What would it look like in your life to know that God loves you?

I mean to know that He really loves you.

Would that love be proven in a new job or maybe a better job?

Would it be an open door that will allow you greater financial independence?

Maybe it would be to find a spouse or maybe deliverance from chronic pain that depletes

your energy?

Or maybe it would look like being delivered from the consuming demands of a special needs

child?

But what if the answer to that question, whether God loves us or not, was something

altogether different than what we expected?

What if instead of any of these things, God showed His love to you by letting you die

in sickness?

It's a crazy thought, right?

Totally counterintuitive.

And yet this is exactly what we read about in John chapter 11 verses 1 to 44.

According to this extraordinary story, because in it we find a life-changing lesson God wants

all of us to grasp.

Here's Pastor John to explain in one of his sermons from 2001.

This is John 11.

I have used this text now in about five settings in the last couple of months because no other

text has gripped me like this in driving home this central point.

Now a certain man was sick, John 11.

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