Have you ever felt stuck? Wondering what you should do but not knowing what to do? You keep doing the same thing over and over and hoping that something will change! Trying to rub all your nickels and dimes together to bring something different but after they’re spent you’re back in the same spot feeling the same way! Albert Einstein said, ” We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
There was a man that was lame from birth and he was laid daily at the temple gate to ask and to hope for some provision. Day in and day out unable to move by himself for 40 years until that one day when Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them — walking, leaping, and praising God. (Acts 3:6-8)
I wonder what it must have felt like to walk for the first time! But the curiosity he had to come to the gate of the temple for 40 years and hearing it called “Beautiful” yet never able to go in because he was lame and dirty! But finally, someone had faith in God saying you’re healed in Jesus name and he got to walk in! Beautiful! Everyone is staring at him as if he were always waiting to walk in but too lame for any of them to help him in! But now they’re as amazed as he is! Filled with wonder and amazement! All because the lame man took the hand of the believer who lifted him up, in the name of Jesus!
Before I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I felt like a lame man inside not knowing what to do and all my hopes and dreams seemed out of reach, that I couldn’t move. I felt stuck because the thought of not being good enough made me too lame to even try to enter into something beautiful. I had all kinds of excuses; mostly that it was other people’s fault that I’m this way, or I didn’t have enough money to have what it takes. My self-made discouragements made me stuck! Feeling rotten, lame and inside dirty. You could have thrown the key of success at me, but my thinking would have said keep it. I wasn’t good enough to enter in!
Why is it that we can think it’s because of godliness and power that we change or can be changed, and we always compare that with others when the Bible says to walk by faith for the eternal reward? “O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.” (Daniel 9:18) For its the name of Jesus, through faith in His name, that made the lame man strong, who we see and now know! Yes, the faith which comes through Jesus has given this man perfect soundness in the presence of all.
If you feel stuck, broken and tired, I’m here to tell you the Christ that made this man whole is here to make you whole! Reach out to Him! For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)
