Break Free At Last!

John 5
Jesus Heals a Lame Man
1 Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. 2 Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda,[a] with five covered porches. 3 Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.[b] 5 One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

7 “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

8 Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”

9 Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, 10 so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”

11 But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

I was reading this and was impressed at the sick man response. "The man who healed me told me, "Pick up your mat and walk". Partially because there is the word "mat" (and I sell mat for a living) but mainly because of what he implied. To me he was saying, as long as that man healed me, then he has the authority to tell me break your Jewish rules! That mas was healed and set free from his sickness because he broke the rules that has bonded him for so long. Have you break free from your bondage to follow Christ? He is asking you today.