Unsearchable Riches

May all who search for you be filled with joy and gladness in you. May those who love your salvation repeatedly shout, “God is great!”

Psalm 70:4

God wants to use our lives as platforms for displaying his power. He wants to work in our lives in such a way that we become trophy cases for his victories. When God works his wonders in our lives, those watching will be filled with wonder and shout, “God is great!”

Consider the story of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. When Lazarus became ill, his sisters Mary and Martha sent a message to Jesus. Their message was simple and represented their absolute faith in Jesus to respond to their needs. “Lord, the one you love is sick.” They expected him to arrive in time to heal their brother, but Jesus had bigger plans.

Imagine that Jesus had arrived at Bethany in time to heal Lazarus. Who would have seen his glory? Read John 11:19: “Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother” (NIV). Why were people at Mary and Martha’s house? Lazarus’s illness would not have brought them. What did it take to bring them? It took Lazarus’s death.

What happened because the Jews from the area had come to mourn Lazarus’s death? They were positioned to see Jesus prove his mastery over death in raising Lazarus from the dead. Now look at John 11:45:

“Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him” (NIV).

Jesus is engineering our circumstances so that his power and glory will be on display. When God builds a waiting period into the course of your affairs, it means that what he is doing requires it. His apparent delays are loving, purposeful, and deliberate.

Thank you for experiences teaching me that your ways are higher than mine. Father, use my life to display your power.

My Master has riches beyond the count of arithmetic, the measurement of reason, the dream of imagination, or the eloquence of words. They are unsearchable! You may look, and study, and weigh, but Jesus is a greater Saviour than you think him to be when your thoughts are at the greatest.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon(1834–1892), English preacher and writer