A bad morning

It was a bad morning. Church on Sunday had been a regular occurrence for years, and at that point, I had been a Christian for a long time. But I had been dealing with a chronic medical issue for several years, and I had gone to bed the night before fully planning to sleep in. God had other plans.

I woke automatically early, as if an alarm clock had gone off, in tears, feeling driven to go to church. I was both crying and surprised.

My roommate and I packed my bag and wheelchair with everything we would need, and we made the trip. On the way, I grew sure that what I needed was one of the regular pastor’s sermons.

He was away.

The guest pastor stood at the pulpit and began preaching about the Bethesda Pool miracle (John 5:1-15), underscoring the paralyzed man’s laziness, and talking at length about how Jesus would have to deal with his complacency before healing him.

As disheartening as it was, I was less shocked by the content of the sermon and more hurt by God’s “audacity” in compelling me to go to church on that day to hear this particular sermon–which I had heard misinterpreted many times before.

I took my complaint to God on the spot.

Immediately, His peace flooded me. The unmistakable quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit stilled me. “You have to be here to feel a sadness you’ll remember, so that when the time is right, you can share exactly what you’re feeling now. That’s how you’ll help Me fix what’s wrong here.”

I was stunned. But that was enough to make me still, so I listened.

And now the time is right.

Reading the passage

The man at the Bethesda Pool has been paralyzed for 38 years, waiting for healing, growing demoralized, probably being drained of more faith each day.

The Bible states that people believed the superstition that healing would happen for anyone who could get into the pool whenever it was stirred. When the stirring stopped, people thought that the healing stopped, until the Angel’s next visit. And in 38 years, this man could never make it in time, which would have been heartbreaking when all his hope was in the water instead of in God.

What suffering does

When you can’t walk and people trample past you for thirty-eight years to get themselves to the water and secure their own miracle, without ever stopping to help you get there yourself, it changes you. It hurts you. It makes you cynical and shows you the “me first” tendencies of the world.

So this disabled man at the Bethesda pool has probably become self-absorbed, yes. He’s probably thinking: “I have to make it all about me, because no one else is going to consider me”.

If the man had paused after Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be healed” and said, “You know, the last thirty-eight years haven’t been all sob story all the time. There’s been a richness here, a chance to build bonds and get to know others at the pool, and grow together and pray and learn together. Jesus, I’m so glad to see you. We’ve been waiting for you. You’re such an artist, for giving us real gems to balance the times of struggle. Every time I turn around there’s more to learn and more ministering to do. I recognize it’s You behind this. And now You’re here, God in the flesh. Do with me what You will. I’m in Your hands.”

That would have been a whole different conversation, a different healing.

So many times, I’ve sat in my wheelchair or my church pew while ministers talked about how Jesus had restored this man’s “independence”. I’ve learned that people have a strange and dangerous relationship with self-sufficiency as the great ideal, as though we’ve “arrived” only when we can prove (or at least convince ourselves) that we don’t need anyone, only our own self-reliance and resilience.

The danger of misplaced faith

But that’s a myth and a trap that the enemy sets. God doesn’t work that way. He wants us to rely and depend on Him, not ourselves.

I think Jesus is pointing toward that principle, speaking to both the man in the scene and us when, after He heals him, Jesus warns him to stop sinning, lest something worse happen to him.

That leaves a big question wide open: What sin is Jesus talking about?

Jesus doesn’t just say “Don’t do that again.” He says: “Stop doing that!” which means he’s likely talking about a habitual sin—something that’s happened over and over. This makes me think of the traps of sin our minds can fall into. There’s plenty of time for your mind to get you in trouble when you’re physically stuck in the same spot.

What is the sin Jesus is talking about?

I prayed about this and had a strong conviction that there had to be a clue in the account itself. The Holy Spirit led me directly to it, and it’s so clear that once I saw it, I can’t “unsee” it.

This man had been putting his faith in the water, not in God, and now that he knew better. Jesus was warning him to beware of where—in Whom—he placed his faith. Jesus is warning us, too.

When we know where every good and perfect gift comes from, we must never place our trust anywhere else. Jesus is saying “Stop putting your faith in things. Your hope is in Me, and if you forget that, worse things will happen.”

Isn’t it ironic that Jesus’ warning was about misplaced faith, and the temptation here is to read this passage and misplace our attention, our minds wandering to wondering about the “juicy scoop” of whichever sin we suspect this man committed?

The story moves forward

Jesus does heal him. He tells him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk—and he does. The man who could not get himself into the water does not find healing through the pool after all, but through the word of Christ.

Later, Jesus finds him again in the temple, and that matters. The story does not end with physical healing alone. It ends with encounter. The man is not only restored in body, but confronted again by the One who healed him, the One who wanted not just his legs, but his heart.

It’s been eleven years since that morning when God shoved me out of bed and forced me to be uncomfortable. And now I know how right He was.