-Strength for Today-"Change is Hard, but Staying the Same is Spiritually Unproductive." -Luke 5:17-23
Change in life is inevitable, in that time will present circumstances that’s unavoidable. Many people fail to adapt to how they live, because adaptive change involves:
· Soul-searching, and an
· Indented mind-set for learning,
That can change “who we are” and “how we live.” Therefore, to change one’s mind, one must become significantly adaptable so that the convicting work of the Holy Spirit can convey to our spirit, the need to mature in our faith. You see, spiritual change is hard, and it’ll only take place when:
· Grace sur-prises us and
· Shocks us to
· Praise and thank God for the Jesus,
Who God sent to us, so that we can have what we really need. It’s really easy to stay in our “stagnant seasons”, and allow the enemy to occupy our minds with the ways of the world. But it’s in these seasons that we must maintain our focus, and praise and “count it all joy” for the perverted trials we face, in order to build a faith that’ll:
· Survive the storms that’re
· Brewing in our lives.
Listen, the devil will always try planting seeds of “fear,” in your garden of “faith,” so that “thistles: and not “fruit” will grow, even in the midst of the Holy Spirit’s transforming work. Because if you don’t have the “Word of God hid in your heart”, you’ll find yourself “hanging from a cliff”, trying to grab ahold of anything that’s strong and stable.
The man on the bed, in Luke 5:18-26, was paralyzed, and he and his friends were simply trusting Jesus for “physical healing”. It probably never entered their minds that Jesus sought not just to heal “physically,” but to address the cause of His coming to the earth, which was to, “seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), that is He came compassionately to “repair” the heart condition of mankind. And with the command given in verse 23, Jesus literally said to the “paralyzed man”, (in my translation), “get up and walk,”. When he did:
· Not only was he healed “physically”, but
· His sins were forgiven.
This “physically” and “spiritually” paralyzed man sought God through Jesus, and found the best when he adapted to “spiritual” change. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” - 2 Corinthians 5: 17-18.
Author: Plez Lovelady, Jr., PhD