John 5: 3-8
“Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches.
Crowds of sick people-blind, lame, or paralyzed-lay on the porches.
One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him and knew how long he had been ill, he asked him, ” Would you like to get well? “
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get there, someone else always gets in ahead of me.”
Jesus told him, ” Stand up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk!
This is an interesting story of a man who has been sick for 38 years and was by the pool looking to be healed, but when Jesus asked him whether he wanted to be well he replied ‘I can’t, sir’. One may wonder why he was there then? Jesus did not say can you heal yourself or why have you not made yourself well? Jesus asked him whether he wanted to get well. His mind was fixed on someone helping him to jump into the pool and didn’t think that there could be another way of solution to his problem.
Many people go to church with issues and are looking to either the minister praying for them or having some supernatural encounter that will “end it all”; all the while however, they have the word of God in their hands.
We can take the word and pray for healing. We can take the word and ask our brothers to pray with us as in James 5:6. We can also ask our Pastors to pray with us, but we don’t have to be fixated that our break throughs will come in a particular way. As we can see, Jesus did not help him into the water as the man expected, he just asked him to get up and take his mat and that was it.
We need to believe God for interventions, but we must not dictate how it should be. This is what happened in Elisha and Naaman’s story. We ought to believe that with God all things are possible.
I caught myself thinking about a situation that affected me greatly in my early years as a believer. I said within me that I can’t be healed of a particular thing, but instantly remembered this passage, and asked the Lord to go to the root of the matter and heal me. We normally say “I can’t” to many things; but have we ask the Lord for help?
Psalm 121:1 -2 says “1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
2 My help [cometh] from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.“
The Lord also, strengthens us to do things that we cannot do by ourselves as seen in Phil 4:13 ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’
As we go into the new year, let us remember that we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength.
I can 🙌🙌🙌.
I can do all things through Christ Phil 4:13
Chara-Joy 🌸 