Prison With A Key

“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.” John 5:6-9

Somebody needs to read this on this Friday. I usually do my Bible Study and prayer time before I post but my Bible turned to this chapter and passage… so here I write. This reminds me of a story I heard over 20 years ago while attending an alcohol recovery meeting with a friend. The story was about a man who claimed to be drowning and no one would assist him. As he pled for someone on the shoreline to rescue him a man yelled from the shore, ‘You are not drowning for the water is only two feet deep. Stand up!’ This is basically what Jesus was saying to the victim in this story.

Many of our challenges remain the basic center of our lives because we will not ‘Get up… or Stand up!’ We define our challenges by the length of time for which we have lived them instead of the reality that we have a part in breaking free from them. Jesus asked an essential question to the man whom had been afflicted for a very long time. ‘Do you want to get well?’ Herein lays the million dollar question for each of us.

We become so at home in our ‘condition’ we forget we have the power in Christ to change it, work on it, move it and be rescued from it. We must recognize when our opportunity to break free arises and when the ‘water is being stirred’. We have a responsibility in breaking free from any challenge for which we have lived our lives. God never intended on any of His children in live in any form of captivity, but we must ‘get up, pick up our mat and walk’ and not depend on ‘someone else’ to do the work for us.

Thanks to Christ, no one lives in a prison without a key.