A Devotional as Review for the Sermon--> "Transform: It’s Time to Rise Up!"
- mpenman31
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Scripture Focus: John 5:1–18
There are places in life where we can sit so long that the place begins to sit inside us.
For the man at Bethesda, that place was beside a pool. Thirty-eight years of waiting. Thirty-eight years of watching others move ahead of him. Thirty-eight years of being near the possibility of healing but never quite close enough to receive it. His weakness was not just physical anymore. It had become geography, routine, identity, and expectation. The sermon names this tragedy clearly: “weakness had become his geography” and survival had replaced hope.
Bethesda was supposed to mean mercy, but for this man it had become a waiting room of disappointment. Everybody knew the rules: first come, first served; fastest wins; strongest survives. But Jesus walks into a system built on scarcity and sees a person. That is the first miracle before the healing ever happens. Jesus sees him. And Jesus sees us as well.
There is something deeply tender and unsettling about being truly seen by Jesus. Not glanced at. Not categorized. Not reduced to what happened to us. Not known by our weakness, grief, failure, loneliness, addiction, age, anxiety, disability, exhaustion, or history. Jesus sees the person beneath the condition.
That matters because long seasons of struggle can teach us to disappear from ourselves. After enough years, we can stop asking what wholeness might look like. We can become so accustomed to surviving that restoration begins to feel unrealistic, even intrusive. The sermon reminds us that the man’s most heartbreaking words were not, “I am sick,” but “I have no one.” His deepest wound was not an infirmity, or incapacity. It was isolation.
Then Jesus asks him a question: “Do you want to be healed?”
At first, it sounds almost obvious. Of course he wants to be healed. Why else would he be lying by the pool? But Jesus is not asking a shallow question. He is not merely asking whether the man wants relief. He is asking whether he wants restoration. Whether he wants to move beyond the life he has learned to manage. Whether he is ready to leave behind an identity built around disappointment.
That question still searches us.
Do we want to be made whole, or have we made peace with partial living? Do we want healing, or do we only want our current pain to become more manageable? Do we want communion, or have we become comfortable with isolation because vulnerability feels too risky? Do we want transformation, or do we only want God to improve the systems we already depend on?
The man answers Jesus by explaining the pool. He explains the rules. He explains why healing has not happened. He says, “I have no one to put me into the pool.” He is still thinking in terms of the system that has failed him for thirty-eight years. But Jesus does not ask the pool for permission. Jesus does not help him compete better. Jesus does not teach him how to crawl faster than the others. Jesus bypasses the entire system and speaks a word: “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”
That is resurrection language. Before Calvary’s borrowed tomb opens, Jesus is already speaking rising into deadened places. The sermon beautifully notes that Jesus “speaks Easter before resurrection ever comes.”
The man rises, but he does not rise empty-handed. Jesus tells him to take up his bed. That bed had carried his weakness, his waiting, his shame, and his history. Now he carries what once carried him. That is not just movement. That is testimony.
But rising can be uncomfortable. The man’s healing immediately creates controversy. Religious people see him carrying his mat on the Sabbath and miss the miracle because they are busy policing the rules. They see a violation where Jesus has performed restoration. They see disruption where God has brought life.
That is one of the harder truths of this passage: not everyone will rejoice when you rise. Some people only knew how to relate to you when you were lying down. Some systems only know what to do with you when you stay in your assigned place. Some people will question the method of your healing because they cannot recognize the mercy of God when it does not fit their expectations.
Still, Jesus says rise.
Rise from the identity that suffering gave you. Rise from the loneliness that taught you to stop hoping. Rise from the excuses that sound reasonable but keep you bound. Rise from the pool you thought was your only possibility. Rise from waiting for somebody else to make room for you. Rise from the fear of being seen walking in newness.
And when you rise, take your bed with you. Not as a burden, but as evidence. Not as shame, but as witness. Carry it as proof that what held you does not have the final word.
This is also a Communion word. At the table, we remember that nobody comes alone. The One who saw the man at Bethesda sees us. The One who restored him by his word still speaks life into places where hope has gone quiet. The Father is still working. Christ is still working. Mercy is still moving, even when the water is not.
It’s time to rise up.
Not because you have figured everything out.
Not because the crowd understands.
Not because the system has changed.
But because Jesus has spoken.
And when Jesus speaks resurrection, even a place of waiting can become a place of walking.
Reflection Questions
Where in your life have you been waiting so long that waiting has started to feel like your identity? What would it mean to imagine yourself as more than what has delayed, wounded, or limited you?
When Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed?” what part of you hesitates before answering? Be honest about whether healing feels hopeful, frightening, unfamiliar, or disruptive.
What “pool” have you been depending on that may not actually be the source of your restoration? Are there systems, people, routines, titles, habits, or explanations you keep trusting because they are familiar, even though they have not made you whole?
The man said, “I have no one.” Where do you feel unseen, unsupported, or emotionally alone? How might Christ be inviting you back into communion with God, with others, and with your own full humanity?
What would it look like for you to “take up your bed and walk” in this season? What old evidence of pain might God be transforming into testimony, courage, or witness?
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