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You have tried to stop before.

Maybe more than once. You made a decision to change your ways. You meant it. For a while things were going well. Then something happened, you faced a difficult day, a moment of weakness, a situation you were not ready for, and you found yourself back in the same place again.

And the hardest part is not the failure. It is the thought that comes with failing when you have tried to change.

“Maybe this is just who I am.”

That thought is a lie. But it is one of the most effective ones the enemy has because when you start to believe that freedom is for other people but not for you, you stop reaching for it.

There is a man in the Bible who had been lying by a pool for 38 years. Every day the same spot. Every day the same explanation for why he could not move forward. When Jesus came to him, He asked a simple question.

John 5:6 says: "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?'"

The man did not say yes. He explained why healing was difficult. He listed his obstacles. He had been there so long that he had stopped thinking about walking and started thinking about why walking was impossible.

Jesus did not help him into the pool. He did not remove the obstacle. He looked at the man and said get up, pick up your mat and walk.

And the man stood up.

The freedom was never in the pool. It was in the decision to stand up.

One of the reasons chains become so strong is because we learn how to live with them.

We tell ourselves it is not that serious. We compare ourselves to people who seem worse. We say things like, "At least I'm not doing what they are doing." We convince ourselves we can stop whenever we want.

But healing cannot begin where honesty is absent.

King David learned that the hard way. After his sin with Bathsheba, he spent months trying to hide what he had done. And in that season he wrote about groaning all day long and feeling the weight of his guilt everywhere he went.

Then something changed.

Instead of hiding, he became honest.

Psalm 32:5 says: "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.' And you forgave the guilt of my sin."

Notice what David stopped doing. He stopped covering it up.

That is where freedom began.

God already knows what you are struggling with. He is not waiting for an information He doesn't already know. He is waiting for honesty.

Tell Him the whole truth. The temptation. The habit. The bitterness. The thing you keep promising yourself you will deal with later.

The chain starts losing its power the moment you stop pretending it is not there.

The struggles that grow strongest in our lives almost always share one thing in common.

They thrive in silence.

The enemy wants you to believe that if people knew what you were dealing with they would pull away. So you keep it hidden. You show up on Sunday and nobody knows. You answer the how are you doing question the way everyone expects you to. And the thing you are fighting gets a little stronger every week because it has never had to face anyone but you.

James 5:16 says: "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed."

Notice that James does not say confess and you will feel better. He says confess and you may be healed. He connects the act of revealing your struggles with someone else with the possibility of something actually changing.

You do not need to announce it to everyone. You need one person. A friend who will not use it against you. A pastor who has seen worse. A counsellor who knows how to help you heal. One honest conversation with one trustworthy person is more powerful than years of fighting something stronger than you in private.

Many people pray for freedom while leaving the door wide open to the thing that keeps pulling them back.

They ask God to help them stop comparing themselves while spending hours in the exact content that fuels it. They pray about bitterness while replaying the same wounds over and over. They ask for help with temptation while putting themselves back in the same situations where temptation has always won before.

Matthew 5:29 says: "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away."

Jesus was not teaching self-harm. He was teaching seriousness. The question is not just do you want to be free. It is how much of what is keeping you in the chain are you actually willing to remove.

Delete the app. Change the route. End the conversation. Stop revisiting what you said you were done with. Find an accountability partner to hold you up when the chain tries to pull you down. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is make it harder to go back.

Most people focus entirely on what they want to stop doing.

Very few focus on what they need to start doing instead.

But an empty space never stays empty for long. Something has to fill it. The only question is what.

Paul understood this. In Ephesians 4 he does not simply tell believers to stop lying. He tells them to speak truth. He does not tell them to stop stealing. He tells them to work and become generous. For every thing he tells them to put off, there is something he tells them to put on.

God's goal was never just to empty your hands. His goal is to fill them with something better.

This is why lasting change often requires more than simply saying no.

If comparison is the chain, spending less time on social media may help, but eventually that space needs to be filled with gratitude for what God has already given you.

If bitterness is the chain, it is not enough to stop replaying the hurt. You have to begin praying for the person who hurt you and asking God to heal what was wounded.

If drifting from God is the chain, deciding to stop wasting time is only half the battle. That time needs to be replaced with things that draw you back to Him, whether that is prayer, Scripture, worship, or time spent with other believers.

The habit that formed the chain needs to be replaced with a habit that moves you toward God rather than away from Him. Not because replacing a bad habit with a good one is a formula for freedom. But because the direction you are moving matters. Turning around is only the beginning.

You still have to start walking somewhere.

One of the most damaging lies the enemy tells after a failure is that you are back at the beginning.

You are not.

Every honest prayer you have prayed still counts. Every day you held on without falling still counts. Every wise decision you made still counts. A setback does not erase progress. It is part of the process.

Proverbs 24:16 says: "Though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again."

The righteous person in that verse still falls. Seven times. The thing that makes them righteous is not that they never fall down. It is that they keep getting back up.

The enemy wants one mistake to become a reason to stop. God wants one mistake to become a lesson that makes you stronger the next time.

Get back up. One setback does not erase the progress God has already been making in your life.

When the man at Bethesda stood up, something interesting happened.

He picked up his mat.

Jesus told him to carry the very thing he had been lying on. Not to leave it there. Not to pretend it had never been part of his story. Pick it up and walk.

Your history with this struggle is part of your story. The years you spent lying by the pool, the attempts that did not work, the failures you are still embarrassed about, God is not asking you to leave those behind and pretend they did not happen.

He is asking you to pick them up and walk.

Because the person who has been where you have been and found their way out is the person who will one day help someone else stand up. And when they ask how you made it, the mat in your hands will say more than your words ever could.

2 Corinthians 1:4 says: "Who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

The chain started as a link.

And freedom starts the same way.

One honest prayer. One difficult conversation. One wise decision. One act of obedience.

Pick up your mat.

And walk.

✝ Kingdom Mantra

Is there something you have been trying to break free from that you have never been fully honest about with anyone? Hit reply to this email or drop a comment below if you are reading this on our website. I would love to hear from you and pray with you. God bless you and do have a great week ahead. ❤️