No, don’t just say yes, DO yes!! With faith comes action. Pick up your mat and walk this out…
As a health coach, I listen to more moaning, whining, groaning and complaining than what is reasonable.
Most of it is legit. There is good reason to moan groan whine and complain.
But at some point we all have to make the personal decision, are we going to get stuck there or are we going to pick up our mats and get on with getting well?
Do we even believe we can get well? Well, why the heck not??
Jesus is in the healing business, end of story. Pick up your mat and get on with it.
I know you might say that at this point after I have been healed it is easy for me to say. No, I did the work, I had the faith, I took the actions, I crashed and burned more times than I can remember, then called on the Lord AGAIN, and did it all over and over and over.
It was not a straight line to health. My “miracle” did not come instantaneously. Part of my wellness journey was in the lessons the Lord had for me on the journey. He already knew that a miracle in a split second would not change my thinking, my heart, my actions.
I have no clue why Christians expect it to be an instantaneous miracle or nothing.
Or let’s look at this a different way. Why can’t it be a bajillion “small” miracles that happen daily in a wellness journey? All those daily miracles add up to one jinourmous healing!!
What about our personal growth? What about our walk with the Lord? What about testing our beliefs?
I will freely admit, not every single moment did I take action during the life-threatening years. There were many times I was too frail to do anything. That was the hardest of all, being perfectly still and having faith that God had it all perfectly planned out and all I had to do at times was to be still.
Okay, there are times to be still. But what about the times when we need to pick up our mats? That means STAND UP, shake the dust off of the mat, take a step FORWARD in faith.
It is easy to say that we do it. As our minds sort it out, we feel like we are taking action. But how many are actually taking that action, based on faith? I mean really taking action. I mean being so ill that one does not have the energy but makes the choice at any given moment to nourish the body with ACTION based on faith…
- nourish with supporting human organs and systems of the body
- nourish with pure food and water
- nourish with daily scripture
- nourish with daily prayer
- nourish with actions that empower us to take the next step
- nourish with loving self-talk
- nourish with celebrations for tiny baby steps forward
- nourish with belief that action after action after action towards health does pay off — even when we don’t see it at the moment
- nourish with praise and worship music that stirs our souls and wiggles our toes so that we move our bodies
- nourish with the fellowship of like-minded others
- nourish with tuning out the naysayers — they are irrelevant to our progress on a wellness journey (we can love them but don’t have to listen or take to heart what they say)
- nourish with comfort – I like crawling up into Jesus’ lap and feel His love and His much-needed safety
- nourish with comfort food – pure healthy food can bring comfort by knowing you are making your taste buds happy while nourishing your frail and ill body
- nourish with liking ourselves — how did we lose that???
The list is endless.
Recently I nourished myself with laughter over Detox or Die. A fellow health coach asked me to do a podcast with her about detoxing. We chatted and laughed our way through it. It all came down to, detox or die.
Pick up your mat or die.
Watcha gonna choose?? It takes work, a stinking ton of work, to undo the destruction of chronic illness.
No, we personally do not have the energy or power to do the work. God WILL give you what you need at every single moment to walk out the ACTIONS that it takes.
Some will choose to pick up their mats and walk in faith – AS they walk in action. Taking step after step to get out of the chaos of illness.
Others will continue to moan, groan, whine and complain.
I am not asking anything that Jesus did not ask, “Do you want to get well?” Yep, it is a loaded question. Only those who truly mean YES will actually stand up, pick up their mat and walk it out.
Jesus is right there to hold your hand, give you the power and might, and love on you through it all.
The Healing Pool
5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. [4] [b]5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 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?”
7 “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.”
8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
~ John 5:1-15 NIV