Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, "Father, I'm grateful that You have listen to me. I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I've spoken so that they might believe that You sent me."
Jesus prayed that prayer right before he commanded Lazarus to come out of the tomb, and out he came, wrapped from head to toe. Lazarus is probably the first mummy to come out alive as Pastor Mark mentioned in the weekend sermon! Here is our first Mummy movie... but before any of those miracle happened, Jesus decided to proclaim His promises in faith before he performs the miracle! Sometimes we knew that God will do something in our lives, but do we claim them? Do we proclaim about His promises in faith? Well, Jesus did.
Maybe some of us are like Thomas, the one called the Twin (also called Thomas the Doubt), who said to his companions, "Come along. We might as well die with him" after Jesus called them all to go back to Judea with him because they knew that the Jews are out to kill them. Well! He was right! If the disciples and Thomas went alone, they could be killed, but since they went with Jesus, they weren't! One of my favorite quote is: "If you think you can, you can! If you think you cannot, then you are right!". Basically, this quote is right in our Christianity faith, but with His promises not ours. If we are like Thomas the Doubt, then we need to increase our faith, to believe and act.
Jesus told them, "Are there not twelve hourse of daylight? Anyone who walks in daylight doesn't stumble because there's plenty of light from the sun. Walking at night, he might very well stumble because he can't see where he's going." What does that mean? It showed us that we got to keep our eyes on Him and let Him be our light. So that we will know what we should do and where we should go! Jesus knew, so he went! Thomas the Doubt didn't, so he could have stumbled, but because he was with Jesus, he didn't! We need to keep ourselves in the daylight!
Faith is more than believing His words, it includes our action! Proclaim!
I don't know. I think the Message translates this poorly. The NIV and most other translations have that Thomas said, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." So, while the other disciples were afraid, as seen in verse 8, Thomas was the only one with enough faith to actually go with Jesus despite the obvious danger of death.
ReplyDeleteSo here, I would think that Thomas the Doubter, was shown to have the most faith. It's funny how we are sometimes remembered for our failures rather than our victories.
-Cardona
Thanks Aaron,
ReplyDeleteYeah in this passage Thomas showed the courage. He is probably the most courageous disciple on that day as he called them to go with Jesus, come and follow! I think that they still have a lot to grow. Maybe Thomas may be courage, but a bit doubting when it comes to miracles. In this passage, it seems like Thomas overcome his doubt by deciding to go and die with Him. But I think it still shows his doubting. Instead of saying, "come and we will escape again", he said "come and we may die with him". If Jesus escaped once, then he can escape again with His hands in all of this.
When I think about failure, I encourage myself by telling myself that success comes with failure. I said that to myself because I was thinking about the failure.
So, in the same way, I think that Thomas is telling the disciples to be willing to die with Jesus, to encourage them because they were afraid of dying.
Kari =)