She, Herself & God: Martha
Martha’s Marvelous Faith
“Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if only You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give You whatever You ask.’ Jesus told her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ ‘Yes,’ Martha said, ‘he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.’ Jesus told her, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. Anyone who believes in Me will live even after dying. Everyone who lives in Me and believes in Me will never, ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she told Him. ‘I have always believed You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One who has come into the world from God.’” (John 11: 21-27)
Back in college, there was a guy friend who confessed to me that he did not believe in God anymore. And instead of convincing him to have a change of heart and encouraging him to contemplate his life, I got seriously mad at him to the point that I said curse words because I thought that losing faith was the worst sin anyone could commit. What I did not realize was that I also committed a sin right there and then because I only gave my friend more reasons not to believe in the Lord. Imagine, I was claiming that I was a Christian; and yet, I was cursing a friend since childhood who was in the worst season of his spiritual life. What a testimony! Nonetheless, I did not say sorry to him after that. I just kept on sending him encouraging quotes and Bible verses that I thought would help him regain his faith. I just did not know if those text messages had been helpful somehow, but I was so sure that my friend did not become an atheist.
To be honest, I was initially proud of myself for fighting for my faith at that time despite being challenged by someone close to me. I realized my faith in God was so strong that nobody could influence me in losing it because I always was (and I still am) a faith first type of person. But in the Scriptures, there was a woman named Martha whose faith was so marvelous that I suddenly forgot that she was a worried housekeeper when Jesus first went into her home. Instead, I wanted to imitate her faith at the time that her brother, Lazarus, had already been in the grave for four days and Christ went to meet her. And because she had always believed that He was the Messiah, the Son of God, and the One who had come into the world from God, she was confident that her brother would not have died if Jesus had been there. But even then as they were speaking, she was so sure that the Heavenly Father would give Christ whatever He asked.
Needless to say, that conversation between Jesus and Martha made me look back on my college encounter with my faithless friend. If only I had a marvelous faith back then like Lazarus’s sister who believed that nothing was impossible for the Lord, what difference could have been made? If only I had prayed to God for my friend to be transformed for His glory instead of cursing him for his lack of faith, what miracles could have happened? And if only I had preached to him the gospel of the kingdom of God instead of just sending encouraging quotes and Bible verses that appeared as text templates, what changes could have occurred? The possibilities are actually endless. He could have been a believer, a born again Christian, and a worker in the Lord’s vineyard. What a testimony that could have been! Nevertheless, everything is now, sadly, just another could have been.
As a woman of God, each of us should learn from Martha and imitate her marvelous faith. We should know that nothing is hard nor impossible for God because He even raised Lazarus from the dead. We should realize as well that when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are reconciled to God and adopted into His family; hence, we can ask for anything in Jesus’s Name. And when we do, we have the assurance that it will be given to us whether it is saving someone experiencing physical death or saving someone experiencing spiritual death like my once faithless friend. At the end of the day, no matter how powerless we are as human beings or how hopeless our situations appear to be, the Lord still listens to us and there will always be power and hope coming from Him whenever we pray and have faith like Martha.
Father God, we thank You for Martha’s marvelous faith because it teaches us to no longer worry about anything at all and to just cling to You as the Giver of all including our lives and the world that we live in. Thank You as well for using Martha to remind us that Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God, and the One who had come into the world from You; therefore, anything we ask in His Name shall be given to us. May we always be women of God who have a marvelous faith like Martha so that we can be salt of the earth and light of the world. Please do not allow us to have another could have been moment when it comes to preaching to the lost the gospel of Your kingdom. Instead, we invite Your Holy Spirit to always empower us so that we can draw people closer to You especially those who are in the worst season of their spiritual lives. All these we ask in the most powerful Name of Christ Jesus. Amen.
