Heart Tracks - Can You?

       I love John 11:25-26, and recently, the Lord took me a bit deeper into the meaning of what He says here.  He is speaking to Martha, whose brother Lazarus has just died, saying, "I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in Me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again.  They are given eternal life for believing in Me and will never perish.  Do you believe this Martha?"  There's richness here far beyond my or anyone's ability to fully comprehend, but the eternal life He offers is not something that awaits us only after our physical bodies have died, but is a life, His life, available to all who really believe, right now.  A better interpretation of His words "Do you believe," is "Can you believe."  Jesus is not asking Martha for an intellectual agreement on His words.  He asks her if she can fully receive all the power and life of those words into her life and being.  Can she believe all that is in the power of His promise?  Can you?  Can I?  In the encroaching darkness of these days, and any days, can we believe Him?  Can we experience the fullness of His life?  Can we know and walk in resurrection power and life?

    In his book, The Root Of The Righteous, A.W. Tozer writes, "To many Christians, Christ is little more than an idea, or at best an ideal.  He is not a fact.  Millions of professed believers talk as if He were real, and act as if He were not."  He goes on to say that any belief that does not "command the one who holds it is not a real belief at all, it is a pseudo belief only......For true faith, it is either God, or total collapse."  So many, when faced with the possibility of total collapse, will turn to their own devices and abilities for deliverance, unable to trust and rest in the power and promise of Almighty God.  At such times, their faith is exposed as being pseudo faith, not a real one.  Do we dare to see if such faith dwells within us?  Can we stand before Him, in the midst of the deepest trial and darkness, and in spite of it, say in response to His question, "Can you believe this?", "Yes Lord, I can."  And because we can, we may live in the midst of that darkness with the power of His resurrection life.  Overwhelming problems cannot stand against the power of His overcoming life.
   Tozer says, "For each of us, the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God....to the man of pseudo faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith, it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain."  When that time comes for you and I, when Christ stands before us, with every circumstance pointing to the impossibility of His words being true, and He asks, "Can you believe this?", how will we answer?  How will you answer?  Pseudo faith or real faith.  In which are we walking?

Blessings,
Pastor O