Free People, "Free" People

Last Wednesday our pastors wife Haley said: Free People, Free People. I was taken back on how true it was that I'm not sure how much more of the Bible study I actually listened to. So, I've studied the story of Lazarus. I copied and pasted the whole story onto a word pad and printed it so I could go to work on it with my notes and thoughts. All week I've seen new things about this story. If you are like me you've heard this story hundreds of times and thought, how wonderful, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. If you just "read" it, that is all you walk away with. Let's say shocked is how I walked away from my study each time I searched the heart of God. What are you telling me Lord? Why is this story so significant. Yes, You are the giver of life, yes You are our healer, yes You hear us when we call on You. But what was the message to me? Now? As I went through the passage I kept finding things that the people were doing. Go, went, come, prayed, thought, told, mourned, asked, cried, remove. Are you telling me Lord that I have a part of the miracle. Are you telling me that if I don't do my part many will go lost, many will go on hurting, and bound up? YES!!
Lazarus was Mary's (the one who annointed His feet) brother and was very sick. She with her "prayer partner" Martha interceded for Lazarus by going to Jesus. They didn't wait on someone to come to their house from the local church, they didn't wait on a doctor, they didn't wait on Lazarus to "get Holy enough to deserve a healing", they went to Jesus. All through the story you see time and time again that they went, told, cried, prayed, mourned. In John 11:15 he told the disciples that it was for their sake that He wasn't there when Lazarus was sick, because this gave Him another opportunity to make them believe. Is that why I'm allowed to go through my brothers pain now? Is this why I hurt for him being gone for so long from his family? Is it so that I am a part of the healing, and that my faith will strengthen? YES!!
Now this is the gooooood part. At the end of the story most of us remember Jesus saying: LAZARUS COME FORTH! I'm sure if you are like me you've heard it hundreds of times, I've even performed children's plays to this story when I was a child. But I don't think I've ever remembered the real ending of the story. Those people who had prayed for Lazarus, who had cried and mourned for him, who sought God's healing for him. THEY were the ones Jesus told to complete what He had started. John 11:44 NLT "And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in grave clothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth, Jesus told them, "Unwrap him and let him go"
The Holy Spirit calls the lost, and we unwrap them. In our love, our prayers and our mourning for the them we grow a depth of knowledge of what God wants for them. We don't judge them for where they are or where they've been. We don't hold it against them when they can't unwrap themselves. (how could they) We carefully, lovingly unwrap the things that have bound them unto death.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. Isaiah 61:1