Hi all,
Have you ever been part of an intervention?
An intervention is most commonly associated with family members and loved ones confronting addicts or those with emotional or mental troubles in the hopes of getting them to see that they need help. During an intervention, they present facts from events in that person’s life in the hope they will see their condition through the eyes of others and get help.
Let’s consider the intervention of Thomas
The gospels narrate how the resurrected Lord appeared to the women who went to the tomb with spices for anointing His body. John’s gospel tells us Mary Magdalene saw the stone rolled back, and then ran to tell the disciples, “Someone has taken away His body and I don’t know where they’ve laid Him.” (20:2)
Peter and John ran to the tomb, with John winning the race, and then Peter entered into the tomb, with verses 8-9 telling us they believed what Mary said, that someone had taken His body. Verse 9 tells us: “For at that point they didn’t know the scripture that He must rise from the dead.” They didn’t believe in the resurrection at that point; contrary to the popular resurrection day song, ‘He’s Alive’, they believed Mary’s report that someone had moved His body.
After they left, Mary returned to the tomb, and that is where she saw the risen Lord. Paul would later write in I Corinthians 15:5 the Lord appeared also to Peter, and Luke mentions that too in Luke 24: 34, but the gospels don’t record that event. Later that day, Jesus walked with the 2 to Emmaus, Luke 24 tells us, and then appeared with the remaining disciples as the 2 were giving their report to them of having seen the Lord. Luke 24: 42-43 says to convince them He wasn’t a spirit, He ate broiled fish and honeycomb.
All those people saw the risen Lord: the women at the tomb, the 10 disciples, the 2 on the road to Emmaus – but Thomas was not one of them according to John 20: 24. We can speculate why, but it would be safe to say that he was devastated when the Lord died. Perhaps he was so shaken by the events of that week that he needed to be alone, his whole theology and all his expectations demolished. No matter the reasons, he wasn’t with any of those he had lived with for 3+ years that day.
John 20: 24 says: “Now Thomas (also known as Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.'”
Verse 26 says 8 days later Thomas was with them. No doubt during that week the disciples had told him many times they had seen the Lord. 8 days of testimony! But he said: “Unless I see….I will not believe.” Then 8 days later all of them are together in one room – can you imagine all the disciples gathered around Thomas, maybe with the women as well, perhaps a dozen or more people all telling Thomas they had seen the risen Lord? That is an intervention. Each one told him their experience; Mary saying they took his body, the run to the tomb, the 2 on the road to Emmaus, how He was suddenly there and even ate fish and honeycomb in front of them – yet Thomas would not believe.
He had exercised his power of choice. We say ‘he dug in his heels’. He refused to believe the stories of about 12 of his closest friends. From free will flows the power of choice. Choice rises from free will at the fork in the road, at the point of decision. Choice is exercising free will to move one’s life in one direction or another.
Choose to be empowered
Our lives are the summary of choices we had previously made. Even when someone else’s choice affects our lives, it was a choice that put us in that situation. As they say, half of all marriages end in divorce; the rest end in death. When I said ‘I do’ I chose death as the way out of marriage. When that time comes for Barb and I, if we aren’t raptured out of here, the circumstances of that (those) events can be traced back to decisions we made when we were teens; to date, to fall in love, to marry, for better or for worse. For death. That was our choice so we can’t complain about events which flowed from that choice.
Because events, good and bad, happen to all, life becomes a matter of choosing how to view life. I’ve mentioned before about an article from an advice columnist documenting the case of twin boys. One grew up to become a successful lawyer, married, kids, house, a good life. His twin battled alcoholism, had failed marriages and had a hard time staying employed. At a convention for twins the organizers were shocked when reading the questionnaires of each brother. Their answer was the same to this question: What event most shaped your life? Their answer: My dad died when I was 12. One made choices to use that tragedy to chart a successful life, and the other let that tragedy ruin his life. The power of choice.
The power of choosing is so important during life’s challenges bit and small. It allows us to use challenges to grow and better ourselves and our situation. Not deciding is a decision. Free will is what you are born with. Learning the power of choice and its consequences can be a life-long learning experience.
Even God can’t steer a parked car.
I see it all the time; people who are reactive and people who are proactive. An aging couple knowing they are failing, yet have written no will, rather than being proactive and getting their house in order. A person knows they are running out of money, their credit cards are at their maximum, yet they wait until forced into decisions they didn’t want to make, rather than proactively choosing to make decisions before they had completely run out of money and credit. A person feeling symptoms in their body but are afraid of what a doctor might find so they delay going to a doctor, but later they are forced to react to the diagnosis when the disease or condition is much more advanced.
Making choices when you first realize and think; ‘something needs to be done’, empowers a person to take control of the situation rather than the situations controlling them through their inaction. Again, a decision not to do anything is a choice. Circumstances, symptoms, account balances dwindling, are all like the disciples telling Thomas what they saw and heard, but him saying ‘unless I see….I won’t believe.’
Thomas was in full control of ‘today’
If Thomas had focused on the day when the disciples all told him they had seen the Lord, instead of focusing on what he thought didn’t happen, he would have believed. Focusing on his preconceived ideas, his imagination, prevented him from believing the obvious as presented by about 12 of his closest friends. He had been with those men over 3 years. They had gone out in teams of 2 and saw people healed and delivered of their own hands. He had no reason at all to doubt their claims – yet he did – because he was focused on the past and what had just happened rather than on the present.
Stop looking over your shoulder. Make decisions proactively which align with your long terms goals. Where do you want to be in a year? What do you want your bank account to look like? What do you want your health to look like? Be proactive. Pay the price, the discipline, to make the right choice.
And here is the bottom line truth: Your free will, your power to choose, is greater than both God and the devil. Neither can make up your mind for you. And we’ll start there next week.
Until then, blessings,
John Fenn
