Pick up your mat and walk!

Monday, July 17, 2023


Psalm 40

1 Samuel 31

John 5:1-18


Pick up your mat and walk!


Trinity Sunday was a while ago now, but a recent conversation brought up the question of what our personal relationship with each of the three Persons of the Godhead are like. It is actually a helpfully revealing exercise in self-reflection: do you feel comfortable with Jesus, and are maybe a little afraid of our Father, while the Holy Spirit is there as someone you really ought to get to know more? Or perhaps the loving Father is the one you run to by instinct, while Jesus might seem a little stern, but the Holy Spirit encourages you along to our loving Brother and Friend? Maybe it is the Holy Spirit who is the first to receive your attention, which seems reasonable because He is the one closest to us in the sense that He literally dwells within us?


If we feel like we are a little imbalanced in our relationships with the Persons in such a way, we can be encouraged with the knowledge that while their actions in our salvation may have been different, their intentions were united. Or another way: the emotional attitude of God towards you is the same across the three Persons; the Father loves you to the utmost, the Son loves you to the utmost, and the Holy Spirit loves you to the utmost.


Because the Godhead is united in purpose, Jesus was able to perform the miracles like the one we read about today. In another place, Jesus spoke about how the demons will never be able to get anything done properly because they are always at loggerheads with each other, but because God is united, Jesus can perform miracles (Matt 12:22-28). When Jesus spoke to this man by the pool, the man replied as if he wanted Jesus to help get him into the water. Jesus could have done so, but that doesn’t seem to be the united purpose of God. Instead, Jesus skips the middle man and jumps right to the most generous option: a full, instant, miraculous healing.


What confidence we can have if we would dare to be as bold in our requests to God as God would have us be! Instead of asking for scraps, which comes across as false humility, God has adopted us as sons and daughters of the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, and would give us every good thing we ask for. So the Bible says to us, here, today, in our prayers and in our walk with the Lord: pick up your mat and walk!

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