March 22, 2026 - From Death To Life

As we prepare our hearts for Easter, we're taking the next few weeks to look at how Jesus conquered death. Listen to this week's sermon from Lead Pastor Dan MacGillivray.

For further information about Fort St John Alliance Church, check out our website fsjalliance.ca

Our desire is to become a community of people who practice the Way of Jesus together, and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, live on mission to meet the social and spiritual needs of the world around us. Each week, we gather as a community to worship, learn from God’s Word, and be encouraged in our walk with Christ.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Fort St. John Alliance Sermon Podcast. I'm Nate Perry, the youth pastor here at the church. We're so glad you've joined us today. Our desire as a church is to become a community of people who practice the way of Jesus together and, through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, live on mission to meet the social and spiritual needs of the world around us. Each week we gather as a community to worship, learn from God's Word, and to be encouraged in our walk with Christ. In this podcast, you'll hear the latest message from our Sunday service. Whether you're listening from right here in Fort St. John or from afar, our prayer is that God will speak to your heart and strengthen your faith. Let's lean in together as we hear today's sermon.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Good morning. I'll go to the center. I'm going to get you to stand up again for the reading of the word this morning. I'm Dave Laterno, a member of the church, and you probably see me greeting you every morning or sometimes. I have to use my phone because I couldn't read the little words in the Bible. We're reading out of John chapter 11, starting in verse 1, and we're going through to 44. Now a certain man, I'm reading out of the New King James Version. Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary, and her sister Martha. The other thing I should do is put my glasses on, sorry. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore, the sisters sent to him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was. Then, after this, he said to the disciples, Let's go to Judea again. The disciples said to him, Rabbi, lately the Jews sought to stone you. Are you going there again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. These things he said to them. And after that he said to them, Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that he that I may awake him. Then his disciples said, Lord, if he sleeps, he will get well. However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought he was speaking about taking rest and sleep. Then Jesus said to them plainly, Lazarus is dead, and I am going for and I am glad for your sake that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless, let us go to him. Then Thomas, who was called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, Let us go, also go, that we may die with him. So when Jesus came, he found that he had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away, and many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning the brother. Now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him. But Mary was sitting in the house. Now Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know whatever you ask of God, God will give you. Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again. In the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? She said to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world. And when she had said these things, she went her way and secretly called Mary her sister, saying, The teacher has come and is calling for you. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into town, into the town, but was at the place or in the place where Martha had met him. Then when the Jews were with her in the house and comforting her, when they saw that Mary rose up quickly and went out, following her, saying, She is going to the tomb to weep there. Then when Mary came to where Jesus was, she saw him. She fell down at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, he groaned in the spirit and said, and was troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, See how he loved him? And some of them said, Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying? Then Jesus again, groaning in himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him who is dead, said to him, Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days. Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God? Then they took the stone from the place, and the dead man was lying, where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me, and I know that you'll always hear me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me. Now, when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, Loose him and let him go.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

He may be seated.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

Thank you, Dave. Appreciate you taking on such a big passage this morning. I did not know where to maybe just, I mean, yeah, earlier this week I was thinking, where can I pick out of that? But it's also good. So I thought, well, let's just go all of it. So thank you so much, Dave. Just really appreciate that. Uh good morning, everybody. So, so good to be with you today. Um, just a couple things before we get into uh this morning. Uh, just want to give you an update on our team in the Middle East there, uh, Ben and Rachel. Um I've had a number of you just asking, you know, how are they doing uh over there in this season? Um and I can tell they're doing good. Uh we actually chatted with them here this past week. We send texts to them about kind of two or three times a week just to kind of see how things are in the region. Uh they don't text a lot back because they're pretty busy, as you can imagine, with lots on their plate right now. Uh, but they're doing well. Um they are still doing the same uh ministry as usual. Uh so that's all been going well. Um and I do know they're kind of on this place of alert, so they're kind of like we're ready to leave if we have to. Uh, but uh what they're doing for ministry though is actually still still going forward. So anyway, um just I mean in your prayers for them just just to pray um that not only for their safety, but also just just for the ministry itself, uh, because they really, really love the people there. And it would really hurt them to have to leave, actually. They they want to stay for as long as they can. And so if we could just you know have have them in our prayers just just for strength, for wisdom, um, and as well for uh safety in that um, you know what, as a church, I am so grateful for you all and just for your investment into not only what we're doing there, uh, what we're also doing in uh uh Mexico as well, and also here locally. Um, your love though for others is seen. And I just want to say to you guys, just just it is so moving to watch you guys give so well. You are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly generous, right? So thank you for the ways in which you give, for the ways in which you just say to us as a church here, we we are all in with I mean, everything that we have. And so I am grateful for you all, thankful for the ways in which you give to the church, which you give to the mission that we're doing here. So just want to say that. Uh I have a sort of a confession. It was gonna be a question this morning, but I switched. I was like, no, it's more of a confession, Dan, if you're honest with yourself. So it's a confession. Um, I confess I have a hard time waiting for things. I'm a little impatient. How many of you would say at times you're a little impatient? Okay, not too many of us. We can meet afterwards in the lobby. We can talk later. Um, right? I am not very good at waiting. I remember last year we took our kids to uh Disneyland. And although it's fun at Disneyland, I enjoy it. Fun rides, fun food, fun just I mean, memories. You have to wait to have fun there, if you know what I mean. Right? Like you go there to wait to have fun, right? You know, on our second day in the park, we got in line for a ride. It was uh first thing in the morning, and so we had our kids up by 6 a.m. That's what that's what we mean by first thing. We're in the park at eight because we are eager to wait for the fun that's coming. We have to get there right away. And when we get to the ride, we get in line, and at the entrance of the line is this sign, and it shows you how long you're gonna be waiting for when you get in line, right? Because you have to wait a little bit more because the fun is coming, right? And now the ride is has a wait time of 45 minutes, which if you've just I mean, been to Disneyland, that's pretty normal wait time. You just expect you're gonna wait about 45 minutes, right? And for the most part, I'd like to think I'm a pretty patient person, actually. It's definitely something that the Lord is trying to form in me more, but I think I'm generally patient. I generally hold to the idea that if you wait, then probably good things will come your way. So, right, so I'm okay waiting most of the time. However, 45 minutes into our wait, I realized that I was not at the ride yet. The sign had lied to me. It was not quite accurate. Fun was not being had in the way that I had expected it to be. In fact, as we were in the line that looks close to a mile long, when you look at how it kind of weaves in and out of everything, we've maybe moved a quarter of the way through since we got in. And by my math, we're now gonna be waiting a lot longer than the 45 minutes had said, because we're not gonna make it there right away. And then all of a sudden there was a uh voice over the intercom, which you never really hear in Disneyland, but all of a sudden there's this voice over the intercom in the line. And it says that two out of the six rides are working, the other four are broken. And so you can expect to wait longer. So that's all they say. They don't give you a timeline, just expect to wait longer. Okay, I guess I can wait longer. Just over two hours later, we finally make it worth the wait. Worth the wait. I like how uh Jane Austen says about uh waiting. Uh she says this uh when people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five. Isn't that true when you're waiting? Everything just seems to take longer. If we are honest with ourselves, most of us, most of the time, are not good at waiting, actually. All through our lives, we just I mean to find ourselves in just I mean, spaces and places where waiting is a must. You would think by now that we might be better at it, right? That we've just learned that it's just a part of what's gonna happen. We're going to learn how to wait, but our current moment in culture of hurry and getting everything instantly is not really helping us wait. In fact, if in fact, over the last 75 years, we've seen so many things move forward to help us not wait any longer because we don't like waiting. For instance, the invention of the drive-thru at restaurants has formed us into thinking that a full meal should arrive to me in minutes. Right? That, you know, having lived in Edmonton most of my life, I have been formed to believe that two-day shipping from Amazon is too long when I can pick the same-day shipping, right? That has been forming me in how I wait. I don't have to wait each week when I watch something new on just uh on I think uh uh uh Netflix because I can just watch the whole season over a weekend if I wanted to. No one here does that, right? Everybody paces themselves when they watch a show. No matter what is on my mind, no matter what I'm just just you know, you know, having just I mean, I sit and think about, I don't have to sit and contemplate and wonder about what might be on my mind. I can just Google any question I have and get an answer instantly if I want to. We see being busy and rushed is almost this, I mean, a badge of honor, right? Where just I mean, a work environment is always pushing us to multitask in order to be more efficient. We are constantly looking for the fastest way to get results in our lives, but this is just the way the world works, right? We just move quicker now. Everything has to happen faster. We expect things right away. But I wonder what kind of effect is this having on you and I as we long for things to be faster, what's it doing to us internally? See if some of these things are things you can just, I mean, relate to. When you send a text to somebody, when they don't reply quickly to you, do you wonder if something's wrong on the other end? Or while you wait for a response, you anxiously look and watch at the chat bubble at the bottom of your screen, right? And you just are wondering anxiously what they're gonna say. The moment your phone makes a noise, you can't help but pick it up. When you watch a video online, you get really annoyed by an ad that you have to wait five seconds to skip, and you get really annoyed if you can't skip it at all. How many of us feel that way? Our cultural desire to not have to wait is actually forming you. It is forming you, and it's not forming you in the best of ways. It's not forming me in the best of ways. It is reshaping our soul towards impatience, actually. It is weakening our longing for depth. It turns our just I mean a relationship shallow and quick. We are emotionally just I mean, reactive in how we get frustrated at the smallest inconvenience of not getting our way. Our attention is fragmented all the time. But more than anything, it distorts our view of God. It changes how we see him. We put the same cultural expectations of hurry on him when we don't get what we want. We get frustrated when God doesn't answer prayer in our timing or we start thinking that any delay on his part is equal to absence or indifference. And if he doesn't act in the way that we hope, we question his goodness. Does God really love me the way he says he does? You see, at any given time, you are being formed. Formation is always happening, and you and I are being formed if we're not careful to conform to the pattern of the world around us, just that we would be swept up in the hurry and the impatience and getting everything right now, that our lives need to move more quickly and results need to happen right away. But the problem is this hurry doesn't just speed up our lives, it's eroding our ability to see God for who he really is and to experience him for who he really is. The ancient just I mean, a practice of waiting on God is more difficult in our cultural moment than ever before. To wait for him is painful. And so this morning, here's what I want to do as we head into this just I mean, Easter season, I think the I mean an invitation from Jesus is to slow down. I think it's to breathe deeply, to learn how to wait. I don't know how many times I've heard this past week from so many different people that feel like this entire season has just snuck up on them. All of a sudden it's Easter around the corner. And I don't know about you, but I really don't want Easter to fly by. I don't want to look back in a month and be like, man, that was quick. I'd rather it take its time. And what if the invitation from Jesus then in this season is to bring all your expectations of him, all your worry, all your anxiety, all the things that you think you want right now, all the immediacy that you're feeling, all the angst, all the prayers that feel like they are hanging in the air without response, and to realign your heart with God's, that it would just settle and be calm. That you and I would move from this posture of hurry and we would slow our hearts and practice the way of Jesus through waiting. That we might do that. So this morning, if you have your Bibles, turn to John chapter 11. If you have been part of our church for a long time or a short time, this is a pretty just I mean a familiar story for many people. And God wants to reveal his heart for us as we dive in, and it's gonna happen through the death of his friend. We're gonna see how it is experienced through just, I mean he had Jesus and what those around him experienced of him in their waiting. And so we're gonna pick this up again in verse one. It says, 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 sister sent word to Jesus, Lord, the one you love is sick. Mary and Martha are names that most of us recognize in the room, right? They are two sisters who famously have a moment with Jesus where he shows up to their house. Martha is busy cleaning, getting the house ready to go, while Mary is doing the opposite. She is sitting and not working, but sitting at the feet of Jesus. And after Martha complains to Jesus about what Mary isn't doing, Jesus says, Oh, Martha, Martha, what Mary is doing is best. Even in all the hurry in that moment, what Mary is doing is best. He says, Understand something here. There is this deep affection for this family here for Jesus. Like he loves these three deeply, right? They have played an important part of his ministry. They are close friends. They most likely have been a place where when he is on the road, they would stop to see them. Like he knows them well. It's a place to rest, a place to eat. They are so close to Jesus that Mary and Martha feel so compelled to send Jesus a message to say, the one you love, our brother Lazarus, is sick. Come quickly. He's sick. You would think that because Jesus loves this family so much, right? That he would just get up from where he was. It's about one day's journey that he would just get up and he would just start moving because after all, he loves this family. Why would he wait? Why would any of us wait on anybody that we love, right? Why wouldn't we just simply get up and do what we're being asked to do? But notice what Jesus does in verse 4. When he heard this, Jesus said, This 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 for two more days. Jesus first makes this, I mean a declaration that says, Lazarus is not going to die. This sickness is not going to take him, but instead, God is going to get glory through what Lazarus is experiencing. In other words, Jesus is saying, through what Lazarus is going through, God is going to show how great and good he is, how kind he is. In fact, Jesus is something similar to the man who was blind who wanted Jesus to heal him. Everyone thought that he was blind because his parents must have sinned. You remember the story back in Luke? He was he's blind, Jesus says, so that others can see and experience the greatness of God in his life. But instead of heading out, or even healing him from there, like he does with the uh centurion servant, it says when Jesus heard the news, he stayed there for two more days. Instead of taking action in the moment, instead of getting up like most of us would do, or even from the outside, if you were reading this for the first time, you would think, why doesn't he just get up and go? He doesn't, he stays for two more days. Why would Jesus do that? Why would he just stay like that? Right, I mean, in this side of the story, we know what happens, right? But but imagine being Mary and Martha, they send word for Jesus to come. Know it takes a day to get there, so by their estimation, a day later, Jesus should show up. He should be there already, he should be present. But keep in mind, they don't know that Jesus said not yet either, right? Like all they know is they've asked him to come. And because they know he loves them so much, they would just expect he's coming. Like so many of us, they might start asking, like, where is he? Doesn't he care? Did he not get the message? Did not get the news? Because again, we have this immediate mindset, right? We have a need, therefore, God needs to answer it in my timing. We often think that. And so I say this in love. We can't fathom that the unfolding of God's plan may not mean that he does what I'm asking right now. We have a hard time imagining that his plan might be to wait on us a little bit, that we wait. That's hard truth to handle. But God is not a genie in a bottle, is he? That we can just ask him to do whatever he wants. He is the creator of the universe. He is sovereign. He decides what happens. He is the first and the last. Everything is in his hands. His ways are so much higher than ours. Who can ever fully understand who God is? None of us on this side of eternity can fully comprehend his ways. And his delay in timing is not a reflection of his love or his goodness or his kindness. It never has been. It is not a reflection on his care for you or whether or not he's listening to you. Here's a quote from uh John Barry, not in the screen here. We often associate waiting with inaction, but he says, but waiting is faith in action, actually. No matter what season you find yourself in today, whether it's illness, whether it's things going on, just I mean, uh I mean, in your marriage or you know, with your kids, whether it's your finances, your mental health, struggles, loneliness, whatever it is you're facing, Jesus is asking you, do you trust me? Do you trust that even though it looks like I'm not moving as fast as you'd like me to, that I still care? That I still hear your prayers, that I'm still present with you? Right, that those things haven't changed. He says, Will you wait on me? Will you trust that I have your best interest at heart? That I know what I'm doing? After the two days, Jesus says, It's time to go, and so they get up and they begin to go, and the way to get there is dangerous. Some people in the area tried to uh uh stone Jesus before, but at this point, he's aware that the spirit now has said to him, Lazarus has died, so Jesus doesn't delay any further and decides to go. And then in verse 11 it says this on his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been dead in the tomb for four days. Uh Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in their loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she sent out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. Lord Martha said to Jesus, If you had been here, my brother would not have died. Martha has this really honest moment with Jesus. She says, Where were you? Where were you? Like we called for you. Like we sent someone to get you. Why didn't you come? I mean, they obviously knew where Jesus was because they sent for him, right? They sent the letter, they knew how far the trip would be. Why did you wait? Because now Lazarus is dead. Really, why would you wait on that? If you had just done what we had asked you to do, he would be alive. You know, can I just say something here? Because I think what she says, though, too, right here to Jesus is so important. God can handle your hard questions. He's not afraid of your heart in these moments in which you struggle in wondering why he would allow what he allows. Why didn't he just do what we hoped he would do? He can handle it. Notice in the text that Jesus never rebukes her, right? He doesn't get after her, he doesn't say to Martha, oh, you know what, Martha, you have no right to ask me that question. Notice he doesn't say that. He just lets her grieve. He lets her lament. He doesn't tell her she's out of line because God knows, he knows that we don't see the full picture of what he's doing. That's why the practice of lament, to mourn, to grieve is so important for us in our faith journey with Jesus. It is so important to give language to the pain we feel, to say it out loud, to voice out loud, to say, I don't understand what you're doing. I don't get it. To give language to that deep longing in our hearts that this world is not as it should be. You know, I feel like these days I have a lot of things on my list that I'm praying for. Praying for so many things for so many of you in this room in these days. Praying for those who live next door to me, hoping there'll be an opportunity for the gospel at some point. For our, for, I mean, it for just I mean, for um, for just I mean, though those in the Middle East and our partners there, for just I mean, for for what's going on in the Middle East in general, just to see peace in that region. And one of the things on my list these days that I pray for, and someone I don't talk about very often from the front here, is my sister Amy. My sister Amy is four years older than I am. I'm still in charge, but she's she's older than I am. Um she is kind and loving and gracious, she is the sweetest soul, and for far too many years, she has been battling with an illness that just ravages her body. Just as terrible things to her. And I don't understand why. Like, I have no idea why God has not healed her yet. Because I pray for that all the time. I pray for him to show up, right? Like, why would God allow such a thing to happen to her? My prayers for her healing are matched by my lament every time she comes to mind. But God can handle that. He can handle the moments that I'm frustrated, that I see her ill, that I live so far away and I can't help her. But let me just encourage you, bring your hard questions to God. Bring the difficulty, bring the pain, bring the tears, bring those things. He invites them. He is never going to tell you, stop doing that. He's never going to tell you, don't complain. That's not his heart. He wants to hear your lament, he wants to know, he wants to listen. There is a beautiful practice of mourning and grief that gives space for us to share our pain with God. And he can handle it. He can take our groaning, our heart's longing. God gave us this grace, this sacred space of lament, right? Where we can grieve without answers. And Martha is doing that here. She's grieving without answers. And in her grief, look at what she says in verse 22. She says, But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask. Even in her pain, she knows that God is still a God who answers prayer, that she is holding on to this hope. And listen to how Jesus responds to her. In verse 23, Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again. Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this, Martha? She says, Yes, Lord. She told him, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into the world. You see, as Martha looks to what's to come, Jesus reveals this unbelievable, incredible, heart-stirring truth that isn't just about what's to come, but it's about right now. He says, I am the resurrection, Martha. I am the life. You see, Jesus wants to refocus Martha's hope, her grief, and her waiting to keep her eyes in the right place and to keep her heart firmly rooted in what's to come. Because Jesus is saying that not only am I the source of all life and power, not only do I have the power to raise the dead in the age to come, which he will. He says that that resurrection life, you can experience it today. It is abundant life to the full. It is that hope that we have in Christ that no matter what happens to us now, there's hope coming. That is the life he's talking about. This eternal life does not start when you die. It starts now. Jesus says, for those who follow me, it starts today. This hope of eternity in heaven is stamped on our hearts. And Jesus wants us to know this because this is how he frames suffering, right? Notice how Jesus is never in a hurry. Do you notice that about him? Right? How he's never rushed. Think about so many of the miracles and moments we see in the life of Jesus. When he calms the storm, where is he? He's sleeping in the back of the boat, isn't he? He's not anxious. When he's asked to heal someone's daughter, he stops on the way to hear the story of a woman who's been sick for 12 years. Because he's not in a rush. Taking the longer way through Samaria to meet a woman at a well instead of the short way around. Jesus is never hurried. And he's never hurried because he can see the bigger picture of the story that he's telling in you and me. He's never in a rush. He knows that no matter what comes my way or your way, no matter what news we hear, no matter what phone call you get, no matter what diagnosis is shared, no matter what tragedy we experience through every tear, every anxious thought, every fear that consumes us, Jesus sees the start from the end. He sees the entirety of the story. And he knows that death does not have the final word. It does not. He does. Jesus has the final word on everything. And so as we wait, we pray, we lament, we groan, and we wait with hope in what Jesus is going to do, that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Here's a quote from uh uh N.T. Wright. He says this, we wait with patience, not like people in a dark room wondering if anyone will ever come with a lighted candle, but like people in early morning who know that the sun has arisen and are now waiting for the full brightness of midday. That's how we wait. That's how we wait. Can I just say this to you? I don't know everything that is on your heart this morning and all that you are carrying, all the things that you're currently waiting for. But let me just say this: you can trust Jesus with everything you're waiting for, with everything that feels anxious, with everything that feels undone, with every prayer that is still hanging in the air, and you're wondering if it will ever reach his ears. Guess what it did? You can trust him in all of those moments. He is there with you, he grieves with you. So much so, a little bit further down the story here of Lazarus, it says, Jesus sees the heartache, the pain, and the grief that he feels. He sees it. Jesus asked to go see the tomb and he passes by everyone else who's there who's mourning. And in verse 35, we have the shortest, most profound verse in all of scripture. Jesus wept. Jesus wept. This literally means Jesus burst into tears as he walked by. He burst into tears. He mourns that the God who made everything cries for his friends. In all of your waiting and your asking and your longing for Jesus to move, the resurrection and the life, who he is, he weeps with you as you weep. I still remember vividly a number of years ago when I was just, it was about 15 years ago, I was in the hospital. I had surgery for cancer. I was there to recover. I was there for about two weeks. It was taking so much longer than I thought it would take. And I remember there were so many afternoons where I would be sleeping, and Christy is there with our little daughter, sitting by my bed day after day, and Christy just in tears, wondering when I'm finally going to get out, waiting for me to get better. And I remember asking Jesus a number of years later where he was in the room when that was going on, because I felt so helpless as a husband, like I had no idea how to help my wife when I'm trying to just be well myself. But I remember Jesus gave me this beautiful scene and picture of as my wife is sitting there crying, he was holding her, crying with her. He is crying with you. In moments you don't think that he's around, he's crying with you. He weeps with you. I love what it says in verse 36. It says, And the Jews said, See how he loved him. After they see Jesus crying, they said, See how he loved him. See it on display. Do you see how he loves you? He sees you the same way as he sees Lazarus. In verse 38, we all know how the story wraps up here. It says, Jesus once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance, and he said, Take away the stone. But Lord said Martha, the sister of the dead man, by this time there is a bad odor. He's been there for four days. Then Jesus said, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me. But I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you have sent me. When he said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And 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. Something just to mull over in your heart today. What do you need to trust Jesus for? What do you need to trust Jesus for? To trust his timing for, to wait on him for in this season. You know, as I think back to my sister, I trust Jesus that he knows what he's doing. I trust him. That doesn't mean there's not pain, but I trust him in what he's doing. Because there is hope that this is not the end of her story. When I asked her earlier this week if I could actually mention her in a sermon, I always ask people, because not everybody wants it. And so when I asked my sister, I said, you know, is it okay if I were just to share a bit of your story with what's going on? And she said, that'd be fine. And I asked her this week, because I know she's going through a lot this week, I said, Amy, how can I pray for you this week? And she said to me, just to remember that God's still good today. Just to remember that God's still good today. No matter what you are waiting for, I want to encourage you, God is still good today. He has not forgotten you, he still hears you. Even if you were in a season of waiting, trust and believe that he has your best interest at heart and hope in that no matter what you experience on this side of eternity, that there is resurrection life still to come on top of what you can experience now. That this is not the end of any of our stories at all. You see, Jesus has the last word, death answers to him. He is the resurrection and the life, and whoever lives and believes in him will never die. There is nothing on this side of eternity that can separate us from the love of God, not rulers, kingdoms, sickness, pain, grief, anything that it says there in Romans. Not one thing can separate us from the love of God. So, how do we respond then? What is Jesus asking us? What is a practice that Jesus is inviting us into? So I thought about a couple different ways for us to practice. Waiting on God does not happen accidentally. Did you know that? Currently, you are being formed in ways that are counter to waiting. And I think the invitation from Jesus is to say, I actually want to teach you how to wait well, because waiting is a big part of what this life is. It is a spiritual muscle that we build through small daily practices that can teach our souls how to trust in God's timing instead of demanding our own timing. There's things that we can do. And so the first way is to uh uh uh lament, right? It is to grieve honestly with God. It's to find ourselves in this place in which we can share exactly what's going on, where to know that he is not afraid of anything that you're saying. When you are praying, don't be afraid to be frustrated. He's okay with that. Read through the Psalms. They are frustrating Psalms sometimes. There are so many moments where David is just brutally honest with how he's feeling about where he is currently with God. Don't be afraid to say those things. He can handle everything on your heart, he's not opposed to any of it. And then in the lament, I think we can be formed in patience through waiting. And so here's a practice I want to encourage you to do. Psalm uh 27 is a fantastic psalm on lament and waiting. It is fantastic. Here would be my challenge to you read this psalm two to three times a day. Morning, afternoon, evening, whatever it is. But then when you're done reading it, sit in silence for one minute. Just for one minute. So many of us, when we even just, I mean you think about silence, it can feel really kind of icky. We don't like silence, but this is such a great way just to learn how to practice how to wait, that we just might sit in that and just invite Jesus in, just to recognize that he's with you in the room and there's no hurry. You don't have to rush. And so that would be my challenge to you as a practice. We're to read that psalm probably two or three times a day. It is really life-giving to wait in that way. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do here. I'm gonna pray for us, then the band's gonna lead us in one last song. So let me pray for you. Uh yeah, so Lord Jesus, thank you for this morning. Jesus, I recognize that in a room this size that there are many that have come here with things today that are on their heart, things that they are waiting for. Jesus, I gave hugs to many on the way in who are in those spaces. Jesus, I have had, I mean, conversations all week with different folks in this room who are waiting on you, who are eagerly waiting. Jesus, I pray that even right now that you would just gently start to just bring to mind something that we are waiting for. Something that feels unresolved, something that feels undone, something that feels like that just needs to get fixed. Or it could be our health, it could be relationships with with our kids, it could be with our with our spouse, it could even be what's going on at work, it can be with our finances. Jesus, would you just gently bring to mind what are we waiting on you for in this season? And then I just ask Jesus that even for just 30 seconds, we might just pause this morning to wait on you. And so, with whatever it is that you have on your mind this morning, just with your heads bowed and your eyes closed, I'm just gonna ask this of Jesus for you and for me, and that we might just sit in the waiting. So, Lord Jesus, thank you that you are the God. Who holds everything in your hands? That you hold my situation, you hold my health, you hold my life, you hold my relationships, Jesus, you hold my finances, my home, my work. You hold everything in your hands. And Jesus, even when I can't see, I believe that you are there. That you have my best interest at heart. And so, Lord, I will wait on you. I will wait on you. Lord Jesus, as we anticipate what's to come in a couple weeks at Easter, thank you that you are the resurrection in the life. Lord, that you have come to seek and save the lost. Jesus, that you have no intention of leaving us where we are, but you are in the business of bringing dead things back to life. And so, Jesus, would you restore our hearts today? Or would you bring those, just I mean, spaces and places in our lives back to life in a way that gives us hope. Hope in knowing that you are a God who deeply loves us, who sees us, who knows us, who weeps with us, and one that we can hope in knowing that this is not the end of our story. So, Jesus, thank you for your love, your grace, and your mercy. Father, thank you for your hands in our lives. Holy Spirit, thank you for leading us and for guiding us to become more and more like Jesus. So, Lord, we love you, and we just ask these things in your name. Amen.