Stop Waiting and Start Living!

John 5:1-14 NLT
Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. 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 he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.” Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”

Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!” But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” “Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded. The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.”

Stop Waiting and Start Living!

Identify the Real Problem

Stop Blaming the Pain

Take the Next Step

Thirty-eight years is a long time to sit on your mat. Every day is the same. Waiting. Watching. Hoping. Not much changes. Sitting on the mat had become his way of life. His life is stagnant. He’s unable to see that the deep well of life is within him. He’s convinced that life will bubble up outside of him, over there, in that magic pool of water. So he sits on his mat waiting, watching, and hoping that things will change.

The man has decided that he won’t get up off his mat until he sees the first bubble. He is living an “as soon as” life. “As soon as the water bubbles then I will get up off my mat. As soon as I get into the water my life will be better. As soon as I get into the water my problems will be fixed.” He’s waiting until something or someone outside of himself does something to change his circumstances.

The pool of Bethesda is an illusion. It convinces us that our life is nothing more than the sum of our circumstances. It deceives us into believing that life is to be found outside ourselves. It tricks us into living an “as soon as” life. Most of us know what that is like. We say to ourselves or maybe even out loud to another, “As soon as this or that happens everything will be better. I’ll be happy. My problems will go away. I’ll be satisfied. All will be well.”

He was locked into a single strategy for getting well, he wanted to lose his troubles in the bubbles! BUT, he had no hope of that ever actually taking place because he had no one who would help him get in, he’s in a vicious cycle that is full of unrealistic ideas and layered in denial!

Are you willing to pay the price for wholeness? Are you ready to let go of the benefits of your brokenness?

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