Robert E Rasmussen.com

God loves to have us wait. In fact, it is likely that right now you are waiting for something to happen, and God is saying “Wait.” I believe that God uses waiting in the life of His children as much or more than any other tool in His toolkit.

I large part of my passion story involves waiting. My wife took a long time to heal. She was puffed up on prednisone for a long, long time. And my ministry didn’t resume for a long, long time. I got an opportunity to do some Bible teaching on the radio, but it faltered and didn’t work out. I had to resign. Disappointment!

My daughters (then 17 and 15) also struggled big time with the aftermath of what had happened to us as a family. They missed Kenya and all their friends. They struggled with living in the USA, unable to find friends who could relate to their big view of the world. Together we all grieved and struggled with depression. To drive toward the hospital seemed like returning to prison. The days were long and dark–like a tomb.

It’s ironic: We all spend an inordinate amount of time in tomb-like experiences, where we can only wait on God to do something…to give a job, to heal a relationship, to reveal His will. Yet we are not very good at handling burial times. One friend put it this way: We don’t have a theology for Saturday. Jesus died on a Friday, and we know a bit about suffering and hardship. Jesus rose on Sunday, and we love to talk about resurrection. But Saturday? We aren’t so good at dwelling in our tomb, handling grief, loss, and delay.

Judging from experience, God considers it essential that we learn to wait. Remember when Lazarus was sick and sisters Mary and Martha called for Jesus to come heal him? Remember what Jesus did? He waited two days before responding. By the time He arrived, Lazarus had died. Mary and Martha were disappointed and upset.

But what do we learn? Jesus deliberately waited because the delay produced a greater miracle that brought Him more glory. Instead of a healing the people saw a resurrection!

The reason God made our family wait, and the reason He is making you wait, is because He intends to do something more glorious than you are currently hoping for.

Be encouraged by this: You story cannot end in the tomb. That is impossible, because of the very character of God.

And that leads to the best part…

I am a missionary and the thing that motivated me to get into this aspect of ministry was the overarching mandate from Jesus to go and make disciples of all peoples. If there is any command I don’t want to overlook, that’s it. The very last words Jesus spoke on earth said that we, his followers, would receive the power of the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses to our Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8).

But here is a confession you may not expect to hear from a missionary: I have always found it a challenge to share the gospel because most people don’t seem eager to hear about it. This was true in California when I was a pastor, and (this may surprise you) it was even true in Kenya where our family did missionary work for 10 years.

So I have thought a lot about how to share my love for Christ more effectively in a world that doesn’t care to hear about it. Over the last 10 years God has taught me something about that. Here is what I have come to see: People need to see that Jesus loved them so much that He died for them, was buried for them, and rose from the dead…for them. But how can they see that?

Here is what God has taught me: People will see the dead-buried-risen Christ as they observe one of Jesus’ followers go through the same process, while still holding on to their faith. (I don’t know if you caught the weight of that sentence. If you breezed over it, please read it again.)

They will see a Christian going through a death-like experience…

…a burial-like experience…

…and a resurrection-like experience.

That is what I have come to call my Passion story, for it is the retelling of the Passion of Christ through our lives today.

Not only do I want to write about my Passion story on this blog. I believe you have a passion story to tell–in which you died a kind of death, you endured a kind of burial, and you had (or will have) a kind of resurrection.

That’s the story I’ll be telling here. I hope you will follow along.

People will see the dead-buried-risen Christ as they observe one of Jesus’ followers go through the same process.

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