Why does God feel painfully late on the prayer you have been praying for years? The one for the marriage, the child, the healing, the door that still has not opened. If you have ever wondered whether God is even listening, this sermon was made for you.In this message, Pastor Josiah walks through John 11, the story of Lazarus, and asks a question almost no one wants to admit they are sitting in. How do we trust Jesus when his timing breaks our expectations? Most of us have a version of that question quietly running in the background of our lives. We have prayed. We have trusted. We have stayed faithful. And yet the relationship is still in pieces. The diagnosis still came back the way we feared. The child still has not come home. The anxiety is still here.Pastor Josiah pulls three honest, freeing truths out of this chapter. First, delay is not denial. Verse 6 says Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, so he stayed. Not so he rushed. So he stayed. That single word reframes everything. The love of God is not always measured by the speed of his response. Sometimes it is measured by what he is producing in the silence.Second, do not forget who he is. When Martha runs to Jesus, disappointed and grieving, he does not give her a five step plan. He gives her himself. I am the resurrection and the life. Faith is not built on outcomes. Faith is built on a Person. Some of us have become so consumed with what God has not done that we have forgotten who he still is.Third, gratitude comes before the movement. Before Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, he stops and thanks his Father. The stone is still in place. The body is still inside. And Jesus is already worshiping. Pastor Josiah points out that anyone can worship after the resurrection. Mature faith worships while the grave is still in front of you.The sermon lands somewhere most preaching does not dare go. Jesus, knowing exactly what he was about to do, still wept at the tomb. He is not emotionally disconnected from your pain. He is fully God and fully human, and he enters in. Faith is not pretending you are okay. Faith is bringing your real pain to a real Savior who already knows the end of the story.And the end of this story is the gospel itself. Lazarus, whose name actually means God is my helper, was dead, wrapped, sealed in a tomb, with every reason gone. And Jesus stood at the entrance and called him out. That is what Pastor Josiah reminds us he still does today. To every person sitting in their sin, their past, their addiction, their shame, Jesus is on the other side of the wall calling, come out. The barrier is already gone.
