Trapped In Transition

The man had been lame from birth, carried daily to the Beautiful Gate of the temple, positioned there to beg from people on their way to pray. He had never walked a single step. When Peter and John approached, he asked for money. Peter gave him something else: "I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." The man's feet and ankles were made strong immediately. He jumped up and began to walk. But walking, as Steven Furtick points out, is not the same as arriving. The man had received a change, but he had not yet completed a transition.

Change versus transition

The core distinction Furtick draws is between change and transition. Change is external—something that happens to you, imposed by circumstances. The man's healing was a change. It happened instantly, without physical therapy or gradual progress. Transition, by contrast, is internal. It is a psychological and spiritual event that takes time. "Change happens suddenly," Furtick says. "Transition takes time." The man could stand and walk, but he had never done either before. He had no framework for what his life would look like now. He was still, in every meaningful way, the same person who had been carried to the gate every day—except his body no longer matched his identity.