“Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.” John 5:2-3
There were many sick people there. One version says “multitudes.” They were all lying around on their mats waiting for an angel to come and stir the waters so that if they were in the right place at the right time, they might be healed. Jesus goes on to tell of a man who had been there for thirty-eight years! Jesus saw him lying there on his mat and asked him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6). Check this out: He answered,
“I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” (John 5:7)
Why didn’t the sick guy just say, “Yes?” I think he didn’t want to be healed right then because he did not want the responsibility that would come with it. It is easier to be affirmed, established, and pitied rather than to change. However, Jesus calls us to change. The guy on the mat had been there for so long that it had become his identity. He had other friends on mats, and they would talk about their issues together. They had become a culture. If he were healed, he would have to give up his identity and change his way of life. What about us? Could it be that some of us have had an issue for so long that we really don’t want to be healed? We want Jesus to love us and comfort us in our affliction.
Additionally, the man said that no one would help him. Do we blame our issues on someone else who didn’t help us, affirm us and enable us?
Prayer:
“Lord, help us to get off of our mats and be healed. Grant us the boldness to just get up and walk. You are God of the impossible. We believe this!”
In Jesus’ Mighty Name,
AMEN!
Final Thoughts:
Today brokenness has become an idol and people defend their right to bow down to it. They want to be like the man on the mat gathering others with like symptoms and talking about their afflictions thus magnifying and further establishing them. They too have a culture. It is the voice of enabling and in order to be healed we have to break it.
“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’” He told the sick guy to do something He previously could not do: to get up and walk. He will do the same for us if we will just get off the mat of our issues and walk.
Be Greatly Blessed!
