Picking Up a Broken Life

Sin can paralyze you, make you feel sick and unable to move. Sin can break you into thousands of pieces and cause you to no longer be whole — to lay there broken, unable to move.

Good friends want to help. They want to make you whole. They try to help you pick up the pieces, but you cannot move. They have an idea and suddenly you find yourself being carried along by these good friends who care about you. They tell you they have an answer. You wonder if it’s possible to be made whole again, to recapture the feeling of peace you had before sin took over your life.

You tell your friends your hopeless, that they don’t need to help, but they persist. Then you find yourself laying at the feet of Jesus, broken, laying there in a thousand pieces of brokenness: unable to move. “Friend, your sins are forgiven you,” Jesus tells you (Luke 5:20, NASB). You look up at him. Is it possible? Others say only God can forgive sins. Then Jesus tells you, “I say to you, get up, and pick up your stretcher and go home (5:24).”

You feel forgiveness sweep over your body. It heals your soul. No more brokenness. The pieces of your life have come back together. You feel the peace of Jesus making you whole again. Salvation is yours.

Immediately he got up before them, and picked up what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God. – Luke 5:25