Convincing the Skeptical of the Impossible
“I have seen the Lord.”
The powerful exclamation is made even more impactful by its directness and simplicity, and it was uttered by Mary Magdalene in John 20:18 after Jesus rose from the dead.
We celebrated Resurrection Sunday a couple weeks ago, but this short phrase from that transcendent story has been reverberating in my spirit ever since. Mary, fresh off discovering the empty tomb and now confronted with the jarring reality of interacting with the risen Jesus face to face, is assigned the job of delivering the news about Jesus to the disciples.
What must Mary have been thinking? How in the world do you convincingly convey that the impossible has in fact happened? How could she possibly communicate this history-altering news in a way that is received and believed? How can she avoid being dismissed and disregarded as a lunatic?
To be candid, they are questions not entirely different from the ones you ask about your assignment in the current time. How can you possibly make a sane and lucid argument on behalf of the transcendent and seemingly impossible?
Consider today if the answer for you might be the same as it was for Mary, who simply testified to what she had seen:
“I have seen the Lord.”
No caveats. No qualifications or justifications. Not even an explanation or an interpretation. Just simply a statement of fact about what she has personally seen.
The text says Mary then told the disciples the rest of what Jesus had said, a fact that suggests the disciples must have taken her word as true and been open to hearing her out. Consider if you would today a cue from Mary’s approach.
What is it that you have seen in your life? Where and how has Jesus made himself real to you? What is the substance and the evidence you are personally familiar with?
Go and tell of those things to your friends and family!
You and I are richly blessed to have the life of Jesus recorded for us. It is a blessing that Old Testament believers did not have, and one that even those who walked with Jesus were without. These truths about Jesus that you and I read were either prophecies or experienced in real time by the believers who walked with Jesus. It is blessing of immense proportion, and you and I should be deeply grateful for it.
Even so, there may be a temptation to rest only on the academic head knowledge of what you have read about Jesus. I challenge you to boldly and honestly consider today: What is it that Jesus has done for you? What have you seen? To what can you personally testify?
There is nothing like a personal story to convince a skeptical audience of an otherwise unbelievable truth. So, like Mary, go and tell the world your story. Go and proclaim, “I have seen the Lord!”
The following article originally appeared in Thann’s “The Equipped” Weekly Newsletter. For more information on Thann’s weekly email, click here.