Dare to Believe Again

Most of us have lost our belief in God.

Hear me out; it’s not obvious for one and it’s not dramatic. Mary and Martha are our case study for today. We all know that Mary is the one who sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to him while Martha went around doing her due diligence to make sure He was comfortable and when Martha complained, Jesus commended Mary because she was receiving that which was valuable above all else.

We’re familiar with that story but how about their actions when their brother, Lazarus died? They had sent word to Jesus to let Him know that Lazarus was sick and I’m sure they did that because they wanted Jesus to come heal him. “Lord, the one you love is sick.” (John 11:3). When you read the message, it almost sounds like they wanted to emotionally woo Him into coming. Why else would they say “the one You love”? but that’s not what we’re talking about today.

Jesus delayed in coming and by the time He arrived, Lazarus was dead and if I were the sisters, I would be pained because they had asked Him to come earlier and He didn’t. It would have looked like Jesus didn’t care so much or Lazarus wasn’t as important as they thought and I’m sure a million and one thoughts were running through their heads. But it was all for a plan that we see later on in that chapter.

John 11:20[NIV] says, “When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet Him but Mary stayed at home.”

Please reread that verse. If you do, you realize that it wasn’t only Martha who heard that Jesus was coming, Mary also heard. The Bible says, “…but Mary stayed at home.” After Mary had heard that Jesus was coming, she purposely decided that she was going to remain at home while when Martha heard it, she went out to meet Him.

We have to note that this is the same Mary who sat at Jesus’ feet to listen to Him, the same Mary who anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume and used her hair to wipe it off. Her devotion and belief in Him were expressed fervently but when her brother died, she couldn’t help herself. And this is not a post to look down on her. I’ve not experienced the death of someone very close to me but to say the least, I’m sure it must have been gut-wrenching.

How many of us have lost our belief in God when things have gone sour? When that thing which we are so sure God will do, He doesn’t. How many times has that affected your belief in Him? It might not even have been obvious to you but little by little, your faith in God starts to reduce. You find that maybe in situations pertaining to that thing, you don’t believe in Him anymore.

Let me use an analogy; let’s say you were believing God for a scholarship. That was your only chance of going to school because if God didn’t provide, there was literally nowhere you could go to get the money but then the people giving out the scholarship don’t offer you that scholarship. You don’t know what to do or how to comprehend that God “deserted” you at such a time.

Then subconsciously, in issues of money, you no longer go to God for help. In fact, you take matters into your own hands. You start looking for ways to get money and maybe at first, it seems innocent but then slowly, you see that there’s a better, easier and faster way to make that money and you choose to use that route. You still believe in God oo, you’re still a Christian, and you still love Him. You believe in Him for your parents, for healing, for love and for any other thing but in that issue of money, you don’t believe He will show up for you anymore.

I hope this analogy makes sense. You can apply it to any area of your life where you’ve felt like God has deserted you and subconsciously, without even meaning to, you have lost your belief in Him in that aspect. It may not even be a specific thing; it might just be in life generally. Maybe life has been mediocre for you for a long time and you just start to lose faith after a while. You still believe in God but you start “doing your own thing.”

It has happened to the best of us especially when we don’t believe that God cares about every single aspect of our lives. Jesus tells us that the Father knows the number of strands of hair on our heads. If you think about it, what will knowing the number of strands of hair you have do for Him… Nothing! He knows because He cares.

If God cares about so minute a detail about you, how doesn’t He care about every other area of your life? He does. And it’s in knowing that that believe becomes easier. I’m not saying that there is no struggle in believing in Him. There will be and it’s almost always during the hard times but when you come to that revelation that He cares… truly cares about everything about you, faith becomes easier.

Going back to Mary and Martha, we see that Martha in her pain, confusion and struggle, went to Jesus because she recognized on some level that it was only Him that could solve the problem she had. Then, she didn’t know that Lazarus was going to be raised from the dead because when Jesus told her that her brother would rise again, she replied, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” (John 11:24). That means, she didn’t expect that her brother would start living again.

She didn’t expect that now that he was dead, Jesus could raise him up. Her only hope was seeing him on the last day but even with that, even with thinking that this was the end, she still came to Him because it could only be Him that could give her what she was looking for, even if it was just to grieve. After all, we see that the first thing she says when she meets Jesus is, “If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

She went to Him to vent her frustration and her pain. That was all she could muster the courage to do so she did it anyway. She didn’t falter in believing that He was still the Messiah and the Son of God (vs 27) even in her circumstance.

That must have taken a great deal of belief to say even when literally, her life had just crumbled in her face. And that tells us something, that even in our pain, God is Lord. God is King and He allowed that to happen for a reason.

After her conversation with Jesus, Martha goes back to see Mary and tells her that Jesus had arrived and was asking to see her. This also shows that even in that pain, even in that state where we lack faith in Him, He still beckons us. He still calls to us and even if we may not understand, we may not see that God is sovereign in that circumstance, we know that in that situation, He wants us more than ever. He wants us to go to Him with that confusion and with that pain.

Because her grief was so deep, Mary lost her faith in Jesus for a moment but we see that when Jesus asked for her, “she got up quickly and went to Him" (vs 29). Even though her belief was lost for a smidge of time, she also saw the heaviness of what it meant for Jesus to ask for her even when she didn’t come to meet Him when He arrived.

If there’s one thing we can see from her, it is that she dared to believe again, she saw that He was able to take her grief and she went to him and as she went to Him, she repeated the statement her sister has mentioned earlier; “If You had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” They weren’t aware of what was going to come after but they had faith In Jesus and His ability either way.

It’s the same for your life. You may not know what will come later but for now, what God is requiring from you is your faith in Him again especially in that thing you thought, “Oh, I’ll just do it my own way now.”

Dare to believe in Him again.

Much love,

Uche 🤍