Revelation 21:3-5 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said [a]to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
Paastor Chris continues: My wife now lives with no suffering, no mental-illness, no pain, no disconnection between body and soul, no shame in being not the person that she should have been she couldn’t contain her own mental processes; and the same is true for you born-again believing loved ones. There is a hope that comes along with Heaven that has been different for me now, and it is almost a complete deconstruction of the version of God that I thought was there. And in it’s place, something new has been built , and it is invincible because it is not fake and false; it is now real and true. It does not afford the promise of “nothing bad is going to happen.” It is our Heavenly Father God, who stands with us in the wrestling, in the suffering, and in the pain. This truth makes the parts of Scripture that I used to not associate with before give meaningful direction for life. Before the death and raising of Lazarus in John 11 was a cool, neat story. And now when I read that passage, I yearn and beckon with my soul for Jesus to give me that type of peace. Everything is different now.
I want to point you to another one of these. John 20:24-29 is about “doubting Thomas (though all of the 12 disciples really doubted Jesus would rise according to the Scriptures) and happen a week after Jesus rises from the dead. We do not like to see ourselves in text of Scripture as doubters either. In reality, if penned in Scripture I am “doubting Christopher”, but don’t laugh … what is your name? I’m sure that you have doubts too. We may believe that the Lord raised from the dead on Easter, but we may doubt His gentleness, interest, providence, et cetera (you have something in your life) and we wrestle with them right now. It is a genuine desire and God is just not showing up and it is confusing. The beauty of it though is that I used to would have thought our doubts and wrestling made God nervous or that they were irreverent, but they are not!
In the Book of Psalms, we see three types of psalms: Praise, Thanksgiving and Lament. One third of all the Psalms are ask God, “Where are you?” or “Why do my enemies succeed and the faithful fail?” or “Why do the people who steal never get caught and have everything while I am trying to be judicious and barely get by?” “What are you doing?!” The Disciple Thomas is saying, “I want to know and I want to believe. You are telling me that Jesus resurrection form the dead and is alive, but I just can’t get there. I’m wrestling with the idea of this. I’m not quite sure. I just experienced the deepest grief ever. I gave my whole life to follow this guy and now he lies rotting in a tomb. I am not going to change and go back to that type of hope until I see him, and I put my finger in his nail-scarred hands and it spear-pierced side.” In my brain the next verse should start with the words “immediately Jesus showed up”, because Thomas was earnest. He was saying, “I just want to believe. I’m not trying to cause a problem. I just have these doubts. But his timing was not God’s timing, so seven days went by. It is as if God wanted Thomas to struggle and wrestle. Jesus came to the nation of Israel. The word “Israel” literally means “to wrestle with God”.
You would think that Jesus, when he appeared to all twelve that week later, would shame Thomas and make him feel the full weight of his doubt. Thomas saw Jesus make the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf to hear, the mute to talk, raise people from the dead, cast out demons, and told the storm and waves to stop and they obeyed. Then when he said that he was going to come back from the dead, Thomas didn’t believe Him? You think that Jesus would say, “How dare you Thomas?” But, Jesus gently reaches out and puts His hands in front of Him, then says “put your finger here in the holes and your hand in the gash in my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas then responds saying, “My Lord and my God!” The last past is not criticism when Jesus says, “Because you have seen me, you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” What Jesus was doing is saying, your generation will see me with their own eyes, but there will be thousands of years or people who have never seen me and their call to faith will be the Bible, the stories, and your testimony from you Disciples. You tell the stories and write them down because they must believe through what they have not seen.
In John 14:1-6 Jesus tells us, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
What do the nail marks of Jesus represent to us today? They represent victory, sacrifice, love and our resurrection. One day, I will see Jesus face to face, and if you are in the risen Christ as a repentant believer and follower, having surrendered your life over to Him, then you will too, for He died and was raised for you. And the Word of God tells us that those nail marks will not be gone. They are a forever lasting reminder of the love, sacrifice, victory over sin and death that Jesus overcame in the resurrection and ascension to the right hand of our Heavenly Father to prepare a place for you, when He made Himself, though the power of the Holy Spirit and God the Father, to live again after crucified and dead three days in a tomb.
Let's conclude Pastor Chris' message on wrestling with the real God in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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