Beyond Sunday

Last Sunday, Pastor B began a conversation at Beyond about the difference between seeing and discerning.

Returning to the house in Bethany described in John 12, he showed how everyone could witness the same event and still understand it differently. Judas saw perfume with a price. Mary discerned a moment of eternal significance. One calculated the cost; the other recognised what the moment required.

The question left with the church was searching:

Are we merely seeing what is happening — or do we understand what God is producing?

This Sunday, Pastor B continued that narrative. But the emphasis moved from recognising a moment to trusting God when its meaning remains hidden.

What happens when we cannot yet discern the purpose of the season? How do we respond when understanding comes later? And what kind of heart enables us to remain open, trusting and joyful while God is still revealing what He is doing?

Once again, the answer emerged from Bethany.

Six days before the Passover, Lazarus — recently raised from the dead — was reclining at the table with Jesus. Martha was serving. Mary’s costly perfume filled the house with its fragrance.

It was a room crowded with evidence. A man who had been dead was eating dinner. A woman was offering extravagant worship. The Messiah was sitting among friends.

Yet almost no one understood the full significance of what was happening.

The disciples were days away from the crucifixion. Jesus knew the cross was approaching, but those around Him remained occupied with what they could immediately see. They imagined a crown while He prepared for a cross. The crowd welcomed a political king while Christ moved steadily towards a throne they could not yet comprehend.

“They did not understand these things at first,” John writes. “But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered.”

Understanding came later.

Last week’s message called us to discern beyond the visible event. This week’s message addressed the space before that discernment arrives — the difficult distance between what we are experiencing and what we will one day understand.

WHEN MEANING IS STILL EMERGING

Human beings naturally interpret life from the centre of their immediate experience. We ask why something is happening to us, why God permitted it or why He did not intervene sooner.

In painful seasons, emotion can become the lens through which everything — including the character of God — is judged. A sudden change feels like abandonment. Resistance feels like failure. Delay feels like denial. The discomfort of the process becomes evidence that something has gone wrong.

Martha knew that tension.

When Lazarus died, her first words to Jesus carried the weight of disappointment: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” She knew Jesus had power, but she could not yet see the purpose unfolding through His apparent delay.

The resurrection of Lazarus would become more than a private miracle for one grieving family. It would cause many others to believe in Jesus. What felt like absence was preparing a revelation. What looked final was becoming a testimony.

Last week, Pastor B challenged the church to stop asking only, “What is happening to me?” and begin asking, “What is God producing in me?”

This week, that question widened.

What God produces in us is rarely intended to end with us.

The patience formed in a difficult relationship may one day strengthen another family. Wisdom born in confusion may become guidance for someone without a map. Compassion cultivated through grief may become shelter for another person in pain.

The experience may happen to us, but its fruit can reach far beyond us.

Joseph’s prison appeared to contradict his dream, yet it became part of the road to the palace. David’s wilderness looked like a postponement of his calling, but it formed the king who would eventually carry it. The cross appeared to be Christ’s defeat, but it became the place of humanity’s redemption.

What looked like interruption was often preparation. What felt like burial was sometimes planting.

The disciples could see what was happening to Jesus. They could not yet see what His suffering would produce for them — or through them.

A FRAGRANCE RELEASED UNDER PRESSURE

Mary’s perfume could not remain contained and fill the room at the same time. Something had to be opened. Something costly had to be poured out.

There is something quietly prophetic in that image.

Seasons of pressure often reveal what has been formed within us. They expose whether disappointment produces bitterness or trust, whether uncertainty produces panic or prayer, and whether success produces pride or gratitude.

This does not mean pain should be romanticised or every hardship casually labelled as God’s doing. It means difficulty does not have to be meaningless. In God’s hands, even an unwanted season can become a place of formation.

A difficult relationship may cultivate patience. A delay may develop endurance. A closed door may redirect a calling. A crushing season may prepare new wine.

The question is not only what the season is producing in us. It is also what kind of fragrance it is releasing through us.

Mary poured out something costly, and the fragrance reached everyone in the house. In the same way, what God forms privately within a person can eventually become grace experienced by an entire room.

Formation is personal, but it is seldom private in its purpose.

EYES THAT SEE INTENTION

“Wisdom is the principal thing,” Pastor B reminded the church, returning to Proverbs 4:7. “Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”

Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:17–18 was similarly that believers would receive wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, and that the eyes of their understanding would be enlightened.

The phrase is striking: understanding has eyes.

Last week, the contrast between Mary and Judas showed us what those eyes can recognise. Where natural sight saw an expense, understanding saw worship. Where one person saw an object that could be sold, another recognised a moment that could never be recovered.

This week, Pastor B extended that vision into ordinary life.

Natural sight observes what is immediately present. Enlightened understanding looks for intention, possibility and purpose.

Natural sight sees a profession. Understanding sees a platform through which the Kingdom of God can advance.

Natural sight sees a struggling young person. Understanding sees someone whose future is still being formed.

Natural sight sees a church service as something to attend. Understanding sees a place of equipping — a community that receives on Sunday so that it can give on Monday.

Natural sight sees money leaving a person’s hand. Understanding sees a seed capable of reaching people and places the giver may never visit.

Understanding changes the way we handle people, opportunities and moments. Without it, gifts are overlooked, relationships are mishandled and experiences of divine significance are reduced to their immediate cost.

Yet understanding is not produced by intelligence alone. Spiritual sight requires a particular posture of heart.

It requires us to become like children again.

BECOMING LIKE A CHILD AGAIN

Pastor B connected the opening of our spiritual eyes with Jesus’ call to become like children.

The Kingdom is not received through self-importance or the insistence that we already know. It is received with a heart that remains open, trusting and teachable.

Children possess a kind of receptivity that adulthood can slowly erode. They ask without embarrassment. They believe before they have worked out every detail. They forgive quickly, return freely and remain capable of wonder.

A child does not need complete understanding before drawing near to a trusted parent. The security of the relationship makes room for the unanswered question.

Childlike faith carries that same confidence into the presence of God.

It does not mean becoming childish, careless or undiscerning. It means surrendering the pride that demands mastery before obedience.

It is the willingness to say, “Father, I do not understand what You are doing, but I still trust who You are.”

Perhaps one reason we struggle to perceive God in unfamiliar seasons is that we have become too certain of what His work is supposed to look like. We have learned the patterns, developed expectations and decided in advance how the answer should come.

A childlike heart leaves room for surprise.

It can recognise resurrection at an ordinary dinner table. It can see worship in a broken jar. It can believe that a cross may become a throne and that a tomb may become a doorway.

To become like a child again is to recover teachability. It is to allow God to correct our assumptions without threatening our identity. It is to remain soft enough to forgive, free enough to wonder and secure enough to follow when we cannot yet see the whole road.

Last week’s message called us to seek understanding. This week’s message revealed the posture in which understanding is received.

It begins with the humility to admit that we do not possess it all.

THE JOY OF OUR SALVATION

Children are not only teachable. Pastor B reminded the church that they are also playful.

They carry a freedom many adults — and sometimes many believers — have forgotten.

Faith was never intended to become a grim performance of religious seriousness. The life of God produces reverence, but reverence is not the same as heaviness. The gospel is good news. Salvation is deliverance. Grace gives us a reason for gratitude, wonder and joy.

The joy of the Lord is our strength. Yet it is possible to become so occupied with the demands of faith that we stop enjoying the God in whom we have placed that faith.

We can attend church without delight, worship without wonder and serve without remembering what a gift it is to belong to Jesus. We can become technically faithful while losing the joy of our salvation.

Pastor B’s invitation was disarmingly simple:

Enjoy your faith.

Enjoy the presence of God. Enjoy the people He has placed around you. Enjoy gathering with the family of faith. Enjoy worshipping, giving, serving and participating in what God is building.

Let church become a place we look forward to — not because every moment is effortless, but because grace has brought us into a life and a family we could never have earned.

This joy is not shallow optimism or the denial of pain. Children cry honestly. They feel disappointment deeply. Yet when they know they are safe, they retain an extraordinary capacity to return to joy.

That is the posture salvation makes possible.

We grieve, but not without hope. We walk through pressure, but not alone. We face what we do not understand while remaining held by the One who does.

Joy, then, becomes an expression of understanding.

When we understand what Christ has accomplished, faith ceases to be merely an obligation to carry. It becomes a gift to cherish.

Perhaps one of the clearest signs that the eyes of our understanding are opening is that joy begins to return.

We remember that Jesus did not save us only from something. He saved us into something — a life with God, a place in His family, a confident hope and a love that restores our capacity for delight.

DO NOT ABANDON WHAT YOU DO NOT YET UNDERSTAND

Pastor B warned against abandoning a process simply because its purpose has not yet become visible.

A lack of understanding is an invitation to seek God — not a signal to walk away.

The disciples did not understand the road to Jerusalem while they were travelling it. Only after the resurrection could they look back and recognise how prophecy, sacrifice and redemption had been unfolding before their eyes.

Their confusion did not prevent God from completing His work.

That is good news for anyone living between the event and its explanation.

Faith does not require us to pretend that everything makes sense. It asks us to trust the character of God while meaning is still emerging.

Childlike faith gives us permission to say, “I do not understand this,” without concluding, “God is absent from this.”

Sometimes revelation arrives in retrospect. We look back and realise that the closed door redirected us, the delay developed us, the wilderness dismantled a false dependence or the pressure revealed a strength we did not know God had formed.

The explanation may come later. The formation is happening now.

Understanding does not deny the pain of the process. It reveals that pain does not have the final word.

Joy does not deny it either. Joy declares that even here, sorrow is not the whole story.

BECOMING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT JESUS HAS DONE

Lazarus barely speaks in John’s account. His presence tells the story.

He had become living evidence of Jesus’ power — so much so that the chief priests plotted to kill him because many people were believing in Christ on account of him.

Lazarus did not need to construct an argument. His restored life was the argument.

Pastor B’s charge to the church was that our own account of what Jesus has done should carry that kind of weight: a life so marked by grace that it points beyond itself.

That evidence is found not only in endurance, but also in joy.

A believer who retains wonder, tenderness and delight in a cynical world bears witness to another Kingdom. A church whose people genuinely enjoy God and one another offers a compelling picture of the family Christ came to create. A person who remains teachable after success, forgiving after disappointment and hopeful in uncertainty reveals something reason alone cannot explain.

This is the deeper purpose of spiritual formation. God does not carry us through seasons merely to make us more comfortable. He forms Christ in us so that others can encounter the fruit.

The season may feel deeply personal, but its purpose extends far beyond the person enduring it.

Somewhere beyond the confusion, a testimony may be forming. Beneath the pressure, wisdom may be taking root. Inside what appears to be an ending, resurrection life may already be at work.

Across these two Sundays, Pastor B has led the church through a developing invitation.

First, do not merely see the moment. Discern what God is producing within it.

Then, when you cannot yet discern its meaning, remain teachable. Do not abandon the process. Trust the Father. Allow Him to open the eyes of your understanding.

And while you wait, do not lose your joy.

The disciples eventually understood the road to Jerusalem — but only after Jesus had been glorified. The meaning was present before their perception caught up with it.

The same may be true of the seasons we are living now.

We may not yet understand the room, the breaking or the cost. But if the eyes of our understanding are opened, we discover that God has been present in the process all along.

Perhaps He is already moving.

Already shaping.

Already preparing.

Already producing.

And perhaps, as our eyes open, we will recover something else: the humility to become like children again and the freedom to enjoy the salvation we have received.

Last week, the question was:

“Do I understand what God is producing?”

This week, the prayer becomes:

“Lord, open the eyes of my understanding. Make my heart teachable again. And restore to me the joy of Your salvation.”