John 5:7-9a (ESV)

The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

This man had both hope and hopelessness. He had hope or he would not find a way to the Pool of Bethesda each day. Yet once there, he had little hope that he would be able to win the race into the stirred-up waters and be healed. He could not see a way out other than thinking in the natural. John Calvin notes, “The sick man does what we nearly all do. He limits God’s help to his own ideas and does not dare promise himself more that he conceives in his mind.”

Do you ever limit God in your thinking?

Of course, the opposite of this problem is the Prosperity Gospel. Name it and claim it. God wants you to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. If that is the delusional, time-share kind of Christian message you are looking for, there are plenty of peddlers willing to sell it to you in order to finance their lavish lifestyles. It is a lie. God makes no such promises in His Word. Can you be a Christian and be rich? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Influential? Yes. Famous? Yes. Live in a big house and drive a nice car? Yes. However, God owes you no such reward and you can’t do anything to force him to give it to you.

Jesus offers riches and healing that nothing on earth can.

Jesus boldly told the man to do what he could not do. He told him to believe in the impossible. It’s easy to imagine that the man’s first reaction was, I can’t do that – why even try? Yet something wonderful prompted the man to say, If this man tells me to do it, I will try. Jesus guided the man towards a response of faith. “Because Jesus told him, he asked no questions, but doubled up his couch, and walked. He did what he was told to do, because he believed in him who spoke. Have you such faith in Jesus, poor sinner?” (Spurgeon)

Sometimes Jesus chooses to heal us—and sometimes he doesn’t—but he is always with us and will never leave nor forsake us (Heb 13:5). In this present life, we see through the glass dimly (1 Cor. 13:12), but one day we will see the rhymes and reasons of how God was always working…for His glory and our good. We do well to remember that nothing is impossible with God (Mth. 19:26), and so we should never limit him in our minds. We should never think that in whatever difficulty we face, there is no way we can “pick up our bed and walk.” Our deliverance may not come in a way we imagined, or in the timing that we wanted, but God will deliver each and every one of His Children into His Promises one day.