Sometimes Miracles Hurt - Eric Metaxas

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped His feet with her hair.

So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one You love is sick."

When He heard this, Jesus said, "His sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son  may be glorified through it."

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days.....

On His arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days....

"Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

Jesus called out 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 to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."


                                -- John 11



From Eric Metaxas:

For God to be glorified, it sometimes means first allowing something unpleasant to transpire.

Jesus could have saved Lazarus from dying, or could have raised him from the dead immediately, but He did not.

In a sense this miracle shows us that we can trust God, and if we do trust Him, He might take us on the long and difficult road, but it's only to bless us more in the long run.

So we must consider the implications of this.

Can it be that God allows us to go through things specifically so that we have an opportunity to trust Him and then to see Him do something we wouldn't have expected, something beautiful and extraordinary that wouldn't have been possible if we had had our prayers answered when and how we wanted them to be answered?

If this is true wouldn't it follow that any difficulty we encounter is an opportunity to trust God, to see how He might bring something glorious out of our trial?

Wouldn't is also follow that if we did not look for God in our difficulty we would be missing the opportunity to see Him do something more wonderful than merely taking away the difficulty?

Or perhaps it tells us that if we really know who God is, we will want to trust Him, and will allow Him to bring us into difficulties or suffering, knowing that if we let Him, He will use these things to bless us and to do something beautiful that would not have been possible otherwise. 
                
             
                      From Miracles, Chapter 7, by Eric Metaxas