My beautiful daughter had an injury recently and needed crutches to get around for weeks afterward. Actually, she needed more than that, but her crutches were the last thing to go. It wasn't easy to give them up either. At first they were essential and then they became less important physically but more and more important psychologically.
Eliminating your crutches is not as easy as you might think. There is a fine line between giving them up in the correct time and giving them up too early, which might cause you to develop a limp that you could carry with you for the rest of your life.
Some people use god, or more correctly, “religion,” as a crutch. They are in trouble and religion is just the thing to help them out; that’s not entirely bad, but they need to get rid of the crutch at the right time or they may permanently limp through life.
This may sound counter-intuitive, but God is not meant to be our perpetual crutch. In reality, he is the whole hospital, but if you spend all your time in the hospital, that is a sure sign of being unhealthy! God has everything we need but he intends for us to eventually be able to stand on our own intellectually, emotionally and psychologically. We will never be able to handle all our own spiritual problems without God, but he wants us to be logical and normal to the fullest extent possible. He desires for us to be dependent but not to be permanently debilitated by our situation or circumstances. His goal for each of us is that we would be complete in the power and strength of Jesus.
The danger is in not finding the balance between trying to go it alone in life and ending up limping through it, or never trying to walk on our own and not maturing to become that which we were intended to be.
“Wouldest thou be made whole? The sick man answered him, Sir,
I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the
pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.
Jesus saith unto him, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk. And
straightway the man was made whole, and took up his bed and
walked.” John 5:6-9
I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the
pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.
Jesus saith unto him, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk. And
straightway the man was made whole, and took up his bed and
walked.” John 5:6-9
