When Your Limiting Beliefs Keep You Stuck

Hello, friends!

I heard an interesting story recently about how to train elephants. In case you are wondering, there are no plans in my future to join the circus, 😊but I found that the story has so many applications to my life and yours. 

When an elephant is a baby, trainers take it outside and stake it to the ground. The stake is strong, the rope is strong, and the baby elephant can’t move. As the elephant grows, the trainers keep that stake in the ground, and the baby continues to think that he is stuck there.

Because of this belief, he grows to be this giant, enormous elephant held to the ground by a little wooden stake which he could easily pull up and destroy. 

He could go anywhere his little heart desired, but instead he goes nowhere. 

He’ll stay in one place because he’s been trained by other people, or been trained by his own mind that those are his limitations. 

Our limiting beliefs cause us all kinds of unnecessary suffering, too.

Let me explain one way. 

John 5 in the New Testament has been special to me for a long time and especially since our trip to Israel when I sat beside the possible location of the pool of Bethesda.  #pinchme #thankyoujesus

You can read about our trip here: Ten Tips For Visiting Israel

The words Jesus asked the man, “Do you want to get well?” are so impactful for me and have played a big part in my own spiritual healing journey. 

Let’s go through this story together, starting with verse one. 

“Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the sheep gate, a pool, which, in Aramaic is called Bethesda, and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. 

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” 

“Sir,” the invalid, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I’m trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” 

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” At once, the man was cured. He picked up his mat and walked.”

There’s more to the story, but this is what stood out to me this time.

We know that the man was 38 years old. That’s a long time to get back and forth to a healing well. Did he live there? How did he eat? Care for his physical needs? Why wouldn’t his friends or family take turns sitting with him and rush him to the healing waters? So many unanswered questions that come to my mind when reading the Bible. Anyone else? 

Then I started wondering, “Was he really paralyzed?” 

Maybe he had some other condition – and that made me think about that baby elephant.

And it made me think about you.

And it made me think about me.

What is your “condition”? What is mine? 

It could be a physical condition, an emotional condition, a thought condition, a body condition that doesn’t have anything to do with things not operating properly, but how we choose to use our bodies.

What condition has us on our figurative mat, stuck, unable to get to the place where we could get our healing? What kind of stake have we stuck in the ground that is keeping us here when God wants us…there?

Does this resonate with you at all?

I think there may be something, some condition, for each of us. And I want to encourage us all that Jesus may be saying to us, 

“Do you want to get well?”

If we’re God’s adopted kids, we’re already safely saved. But how do we get to be sound? 

What if that’s the sanctification part that happens when we don’t stay on our mat, when we don’t stay stuck to the stake that we could pick up and move if we wanted to?

Friend, do you want to be well?

I’m working on a new project that I know will bless people. Even though I have all the freedom to do it, instead my brain is offering all the reasons why I shouldn’t.

But , I’m not giving in to those lies. 

I am going to get up off my mat, I’m pulling that stake out of the ground, and I am moving forward.

God is going to be in charge of the results. I don’t have to be. 

The act of moving forward and doing what I feel like He’s asking me to do – accepting the opportunity that He’s presented to me – there’s going to be all kinds of growth in that. 

If you are like the little baby elephant who’s been staked to one spot for so long that you think you can’t move, I want to tell you that you CAN.  If you are stuck on your mat, whatever the mat is, maybe it is time to get up and walk. 

Jesus says we can.

So much love for you, dear reader.

xoxo

Susan