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TRUST JESUS TODAY

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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Walk (07/20/06)
“After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked…”

At times in my life it is extremely difficult to fight giving up after times of disappointment. It is a struggle to move past the ashes of life and muster up the strength to not only build again, but to have the strength to believe you can build again. Life can cause us to become used to the ashes, to crawling, to lying down suffering with our defeat and disappointment. This process is not as easy as it sounds.

The command to walk assumes that you have not forgotten how to walk, that you haven’t been so consumed with your past that you don’t just expect defeat. It is hard to believe, at times, that this relationship won’t end like the last. It is difficult to understand how God wipes the slate clean and gives you another chance to try again. It is difficult to accept God’s free gift of salvation without the usual strings of guilt, shame and condemnation of what you did attached.

It may seem easy to respond to a command to get up and walk – to carry your past’s pain and your current scars from what she did to you, what he didn’t do for you, what they did to you and what you did not have. It is not easy to just believe that as you consider the fact that you can get up again and walk that you will have a formidable opponent of doubt laughing at you and making a mockery of your latest attempt at salvaging the time in life you have left.

This is the victory that must be won. For us to grasp what God has destined for us, in our relationships, family, career – we must be willing to get up to receive healing. Like the man at the pool, we can’t receive this while we sit and grapple with how impossible it seems to recover from our past. God is extending an invitation to our future free from our past. He asks you to get up. He knows it is difficult, you may not even believe it is possible and may still harbor an inability to sustain faith that you will get up.

Yet, we must get us still. We may stumble, we may crawl, and we may scrape our knees and bruise our egos as we struggle to our feet. We may consider staying down, where we are, because it is easier and better that showing our weakness. God knows that we want our healing more than we want to keep our pride. He understands that as we get up and walk – we can, then and only then, grab a hold of what has eluded us these years. We can reclaim it. Believe, use what you have in you to get up, grab on tight – and begin to walk.
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Lynda Schultz 
07/28/06
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" someone once said. That first step is hard, but our God is greater than whatever it is that makes taking it difficult. Thanks for this well-written reminder.
Joanne Sher 
07/29/06
Very well done! I think you have a very good grasp of sentence structure and flow - your paragraphs really seemed quite unified in that way. Also a wonderful message, of course!