Do You Believe?
“Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” Luke 11:27
Martha was home, surrounded by mourners, when she heard that Jesus had arrived. She ran to meet him with a heart full of grief and a mind full of questions. Her brother, Lazarus, had been dead four days. Why hadn’t Jesus come sooner?
But Martha’s conversation with Jesus displayed faith and hope rather than anger. She sought understanding and comfort when she said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not 
have died.” Her faith was strong: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask” (v. 22). And in verse 24 she declared, “I know [Lazarus] will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
Jesus then redirected her focus: “I am the resurrection and the life” (v. 25). In other words, “Focus on me, Martha, not the circumstances.”
Martha’s refocused response to Jesus was “I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Warren Wiersbe says the tense of the verb believe indicates “a fixed and settled faith.”[1] Martha’s saying, “I have believed, I believe now, and I will continue to believe—no matter what.”
That declaration of faith signaled a spiritual aha moment for Martha. The real issue wasn’t whether Jesus could heal Lazarus or should have healed him. Martha needed to place her complete trust in who Jesus is—the all-powerful Son of God who’s working toward our eternal good and his eternal glory no matter what circumstances suggest (Romans 8:28–29).
A deeper understanding of who Jesus is—we need that too. If we’re constantly asking for a What, we’ll miss the Who. And it’s the Who and our relationship with him that quiets our questions and dissolves our demands. When we stop seeking specific answers and affirm that Jesus loves us and knows what he’s doing, peace comes.
At Lazarus’s burial site, Jesus said to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” (v. 40). She believed. And she witnessed a miracle. If we believe in him, we too will see his glory revealed in ways we never imagined.
Do you believe?
DIG DEEPER
Read John 11:1–46. How do both sisters demonstrate their love for Jesus and their faith in him? Why do you think the people who witnessed the miracle had such different responses to it? (See vv. 45–46.)
Read John 5:24–29. What does Jesus say about life after death in this passage? How do his words differ from what many people believe about the afterlife? What do you believe?
Read Titus 1:1–2, 1 John 2:24–25, and Jude 1:21. What is the hope of those who have believed on Jesus Christ? Do you have this hope? How does it make a difference in your day-to-day life?
Denise K. Loock
This devotion is part of a series, The Miracles of the Messiah.
[1] Warren Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: New Testament, (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), 269.