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Take Up Your Mat & Don’t Return
John TiltonActs 9:32-24
As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord’s peoplewho lived in Lydda.33There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years.34“Aeneas,” Peter said to him, “Jesus Christ heals you.Get up and roll up your mat.” Immediately Aeneas got up.35All those who lived in Lydda and Sharonsaw him and turned to the Lord.
I’ve read these scriptures before and focused on Jesus healing Aeneas and the amazing miracle that it was. However, this time, I pondered what “Get up and roll up your mat” meant, and why Jesus instructed Aeneas to do so. Why would Jesus in the moment of the miracle tell Aeneas something that would seem so trivial, such as take up and roll your mat?
Aha! Then it came to me that rolling up his mat was a response and action step to believe in faith of Jesus healing him and that he would not be bedridden anymore, and therefore in faith, would roll up his mat believing that he would not need the mat anymore, and therefore would not return to his prior condition
It brings to mind how we might believe in Jesus and what He has done, can do and will do in our lives; yet we hold on and leave our mats in place just in case we need the crutches and beds of our past to fall back unto and in to? How often do we experience and receive the freedom, healing and new life in Jesus but return to our stinky bed of many years including our old ways. How often do we roll up our mat of the old ways and habits, but then carry it along with ourselves just in case, ready or prone to unrolling it and falling back unto our old ways, crippled and paralyzed again in sin and bad habits?
Jesus command is so clear and applicable to us today to take up our mats of the past that we found false and temporal comfort and relief in; roll them up and if we unroll them, unroll our mat under the covering of Jesus in a new place, where the mat would become a place of communing and resting in Him. That we would make a change in our environment and those place, people and potential pitfalls that would be stumbling blocks of influencing us to return to our old ways and habits.
Dear Lord, thank you for such a keen word to remind and prompt me to continue to walk forward ahead of my old ways and habits, seeking and staying in a new place, in a new season and my new ever-continuing and growing life in you as my Savior.
