You’ve been sick for thirty-eight years. Your physical condition has become a way of life. You’ve adapted to the way things are. You’re living a “new kind of normal.” One day someone comes to you and asks, “Would you like to get well?” You think to yourself, “Duh?” Well the Bible tells of this exact story…
“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!” John 5: 2-9
After so long of being sick, this man had no hope of ever being healed… No hope. Period. For good reason—no one EVER helped him! There are many of us who kind of feel the same way… our situation feels hopeless. But I’m here to say that no matter how trapped we may feel, God can always use it to minister to our deepest need, which is spiritual. Now coming from someone who has been struck down in the prime of my life with a disability, sometimes that’s hard to hear. I mean yes, God met me in my deepest need, and I can’t wait to be with Jesus in Paradise; but the human side of me screams that I need my body to work properly while I’m here on earth!
But I know that I know, I can never lose hope. God has work that only I can do in spite of Muscular Dystrophy. Many of us have the privilege of ministering effectively to hurting people because with Jesus, we’ve triumphed over our hurts.
Miracles happen. Hope is hard to kill.