Feb 7, 2021 Used with permission from STEVE FARRAR
T H E C A L L T O L I V E
“Lazarus, come forth!”
John 11:43
Lazarus was thoroughly dead, so much so that his own sisters warned Christ that his body would stink. For days their beloved brother had lain in the tomb, the heat and flies putting an exclamation point on his demise.
Lazarus was dead. But then he wasn’t. Still wrapped in his burial shroud, he began to move. If there was a smell of death within the tomb, it did not stop him from responding to the command of life spoken by his friend.
It was Lazurus’s choice to respond, or so it seemed. Surely he had found the beauty of a post death experience to be wonderful, and his return to a hot, smelly tomb in Palestine undesirable by comparison. So many of the “dead” are saddened, they tell us, by their return to the “land of the living.”
Yet respond he did, because it was the voice of God who spoke the command. Thus it is with each of us who have gone well down our own path of death. For most, the death of an unconscious soul has been with us not just for days, but often for years. The finality of biological death for many simply reflects what they have experienced within their minds and hearts, now written in their bodies.
Lazurus’s rising reflects the truth of our Being: life and death is a matter of our soul, not our body. It is of this that Christ spoke when He asked, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul (awareness of his divinity)?” How does a man lose his soul (awareness)? By failing to recognize the very truth of his Being, it’s Union with God.
When the Father commands life, whether it be spiritual or physical, IT WILL BE SO. And He HAS commanded life for all the sons of God. “With long life I will satisfy him and show him My salvation,” the Psalmist channels God as saying. “Even unto your old age I will be the same. Even unto your graying years, I will bear you. I HAVE DONE IT. I will carry you, I will bear you, I will deliver you,” Isaiah quotes the Lord as promising.
All life originates from within. All life dies from within. The ”issues of life” are always decided within the awareness of the Self. Christ said, “Now this is eternal life, that they MAY KNOW You, the only true God, and Yeshua Christ (within yourself), whom You have sent.” The eternal is not designed to weaken and die. It is designed to live, yet that very life arises from knowing – as a present living reality – the Father and the Son. These are the immortal ones, with whom we are forever One.
It is not enough to know mere theology, or to be familiar with ritual. Life is not perfunctory, nor is it found in duty, or even obedience. It is experienced in a direct flow of loving union inherently provided by the Father to all his children. It is not merely biological. It is spiritual, emotional, and mental. It is marked by love, peace and joy.
The world is filled with the walking “dead”, those who are unawakened. The soul does not live by “bread” alone – not by worldly thoughts, ideas, foods, or any other physical thing. It lives by the words of God, the messengers bearing the loving thoughts of God. IT LIVES BY PARTAKING OF ITS TRUE IDENTITY.
When you hear the Christ within say “Arise, come forth, “ do not hesitate. Do not doubt the voice within. Come forth from all prior beliefs and ideas and identities. These are but briefly lingering tomb smells. You have been designed for life, not death, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. Accept this and do not look back. No longer consider “any man (especially yourself) after (as) the flesh.”
– Steve Farrar