Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of invalid folk, of blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, who had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been now a long time in that condition, he said unto him, Will you be made whole? The invalid man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steps down before me. John 5:1-7

The account of the man by the pool of Bethesda is one of my favorite healing testimonies. I love it because the man had zero, if not negative, faith for a healing. Over the years, I’ve heard faith-based teaching that implied that Jesus won’t heal us unless we have blazing faith of exactly the right type (grain of a mustard seed with hyper-accelerated growth) which results from non-stop immersion in/focus on the Word of God. I get tired just thinking about it. 🙂 BUT I’m not ruling out any pathway to healing as long as people understand that there are as many different pathways to healing as there are people.

However, in the past, I found that it was so easy to slip into the mode in which I trusted in a formula instead of trusting in God. And there are formulas or formulae-aplenty out there, proposed by good people who sincerely want to help others experience the same healing victories that they have experienced. But taking on a performance burden means a lot of hard work—and that’s what I love about this healing account. This man by the pool of Bethesda had absolutely no faith in Jesus, before or probably after the healing. And I don’t believe anyone stood in the faith gap for him. I further don’t believe that he literally “stood on faith.” The man was all about waiting for someone to pick him up. So he would have expected “the stranger” to do so—unless there was some outer manifestation by Jesus and/or the blessed sensation of strength suddenly came into his limbs. Furthermore, based on his statement about having no man servant, the weak man didn’t even believe that the “troubling-of-the-waters” formula would work for him. Let’s just face it—this was the “ultimate unfaith” healing.

This man had been infirmed for thirty-eight years. Does this mean that God allowed chronic suffering to go on and on unabated? Well, I don’t think the man was in physical pain. The King James Version says he was impotent. (asthéneia – properly, without strength, refers to an ailment that deprives someone of enjoying or accomplishing what they would like to do, focuses on the handicaps that go with the weakness, expresses the weakening influences of the illness or a particular problem, especially as someone becomes wrongly (overly) dependent.) I believe that I had previously shared that my mother became an invalid out of fear. She refused to have a bone density scan, but was convinced that she had advanced osteoporosis. So when she broke her hip, she thought that was only the beginning—the easiest solution was just to stay in bed. After several months, her muscles atrophied to the point where she couldn’t have walked if she wanted to. 😦 However, although her quality of life was poor, my mother wasn’t in physical pain.

So it could have been fear, or the man-by-the-pool could have been a hypochondriac, and/or he could have had a victim mentality or…“I used to think that this man at the pool at Bethesda had lain there for 38 years. But it does not say that; it says he had been ill for 38 years. We do not know why…He is not called a ‘lame’ man… He is weak, feeble, and unable to stand, probably because of some wasting disease — perhaps cancer, tuberculosis, or multiple sclerosis. In any event his disease made him unable to walk for 38 years.“ Whatever the pathological condition, Jesus wanted to deal with it. “The value of a story like this, and the reason it is in the gospels, is not only to reveal to us who Jesus was — truth about the Lord himself — but also to show us how God proposes to deal with human helplessness and weakness. Undoubtedly it was the helplessness of this man that drew Jesus to him…We all need help. We all find ourselves paralyzed at times, unable to do the thing we want or ought to do. We find we are lame: we do not walk very well spiritually. This story is included in the gospels in order that we might understand how God proposes to help us through the ministry of Jesus.“¹

The commentator then goes on to say that Jesus, who is perfectly omniscient and knows all the minds of men, knew that the man-by-the-pool really wanted to be healed. But he had to get to the point at which he could accept help from Jesus. So if we get to the place of surrender in which we say, “I am never going to be able to do this myself,” Jesus will find us—out of a crowd of innumerable people—and save us. I think that’s a word for somebody.

Another theory (Morli-ism) is that when Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed, he was essentially asking, What’s your end game? A domino topple of perfectly timed events—or to ambulate away from here this second? Are you willing to accept help if it’s packaged in a different form factor?

I don’t know if you’ve ever had anybody ask for prayer who has the dominos perfectly lined up, ready to go. In other words, they have very specific ideas about how their healing will come and need your help praying it into the natural. For example, “Please pray that the surgeon, whom God wants me to see, will send me to Sweden for a miraculous homeopathic regimen instead of putting me under the knife.” 🙂 Others have asked for prayer, having already made a conscious decision that the healing had to be within a certain timeframe, or they weren’t interested. On the other hand, one amazing friend actually told me (shortly after my salvation experience) that the LORD said she would have to go on a six month prednisone regimen—but after that, she would be 100% whole. I didn’t think that could possibly be God, as I knew He could heal her in an instant. But she was totally plugged in/submitted to His will—and He carried her through every step of the way as He healed her. To my knowledge, she has never had another onset in 26 years.

The delay-doesn’t-mean-denial scenario eventually impacted me firsthand. I moved to a desert climate and had a dermatitis onset for the first time ever in my life—my hands were literally breaking out in blisters! That happened in my “name it and claim it” phase, so I was claiming my healing non-stop and didn’t hear the LORD telling me, “Go to the doctor, ‘Morli’.” 🙂 Then when I finally went to the doctor, I didn’t believe him because he said I was having an allergic reaction—to what? he couldn’t say, so what good was he? But I continued to cry out for a healing, and one day I walked out of J. C. Penney into the parking lot, and paused—because I saw something unusual—a car just like mine had entered the far corner of the lot. (My car had a very unique electric blue color, and I had never seen another like it in all the years I had owned the car.) I watched the car approach, and as it drove past me, I noticed that a woman, who was approximately my age, was driving—and then I noticed that—on a 105 degree day, she was wearing cotton gloves. 🙂 It turned out that, in the oppressively hot Arizona summers, when the temperature exceeded a certain threshold, I became allergic to the steering wheel/its changing chemical properties for that particular make/model/year of car. The LORD had orchestrated an incredible sequence of events to show me my allergic trigger!

What can we learn about the triune God from this? He has a pathway to healing for every single one of us. He may surprise us with the healing package/form factor. But His end game is our healing.

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¹Ray Stedman’s Website: /new-testament/john/do-you-want-to-get-well