Pick Up Your Mat

Last week I wrote about built up immunity. That as we face challenges in life, we will grow stronger if we let trials have their good work in us- like immunity that is built up. We all have seasons in our lives where some are more challenging than others, but challenges are meant to increase our faith in God, mature us, strengthen us, and make us wiser. God doesn’t intend for us to stay stuck in a season. He’s the only One that’s meant to stay the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But we’re meant to morph and grow as He moves us from season to season. However, it is possible that we can stay stuck in a season for far too long, longer than God intended us, if we choose to.

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Turning to Scripture

5 Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years.6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”

7 The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

8 Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat and walk.” 9 And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.

-John 5: 5-9, NKJV

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Do you notice how this man had been sitting beside the healing pool for 38 years? My, that’s a long time. If Jesus hadn’t of come along he would have continued to wait for someone to help him get to the pool. Now, I understand he had a physical ailment, and physical ailments aren’t always easy to overcome. But waiting 38 years symbolizes when we stay stuck in seasons far longer than we need to. And when Jesus saw him, he asked him “do you want to be made well?” Why would Jesus ask this man an obvious question? But that question symbolizes us, when we’re stuck in seasons that we have the power to move on from, “do we really want to be made well?” Sometimes we get comfortable in anger, unforgiveness, addictions, debt, and immorality, etc that we become content living with these vices.

“There comes a time that we have to make what Jesus has done for us, bigger than what someone has done to us.”

When Jesus died and rose again he defeated sin, death, and being stuck in seasons. He defeated our hurts, as well as the disappointments. It doesn't mean we won't have to still experience hurts and disappointments, but knowing Jesus means we have a better way of dealing with them. We have more authority over our lives than we think. And we have the authority to move past our past. According to Luke 10:19 we have been given authority from above to “trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy. And nothing will harm us.” And, as Christine Caine says, “There comes a time that we have to make what Jesus has done for us, bigger than what someone has done to us.” But it’s really up to us to pick up our own mats (the good, the bad, and the ugly things from life) and receive healing so that we can move on with life. It’s up to us take life’s lemons and make some tasty ice cool lemonade!

Happy Friday!