This May Be The Death Of Me, But It Won't Be The End Of Me! Series

This May be the death of Me, But it won’t be the end of me.

John11:16

Just Because He (Jesus) Loves Me

Day #2

In our text Mary and Martha’s her brother dies. She is completely devastated both her and her sister for they had indeed sent word to Jesus but He was unable to get there before Lazarus died. The bible says that When Jesus got there Lazarus had been dead for 4 days which means that He had been dead most likely even before Jesus physically received the message. I say physically because how many of you know that He already knew.

Look at your neighbor and tell them:

God’s Time is not our Time

Many times we may find ourselves at road blocks. It may be that we are at a stand still but just because we are at a stand still does not mean that time has stood still. No God’s timing continues on continuing to carry out His divine purpose in our lives.

When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick notice that the scripture says in verse 5 that He loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus and therefore He lingered for two more days. I know it’s hard for us to believe sometimes that God loves us when we consider the times in our lives when He didn’t see fit to intervene when some very traumatic things have happened in our lives.

• the day you find out that your child is doing drugs,

• Your little girl is pregnant,

• Husband or you wife has been unfaithful,

• Doctor said you have cancer.

But I have come to give you a new perspective on these matters. That maybe the reason God didn’t intervene was Just because He loves you. This kind of love is not foreign to us we know it by the term “Tough Love”. Yes that’s that love that parents or grandma used to tell us was the love that they were showing when they didn’t give us everything that we wanted at the time that we wanted it. It was the Love they demonstrated toward us when they were disciplining us. It was the love they demonstrated when they finally told some of us that stayed a little longer than most, it’s time for you to get of our house and go get your own and they sang the Papa may have and the Mamma may have but God bless the child that’s got his own” song to you as they were packing your things.

Yes it’s the kind of love that’s hard for us to comprehend in our earlier stages of development as we are growing and changing but a love that we eventually learn to understand when we finally reach a certain level of maturity.

If we want to reach a level of maturity that pleases God we must first realize that we must accept what God allows to happen in our lives even when they are not our idea of what He should and should not let happen. Paul understood this principle and realized that if He were going to get a better understanding of who God is and How He operates, He had to let go of his prior worldly knowledge of who He was and so that he could finally make some progress. He says in

Philippians 3:7-10

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.

Phl 3:8

Yea doubtless, and I count all things [but] loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them [but] dung, that I may win Christ,

Phl 3:9

And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

Phl 3:10

That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

Listen, if we are going to understand God one thing that tends to hold us back from drawing closer to Him is that fact that our ideas of what love is differs from His. Some of us have been scarred from our past and we hold God responsible for it whether we were right or wrong. We just believe that if He loved us He would not have allowed certain things to have happened to me in my life.

But God sent me to tell you tonight first and foremost let’s get something straight. You can’t spell love without spelling the name JESUS. For God so loved this world, that He sacrificed that very best Heaven itself had to offer (His son), even while you were in your trespasses and sin, when you didn’t want me, but I pursued you like a loving Father. I did not let you go. I watched over you, I protected you. Even while some of us were out in the world and some of us still are. God says it’s been me that has been keeping you alive.