Series on The Ascension Lenten Companion by Fr. Mark Toups (Part 6)
Our expectations and what God is doing can be totally different, so how should we respond to that? In the raising of Lazarus, the response of the Pharisees was to have Jesus killed. This was the tragic response of the heart when they were not open and unable to receive the mysterious and unconditional love of God. We can sometimes share the same humanity as the Pharisees too. We sometimes prefer to have Jesus out of our lives completely because of the changes, experiences, and difficult things that are happening in our lives that weren’t what we expected them to be. We want it to be a certain way but then it’s not that way.
But despite all that, we are invited to stay in relationship with Jesus through any difficulty, change, or experience. In this episode we’re gonna do a recap on the raising of Lazarus and dive into its mysterious reality and our response to that.
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Surrender Authority
How does Jesus have authority? It is through His obedience to the Father. But one incredible reality of Jesus is that in His authority, He takes all the stench to the cross, where it will be killed in His crucifixion. His authority does not lord it over us and does not force us to bow down and tremble before Him. But it allows Himself to be emptied and clothed with…
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Discernment Basics
We are made to live in relationship wherein two or more people speak to one another. As we have the desire to talk to God, He also has the desire to speak and to come close to His people. He is speaking to us. We have to grow in sensitivity to what God’s voice sounds like, what our voices sounds like, what the voice of the world sounds like, and what the voice of the enemy sounds like. There are times we already know the voice of who we’re talking to simply because we’ve been with them, we’ve spoken to them, we said things back and forth with them, same is true with God.
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A Really Good Episode
Because of fear and insecurity that is ruling our life, we tend to control everything and self-protect. We look inward and we really don’t see what God is doing—we don’t really trust anyone around us. We don’t have to be afraid anymore. There…
