Lame Man Walking, Part 1

Lameness can set in as an addiction, and that is where you get used to not man up and becoming what God wants you to be. Dr. Tony Evans says living a spiritually crippled life can be habit-forming.

You can be so used to being a failure that you think it is out of the realm of possibility that your life could ever be better. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Today, Dr. Evans will tell us the story of a lame beggar who got more help from Jesus than he expected as he takes a look at how men can find the strength to stand up and start walking by faith.

Let's join him. A fictitious story is told of three hospital chaplains who got together one day and said, you know, our ministry is so powerful, I believe we can convert a bear. So they decided to actually try to convert a bear. Now, one was a Catholic priest, the other was a Pentecostal preacher, and the third one was a Jewish rabbi. Well, first the Catholic priest went to convert his bear.

He came back on crutches. Two others said, well, what happened? Well, my bear didn't want to get converted, but I read to him the catechism, I sprinkled holy water on him, and after an intense time, he responded to my message. Then it was the Pentecostal preacher's turn. He went out to convert his bear. He came back in a wheelchair.

The other guy said, what happened? I tried to convert my bear. My bear didn't want to be baptized, but I wrestled with him, and I wrestled with him, and I got him down into the water, and when I brought him back up, he was gentle and meek.

I had achieved my purpose. Finally, it was the Jewish rabbi's turn. He went out to convert his bear. He came back with a cast from the top of his head to the bottom of his foot.

A full body cast. The other two men said to him, well, what happened when you try to convert your bear? Said, yeah, I tried to convert my bear, but I discovered quickly that circumcision is not where you want to start. It can be rough trying to change folk that don't want to be changed, and a lot of men, we have to enter into wrestling matches with them for them to come around to understand what it means to be a man under God, to be the kind of men that God wants us to be.

And like trying to convert a bear, it becomes a challenge to get men to rise up to their biblical responsibility and biblical manhood. We're told about a lame man in Acts chapter 3. The description of the man is given in verse 2. We're told a number of things about this man. First of all, we have told that he is lame. He's a cripple. But we're told he was a cripple from his mother's womb. So ever since he was born, he's been crippled. That means he was not able to stand on his own two feet.

And it's hard to man up if you can't even stand up. He couldn't stand on his own two feet, and according to chapter 4, verse 22, the man is 40 years old. So for half of a lifetime, this man was not able to stand up on his own. He was lame from his mother's womb. Now, we don't know all of his sociological conditions, although we will get a hint, but we do know he had to be poor because he was a beggar.

We don't know whether daddy was in the picture or not, because only the mother is mentioned. But we do know this. Ever since he was born, he was not able to stand up, so he was never able to man up. And that was a lifetime condition, because he's now 40 years old. We're told the second thing about this man. We're told that his whole life depended upon what other folk did for him, because it says every day he was carried by other folk to beg.

See, you know you lame when everybody else has got to take care of you because you're not man enough to take care of yourself, when everybody else has got to bring you to where you need to go because you're not able to get there on your own. So every day, it says, it says every single day somebody had to carry him to beg. So we know another thing about him. He's a beggar. That means he's living on tips. He wants other people to put something in his can or something in his jar or something in his hat so he could survive another day, because we know he only got enough to live one day at a time. He's a beggar. So he's lame from his mother's womb. He can't stand up. Everybody's got to carry him the way he wants to go next.

He's living on tips. And what's interesting about verse 2 is, he was at the church house every day. It says he went to the gate called Beautiful that was at the temple. So here he was, lame from his mother's womb, not able to stand up, a beggar. Everybody else had to take care of him because he wasn't man enough to take care of himself due to his condition.

And he was at church every single day at the gate called Beautiful, which lets me know you can be a man at church and never change. You can be at the church house every single day and still wind up to be a lame man, not able to stand up on your own two feet, because even though he was at church, nothing had changed in his life. We are living in a day when far too many men are lame. They may not be physically lame. They may be able to physically stand up, but that's not the only kind of lameness. There is mental lameness, where the man is not able to have the cognitive capacity to take on his manly responsibility. There is social lameness, where men are expecting the government to do what God has called them to do. There's spiritual lameness, where the woman has got to lead the devotions, has got to pray with the kids, because he's too lame to take the time to be the spiritual head of his home. See, lameness can come in all shapes and sizes, but it all bears the same characteristic, and that is, somebody else has got to do for you what you will not do and choose not to do for yourself, even if you're spending time at the church house. And so we find this man in this physical condition, but it's put in this passage to make the spiritual point that he was not able to make it on his own. Whatever the cause, whatever the influence, he was not man enough to stand up in order to man up. And so as a result of that, everybody else had to take care of him, and he was living as a beggar.

So that's our circumstance. I am certain even here today there are folk who are lame. I was visiting my father in Baltimore.

My brother and I used to exchange times going back and forth to see him and to take care of him, and I looked all around me. I saw lame men in droves, men who were 40 years old, 50 years old, 60 years old, still in the same space I left them 40 years ago. They were lame because they had not taken responsibility. I saw a myriad of single mothers walking up and down the street, children sired by a man who disappeared, and he refused to take responsibility for the children that they had sired, leaving a whole community. I asked my dad, I said, Dad, how are all these people making it? Because it's by the mega thousands. And my dad said, all of them are on welfare.

All of them are depending on the government because they're unable to take care of themselves, and the men are nowhere to be found. But you don't have to be in a city just to be lame. You could be lame in the suburbs. You just can cover it up with some money, houses, clothes, and cars. Because if you still do not take the divinely ordained responsibility that God has given every man to have by virtue of his created purpose when he created men, then you just become a lame man with some fineries in your life. But that's our situation. Our situation is that we've got a man who cannot stand up on his own two feet and fulfill the responsibilities that he is responsible to take care of, and now he's living on his own crumbs and his own baggie.

So that's the circumstance. But now we enter two other men. Verse 1 says, Peter and John were going into the temple at the ninth hour, that's 3 p.m., the hour of prayer. So now enter two other men, Peter and John. Peter and John are going at three o'clock in the afternoon to pray.

Now that's gonna be important in a second. They are taking their lunch hour, if you will, to go into the house of prayer into the temple to connect with the living and true God. On their way in, they pass by the lame man, and then the story unfolds. And we'll hear that story when Dr. Evans returns in a moment to continue our message.

Stay with us. The world says to man up, but they're often talking about things you can say, money, status. What does God say? To be a man and rise up in society, you can't leave God on the sidelines. To do so is the difference between good and great. See, greatness isn't achieved, it's demonstrated every day. A man leaves his legacy through a million middle moments done well.

It requires showing up, being present, standing up, speaking truth. In his powerful and long-awaited sequel to the instant bestseller, Kingdom Man, Tony Evans' Kingdom Men Rising challenges men to rise up for what they believe in. He inspires men to leave a legacy of both impact and influence. Get the much-anticipated sequel, Kingdom Men Rising, and get going. Seize what's yours, claim what's ours for the collective body of Christ.

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I'll repeat that contact information for you after part two of today's message. Here's Tony. When Peter and John were about to enter the temple, verse 3, he began asking to receive arms—that is, begging for money. So Peter and John are walking in, and the lame man says, what about some change? Can you spare a dime or a dollar?

Can you give me a little something so I can make it another day? So the lame man begs Peter and John like he begged everybody else in order to just get a little something something to hold him over for 24 hours until tomorrow he came out and begged one more time. As Peter and John passed by, Peter looks at him along with John, fixes his gaze on him, according to verse 4, and says to the lame man, to the beggar, to the dependent one, look at us.

Let me pause for a moment and talk about look at us. If Peter had to tell him to look at us, that means he wasn't looking at him. So Peter has to tell him, pay attention to us.

So that tells me something about the lame man. He had gotten so used to begging that he wasn't even looking at the folk he was asking money from, because life can beat you down so long that all you can do is hold your head down low and hope for charity, hope for some help just to come along. So people just passing by, he's just saying, please for some money, please for some money. Peter said, uh-uh, uh-uh, you got to pay attention to me. You got to look at us, because I'm gonna come at you in a way that nobody else today has come at you. So I want your, watch this, undivided attention. So I want to say to every man now who's thinking about the football game last night, who's thinking about the football games that are gonna be on today, I want you to look at me.

I want you to pay close attention right now. I don't want you to be distracted right now, because what Peter wants this lame man to hear is absolutely critical if he doesn't want to stay lame. Cause see, you can be so used to being a beggar. You can get so used to being a failure. You can be so used to being defeated that you think it is out of the realm of possibility that your life could ever be better. It's out of the realm of possibility that you could ever be the man you were birthed to be. Lameness can set in as an addiction.

See, we got a lot of addiction out there, but you rarely hear of lameness, the addiction of lameness. And that is where you get used to not manning up, standing up, and becoming what God wants you to be. So Jesus would ask a man, are you willing to be made well?

Because if you're not willing, I can't help you. Peter picks up on that. He says, hey mister, look at us.

I right now need your undivided attention. So when the man hears this, he now, according to verse 5, he began to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. He may be gonna give me something that don't cling. So maybe Peter gonna do something something special for me outside of the chump chain that I get from everybody else.

So he pays attention. It says expecting to receive some, you know, some paper money, some dollars. Have you ever gotten a birthday card and shook it, nothing within it? Somebody said you happy birthday. You shake it, expecting something to come out. And that guy may have the nerve to write on it.

That's just the right word. Happy birthday and you shake it. Sometimes you shake it twice thinking something got stuck in there. You shake it, you shake it, and you don't get what you expect. This man expected something. He says, so I'm gonna pay attention because you're gonna give me something. Peter says to him, I do not possess silver and gold. Oh, you got, you got to be kidding me. You're gonna tell me pay attention there, you're gonna tell me you ain't got nothing. You're gonna tell me, you know, the bank is broke.

I have not silver and gold. You've asked me for money and I can't help you. See, far too many lame people and lame men are thinking money is gonna solve their problem. If I can make more money, if I can get a better job, there's nothing wrong with legitimately making money, nothing wrong with having a job that is productive, nothing wrong with that. But when you lame and the doctor can't heal you and life has turned left on you, there are some things money can't buy.

And if all your option is is money, if that's all you got working for you, when you run into the lameness of life. See, because when I was back home with my father, he told me whenever they got money, they used the money up so they wind up the next day not having money because what they were missing was character. And you can't buy character.

You can't buy responsibility. And so he says silver and gold, I don't have that. I don't have what you asked for. You asked for money.

You asked for arms. But I have something. In fact, what I have, money came by.

And here's where it gets beautiful. He says, what I have, I'm gonna give to you. I love the word give because the word give is a grace word. Give cannot be earned.

He doesn't say you have to earn it, but he says I'll give it to you. I don't have what you asked for because far too many men are praying for the wrong thing. They're praying for a better job. They're praying for more money. They're praying for more clout. They're praying for more notoriety. They're praying for the wrong thing. They're praying for stuff when God wants to change the person. And when God can't change you and you only want stuff from God, you got it backwards.

Stuff is okay as long as God has given stuff to the right person. All this guy wanted was enough to keep his lameness intact. God is not concerned with keeping our lameness intact.

He's concerned with changing our lameness so we're not lame men anymore. So what Peter says is, I got something, but it's not what you have. I have something, but it's not what you asked for.

What I have, I give to you in the name, somebody say in the name, in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene walk. Stop being lame anymore. I want you to get up and stand up on your own two feet. I want you to stop depending on everybody else to man up where you should stand up. I want you to stop being irresponsible. I want you to stop being lame.

I don't just want to give you a tip so you can stay lame. I don't want to give you leftovers so you can stay irresponsible. No, I want to give you that which will enable you to move on your own two feet.

So I have something for you, but it's not what you asked for. Every man is to passionately pursue a intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ so when you use the name he'll share the power. Jesus doesn't share the power. You say, I'm trying to change my wife or change my kids and I call on the name of Jesus and nothing happens. Well, God wants to know what's the connection like because you can't expect your appliances to work if they're not plugged in to some power.

You can say refrigerator, refrigerator all day long, stove, cook all day long, but if you're not plugged into the power you just talking smack. Peter says, what I have I give to you because I'm so connected to the name that he's gonna allow me to piggyback on the power so I can help another man who is lame himself. And we'll see what happens next when Dr. Tony Evans continues this message on Monday. If you can't be with us the full-length version of this lesson is part of Tony's current teaching series Kingdom Men Rising. Remember all 12 complete messages in this collection along with his brand new book by the same name are yours as our thank-you gift when you make a donation to help keep this program coming your way. Just reach out to our resource center at 1-800-800-3222.

Team members are standing by around the clock to help you. That's 1-800-800-3222 or visit tonyevans.org. And while you're there, if you've never taken the step of starting a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, it begins by realizing that none of us is perfect enough to qualify for heaven on our own. But that's not the end of the story.

Here's Dr. Evans to explain why. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Guess what? God is gonna let you go to heaven on credit. He will credit to your account the righteousness of Christ, because God is credited to Jesus Christ your sin. So your credit score can be 100 if you go to Jesus Christ for salvation right now.

How do you do that? Just visit tonyevans.org and follow the link that says Jesus. Tony has a short powerful video that explains what real Christianity is about, along with some free follow-up resources. Check it out today and discover the amazing difference it can make in your life. On Monday, more from Dr. Evans on why lameness is more than just a matter of not being able to walk, plus a look at the changes that can happen once we take a stand. I hope you'll join us. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.