Now act like it

Unbind him and let him go – John 11.44

If you do a miracle of raising a man from the dead, wouldn’t you remove the death clothes and make him all fresh, too?  Lazarus is still wrapped up in the four-day-old funeral clothes he was buried in. 

There’s more to life than a technical definition of circulation and respiration – and we have a role in that ‘more.’  It’s possible to have a new life, yet be bound in the clothes of the dead.

You can go years without renewing your auto inspection and registration, and never get caught.  But you’ll drive under a foreboding sense of condemnation, guilt, shame and fear.  You know this can’t go forever; sooner or later you’ll get caught.  You’re always watching for cops.  (There’s one right behind you!).  It’s like you’re dead and you’re waiting for everyone to find out.

When you finally pay up there’s relief – no more condemnation or guilt.  But you know what happens?  Right after you pay up, for days or weeks after that, you still drive in fear.  It’s become a habit.  Even though you’re free, you still feel a little buzzing dread that you’re going to get caught, like you’re doing something wrong.  You’re alive but you’re not acting like it.

Let the new live.  Take off the things that are part of the old dead thing.  Be what you now are, with what you now have.  Stop those things that are part of of the old life, the old way of living and thinking. 

Unbind him and let him go.

When you’ve been given a new mind and a new power, let your mind be what it is.  Go with your new interest and way of thinking.  Don’t fight it.  Like physical life grows, so will this.

This is where the big battle and activity of faith starts – not in believing that God is going to do some big thing, but in believing in the big thing he’s already done.  Get this one first and the big things we want him to do in jobs, families, relationships, money, health, etc, will settle into a quieter place.