I broke the five minute rule. Yes, I did the unthinkable. My fingers just kept tapping away truths from his heart. My prayer is that as you spend a few minutes more on today's post, he will do way more than you ever thought just as he did for this beautiful beggar. Our story begins in five, four, three, two, one..........
Acts
3:6
I can imagine at first the beggar may have been taken back
by the disciples’ response. Giving the
beggar a command to rise and walk instead of money probably sounded a bit outlandish.
They commanded him to rise and walk. Wait WHAT!? That doesn’t make any sense.
Yet
I can hear Christ commanding me to do the same rise and walk. Walk out my faith. The disciples gave him something far more
valuable than a few pennies. They gave him the ability to walk.
The Lord wants to give you so much more than just leftover change. He wants to give you eternal change, change that will make a difference in your life FOREVER not just for a MOMENT.
The Lord wants to give you power to walk out that dream, to
walk through harsh realities of life, the power to walk in freedom from
bondage. You were created to walk in authority, in power, in strength, in
freedom, in creativity, in favor, in blessing, in grace, all of this and more.
The Lord wants to give you the gift and ability to walk out
your faith. He doesn’t
want to just meet your immediate need and leave you helpless, he
wants to meet all of your needs.
If the disciples had just met his immediate need for money and continued on their way they would have left him in the same condition as when they first met – HELPLESS. The Lord’s desire is not just to meet you along the way, answer your immediate need, and leave you the in the same condition. The Lord will not only meet your current need but your long term need as well. Maybe the answer to your immediate need is not a quick solution but a Rising, and an answering of a command he has given to you.
A command to pray more, go back to school, apply for the job
promotion, spend more time with your family, begin exercising, eating healthy,
confessing your sin to an elder in order to seek help from addiction, schedule
counseling. Whatever you are begging and
pleading for He has the answer to that and so much more. He healed the beggar giving him the ability
to walk, enabling him to work and never have to beg again.
However, the beggar had a choice. Oh my husband says it ALL the time, “We have
a choice, and we always have a choice.”
He had to choose to RISE and walk out his faith. He responded with obedience even when the answer he was given was different than what he had originally asked for.
What have you asked of the Lord? Has he responded with a command requiring
action? Have you gotten an answer that
looks quite different than what you initially asked for? I believe our response will determine the
outcome of what we are pleading for.
We are told in Hebrews, faith without works is dead. The beggar had to do some work, he had to get
up. He had to RISE.
Do you need to change your response today? Are you begging for him to answer an
immediate need, while he is demanding you rise and walk which in turn will meet
your current need? Perhaps you need to rise and walk away from something, and run into his presence. The first place the beggar went after he was healed was into a place of thanksgiving and praise.
