LAZARUS WAIT SERMON
When Lazarus died, Mary of Bethany and her sister Martha were heartbroken.
The quieter Mary revealed her emotions in her tears.
Mary wept at the loss of her brother, and her weeping triggered Jesus weeping – but this is not where the story starts.

She loved her brother Lazarus, and she trusted and loved Jesus. Like everybody else in her community, she knew that Jesus could heal sick people. So when her brother got sick and she knew that Jesus was nearby, she turned to him for help. Then she waited three desperate and increasingly miserable days for Jesus to come. During those days, Jesus didn’t come, and Lazarus died.

And so she was devastated. Her beloved brother was dead, and her beloved Jesus seemed to have disregarded her entirely in her time of need. She must have felt sure that she had lost the desires of her heart and lost them irretrievably.

But what the story of the raising of Lazarus shows is that a person can feel sure about such things and still be altogether mistaken.

Mary wasn’t entirely wrong. She had this much accurate insight into herself: she was right in thinking that it was her heart’s desire to have her brother, and to be loved by Jesus.

But she was mistaken about what the fulfillment of those desires would be. She thought that she could have the desires of her heart only if Jesus came to her to heal her brother before he died.

So , when Lazarus did die, Mary thought that she had lost what she wanted most.

What the story makes clear, though, is that the Lord can know better than a human person does what she most wants—not just what is good for her even though it hurts, but what she herself wants.

When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, Mary has her brother and is loved by Jesus in a way more deeply fulfilling to her and more glorious than the mere healing of her brother in his sickness would have been.

And here is the thing to notice: Jesus was in the process of giving her what she wanted most, even as she was firmly persuaded that she had lost it forever.

And so the story helps us see that the Lord can be trusted even with the deepest distress of our hearts.

Jesus could have come and healed Lazarus when he was still alive, but he didn’t – he waited.

God could have spoken to Moses in the desert about sending him to help free His people from slavery 40 days after he ran away from Egypt.
Instead, He made him wait for 40 long years.
God could have gotten Joseph out of prison one year after he was sentenced there.
Instead, he was stuck in that dungeon for 10 years before he was finally set free.
God could have given Abraham the son He promised him when he was still a young man.
Instead, He waited until he was a100 years old.
God could have answered prayers and met the needs of these men of God much quicker, but He didn’t.
He made them wait.
And He often makes us do the same.
He makes us wait for healing or wholeness or for a new insight that we could not
have known had our prayers been answered at once.
He makes us wait to fulfill His call in our lives after He puts the desire and passion in our hearts to serve Him in a certain way.
He makes us wait to give us the desires of our hearts,

He kept Moses in a desert for 40 years.
Joseph in a prison cell for 10 years.
Abraham without a child for 100 years.

And maybe He is keeping you waiting – for a reason – to build your faith.

To build your faith during the valley in your life where it’s too dark to see and too hard to believe.
To build your dependence on Him when you are still learning that He is truly all you desire and all you need.
To build your trust in Him when the storm keeps raging, the battle keeps going and victory doesn’t seem near.
Sometimes the waiting period of our life is the most important time in our life.
It is during this period when nothing seems to be happening, when prayers seem to go unanswered, when God seems so far away that the most spiritual growth takes place in our life -that we learn to become more like Him.
It is during this time that we build spiritual “muscle”.
That we grow in faith.
That we learn to only depend on Him.

What are we waiting for today?
What longing do we have that seems so far from ever being fulfilled?
What prayer do we keep on praying that seems to never reach God
I want to remind you that God is not deaf to our prayers.
He is not blind to our tears, our desires, our needs.
IF He is making you wait, there is a very good reason for it.
If He is telling us “no” today, maybe it’s because He has a better “yes” waiting for us tomorrow.

If He is keeping us in the same place we’ve always been today, maybe it’s because He’s helping build our faith before we enter our Promised Land tomorrow.

Wherever you are at today realise that God is right beside you and that there is a purpose for you. Even if that purpose is to wait.
Don’t give up just because you don’t see anything happening today.
Maybe there is nothing physically happening that your eyes can see but there is definitely something happening in the spiritual realm as you learn to rely on Christ.
Don’t allow your waiting period to make you hopeless about what tomorrow will bring.
Instead, let it build your faith and give you even greater hope for what God has prepared for you.
He made some of the greatest people of faith wait.
Don’t be discouraged if He makes you wait as well.
He will come through for you, just like He came through for them.