I heard a message in church a couple weeks ago entitled “Remove the Stone.” It was about Jesus standing at Lazarus’ tomb, ready to perform the miracle to raise him from the dead. He asked them to take away the stone.

Jesus was about to conquer death, for heaven’s sake, did He really need someone to roll away the stone? He could have spoken a word and the stone would have rolled itself, or snapped his fingers and disintegrated it, or used any number of other ways to get the stone out of the way. But He asked them to move it. The pastor’s point? We have to remove the stone in our own life.

It hit me then. What holds us back from achieving our destiny? What huge stone has us trapped? Sometimes we know what it is, a familiar problem we’ve been trying to ignore. Or it could be one we can’t budge, no matter how hard we try. Or it might be something we haven’t yet identified.

The stone we’re ignoring will never roll itself away. We have to recognize it, and work with God to remove it. In other words, we need to drop our walls. Open our hearts, not putting up boundaries, but letting Him wander wherever He will, healing the hurt we’re desperate to protect.

The stone we’re pushing, pulling, struggling against until we’re exhausted, only to find it hasn’t moved an inch, is one where we need help. It may be too big for us to handle on our own. We need to ask God to help us, to surrender the problem to Him. We may even need to get other believers involved if it’s an area where they can help.

And finally, there’s the stone we don’t recognize. The glass wall we slam into and fall on our behinds, wondering what just happened. That one we must ask God to reveal. Ask Him to show us what stands in our way. It may be a total revelation, something we never considered. Most likely, once we’ve thought about it, we’ll see how it blocked our path.

Whatever the roadblock in our lives, Jesus wants to move it. He wants to let us out of our bondage into the light, where we can grow and shine. What’s your stone?