Andre asked me to preach on what spoke to me from the celebration. It took a while for me to come up with something concrete. Having been at Harvester for the past 8 ½ years very little of what was taught was new to me, so I had a good look at my notes and found a thread or a flow over the celebration that connected with what God is doing in my life and in others around me.Luke 5:17-21

Let us have a look at our fellow in the story from Luke. We know very little about him except for 2 facts, firstly he was paralyzed and second he had at least four friends or family who where full of faith. How or why he was paralyzed we do not know. Yet something must have happened for him to have been that way, or he like the man born blind could have been paralyzed, we are not told.

How many of us let the past paralyze us. How many of us let things that happened in our childhood paralyze us in certain areas. Let me elaborate so you can get the picture.

I grew up in a good religious house. My father as most of you know is a preacher of the word and professor of Religious studies. I grew up where going to church on a Sunday was as much part of my week as was going to school Monday to Friday. Yet my father is as are all de Gruchys are people of passion. My father was very passionate about his work at the university and about his work in many other areas of his life that he did not spend to much time with me. The other major problem was that my father and I are very much alike, so we tended to clash rather badly.

This left me in a rather neglected state. Where I would rather not spend time with my dad as the result would normally end up in a fight. The natural reaction for a teenager is to look for comfort elsewhere. I tended to withdraw and spent a large part of teenage years on my own, I still spend a large part of my on my own.

I unlike my sister was not very good at school. I certainly had the ability, but struggled with the school system. Being dyslexic did not help matters so I was constantly off to remedial class and the such. My marks where not a true reflection of what I was capable of doing, but the marks where the things that mattered this often brought about a feeling of despair when after studying hard for an exam or test I would not do very well.

My dad tried to help me along by offering to buy me things if I did well at school. This was all good and well, but in some ways rather highlighted the problem rather than finding a solution. It also taught me that I was only accepted when I did well and that the way of showing acceptance was through buying me things. When all I was asking for was someone to believe in me.

I was also a very sickly child, and it did not take me long to realize that when I was sick I got attention and avoided school tests or exams. This lead me to enjoy being sick and draw sickness to me and at times led me to fake being sick.

By the time Est and I where getting serious about our relation I had a whole trolley full of baggage that needed sorting out. My little tricks of getting attention did not work on her darn! The upshot of all of this is that it could have derailed our relationship before it started. Any of you who know Esther well enough will know she doe not take nonsense.

I came to a point in my life where I had to deal with all of this. I like our friend on his bed was paralyzed. I was paralyzed in my spirit from growing up. In certain areas of my life I acted like a little child and in some ways I was still a little hurting child although I was 21 and about to get married.

I had allowed rejection and failure to rule my life. I had built a life around rejection and failure accepting them as normal and part of my life. I believed that I would always be a failure and part of that was always being rejected and I believed that I would always be sick.

I am sure each one of you has similar stored of how our past has paralyzed you. Esther's dad rolled a car on a mountain pass with her in it when she was young and this lead her having a fear of going on mountain passes as a passenger which was rather irritating. She was paralyzed in that area.

I worked with a very nice lady who was involved in a car accident when she was in her mother's womb with the result that she had a fear of cars and traffic. She traveled to work by train and had a fear of crossing the road. Again she was paralyzed by her past.

We have three possible reactions to these occurrences. The first one is to crack this normally entails getting involved in the wrong crowd and or drugs or alcohol abuse. This normally lands us with a suicide attempt as a desperate cry for attention. This second and more frequent response is to build a wall of protection around the hurt then to avoid ever going there again. The third is to go all out to prove to there father or mother that they are good enough to be accepted. This normally means throwing themselves into studies or sport in a desperate attempt to win approval.

Someone who has been brought up with rejection will often go through life as a single person because they do not want to put themselves into a situation where they could possibly be rejected. They will have a boy friend or girl friend and all will be going well but as soon the other party put pressure on them to take the relationship to the next level they bail out. They are paralyzed in the ability to have a lasting relationship.

The problem with all of these scenarios is that until we have dealt with our past it is very difficult to have a strong and sold relationship with Christ. Because we are so scared that He will treat us as we have been treated in our past. Our past paralyzes our relationship with Jesus.

Here are a few comments from the celebration that got me onto this topic.

Apostle Andre 'correction is not rejection' If we have undealt with issue with our earthly father we will struggle to receive from a spiritual father. No matter how gently or how in love a correction comes it will always be seen as rejection. We had a lady in our house hold that had undealt with issues with her dad. One day she said that we where her spiritual parents and before you know it she treated us in the same way that she treated her earthy father.

Prophet Nola spoke about worship and she said that we must deal with our rejection before we can truly worship. Worship comes from the heart and while we have a wall around our heart it is difficult to be free in worship. Also as soon as the Holy Spirit wants to take down the walls we draw away from what He is doing and thus are scared to really enter into worship for fear of our past being exposed. We paralyze our worship.

Dr Philip 'Renewal of the mind is a daily occurrence' It is very difficult to renew our minds when we have hurt in our heart.

Teacher Riaan 'There is beauty in the simplicity of who you are' and 'When you find out who you are you have peace and you are not threatened by others.' It is very difficult to find out who we are when we block half of our lives from the world because we are scared of being hurt. We paralyze the very discovery of we are.

Apostle Andre 'Your suffering forms you, your hurt pain and rejection' Your suffering can form you in a bad or good way. I always use the example of a tree growing around a fence post or the stake that was used when it was a sapling. My suffering has formed me into a man of God with a strong foundation in the word. It could have also formed me into a bitter rejected failure. He added 'I found myself in Christ' that is the important part to find yourself in Christ.

Getting back to our friend on his bed he found himself being carried off to a house