2. (John 5:1-9) – Waiting for a Miracle

John 5:5 – “One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.”

One of the hardest difficulties I’ve ever faced in my life was suffering from a chronic daily headache for about twelve years. The intensity of the pain would go back and forth from unbearable to livable. My battles with headaches all together have lasted about seventeen years.

I prayed hundreds of prayers for healing throughout my bought with chronic daily headaches, and needless to say, I suffered great disappointment wondering why God was allowing the pain and why He wasn’t healing me. The fight was not only with the pain but with depression and lack of motivation and joy in life. It is not a fun place to be, waiting and waiting for God to show up and bring healing, and wondering day after day after day why He’s not showing up for you.

Think about the man in our story just a moment. A cripple for thirty-eight years-that is an incredibly long time to be suffering with such a problem. It is a long time to be longing for a cure or a miracle. There is no way to understand the depths of the pain inside a person who has been dealt such a difficult blow in life, and thirty-eight years is a lifetime if you’re hurting, lonely, depressed, and disappointed.

The way the story goes about the pool by the Sheep Gate is that periodically an angel would come and stir the waters. The first person to get in the water afterwards would be healed. Imagine what was going on in the mind of, not just this man, but every crippled person lying beside this pool. Everyday could be the day the water would be stirred, and it held the possibility of bringing their healing. Imagine the disappointment with each day that went by if the waters were not stirred. Then imagine the even greater disappointment each time the waters were stirred but someone else entered the water first. It must have been disappointment after disappointment, day after day of unanswered longing and hoping.

This was probably not a happy place to be, surrounded by a large group of desperate and hurting people. But this is who Jesus came to, and there could not have been a more needy or ready person than this particular man.

If you’ve been waiting a long time for God to help you, heal you, or save you. Understand that waiting on God is not a bad thing. God is not opposed to making us wait, and you’ll find that this is one of His common tools throughout scripture in His working in the lives of people. “It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord…for He does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men” (Lamentations 3:26).

If He’s making you wait, and you’re waiting and trusting in Him, you can be sure that He is up to something. When that something finally arrives, you will never be the same again. And you will most certainly be glad that you waited.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. ” (Isaiah 40:28-31)