A part of me was dead. In the grave. 6 feet deep. That night, at this women’s retreat, make-up mostly run off my face, snot dripping, eyes swollen, this moment was God calling me out of my tomb. It was his heart to resurrect me. To bring me back from living in the shadowy place.
John 11:43-44 …Jesus said in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
God is calling us out of our tombs.
We have built grave sights around our regrets, our failures and our wounds, to be marked places that we can come back and visit. Ultimately, though, because it’s an unwarranted death, it results in not a mourning period but a mourning life-style. We aren’t mourning and moving on, we are mourning and holding on. We are wearing our grave clothes like moms sporting yoga pants, they have become our uniform, our identity, our measure of worth. But Jesus is telling us no more death, no more regret, no more sickness, no more depression or shame … He raised his friend Lazarus from the dead and told him to take off his grave clothes because Jesus needed everyone to see that he didn’t belong to the dead. He belonged to the living.I belong to the living.You belong to the living.Jesus wants all parts of us to be revived, to breathe, and to be used as YOUR testimony of HIS victory. It’s time to shake off your grave clothes and trust Him in the next step.
