doing what He has to do to get us to our own resurrection.  

As I said, today, I am searching and sorting.  I am meandering all over the place in response to my reaction regarding Jesus speaking to the Father: Thank you that you have heard my prayer.  I think that I have just scratched the surface in what this has to say to us.  This usually means that there is something wonderful that will reveal itself more fully as we think on the subject.  Praise God.