If you read Part 1, you know I got up off a season I didn’t know how to get out of. What I did not expect was what happened next—that getting up was not really the point. This raised with Christ devotional picks up right there, at the moment rising stops being about you.
The Verse That Reframed Everything
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above.” (Col 3:1)
Paul does not say, “If you have risen, relax.” He says if you are risen, look up—and then look around. Being raised with Christ is not a private achievement. It is resurrection life, and resurrection life does not stay contained. It moves toward other people.
Sometimes we think spiritual growth was mostly about becoming more settled, more at peace, and more sorted out. And some of that’s true. But Scripture keeps pointing somewhere else too—not just up and inward, but outward.
The Shift I Did Not See Coming
A few months after my own “day like any other day”—the drive to church I mentioned in Part 1 – I found myself listening to a friend who was exactly where I had been. Different situations. Different words. Same fog. Same excuses for staying down. Same fear that getting up would just mean getting disappointed again.
And I realized I was not just sympathetic anymore. I had something to actually offer her—not advice from a book, but the specific, hard-won knowledge of what it costs to stand back up.
That is the shift. You do not raise people from a place of theory. You raise them from a place of having been raised yourself.
He calls you to arise—not so you’d stand alone, but so you could raise others with you.
What Raising Actually Looks Like
“Raising” shows up in a few different shapes, and none of them require a stage or a title:
Raising Leaders
Paul told Timothy to take what he had learned and entrust it to “faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). Raising a leader is often just handing someone what got you through and trusting them to carry it further than you did.
Raising a family in faith
This one is slow and unglamorous—bedtime prayers, hard conversations, modelling what it looks like to get back up. But it is an important part of raising.
Raising your voice
Sometimes raising someone is as simple as telling your story out loud, so the person still lying down knows the ground is not the end of theirs either.
The Hand That Reached for You
Here is what we need to keep coming back to: the same hand that raised me up is the one now reaching, through me, for someone else. That is not pressure to perform. It is just what resurrection life does—it keeps moving.
If you have been raised, you already have something to give. You do not need to feel ready. You just need to notice who is still down.
I invite you to say this prayer of Raise.
Father, thank you for reaching down and raising me when I could not lift myself. Open my eyes to who is still on the ground near me—a friend, a child, someone I have not noticed yet. Give me the courage to reach for them the way you reached for me. Let what you raised in me become something I raise in someone else. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Next in this series, we’ll get specific: who is God calling you to raise? That’s the question this whole devotional has been building toward—and it’s one only you can answer.
This is Part 2 of a 3-part devotional series: Arise and Raise. Missed Part 1? Start with “Arise and Shine.” Part 3—”Who Is God Calling You to Raise?”—closes out the series in two days.
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