GIG249 The Ministry of Bethesda

Growing In God Podcast

Web Description: How do we bring the healing that we need and that the world today needs so desperately? The example of healing at Bethesda is a lesson for all of us to apply. When Christ asks us, “Do you wish to be healed?” Our answer needs to be an emphatic, “Yes!” And not, “We are waiting for someone to carry us.” Christ is the source of our healing. He is always willing. And we pick up our own bed and walk in what He has provided.

 

Show Notes: During the first church service of Bethesda Ministries and the ordination of Silas as pastor, a message came about the ministry of healing. At the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem was a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Yeshua (Jesus) asked this man a question: “Do you want to be healed?” The man answered by giving the reasons why he had not been healed so far. Yeshua did not listen to the man’s complaints. He simply said, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” This story shows us something about our own responses to the Lord.

 

The Lord had already decided to heal the man at Bethesda. Christ was standing there as this man’s healing. But he had to be brought to the place where Christ was positioned as the manifestation of God's healing for him. The same is true for us. The Lord is not here to listen to our troubles, our excuses, and all our reasons for why things have not worked. He is here to bring us into the place where the answer already exists for the healing and ministry that we need.

 

There must be a drive in you to fulfill the will of God in your life. Someone else will not do it. It is never someone else's responsibility. It is always your responsibility to get up and walk with God. Christ is always there for us. He already said to the Father, “I am willing,” and He went to the cross for us. Now the fulfillment of that cross is always available to us. We just need to go to Him and say, “I already know You are willing because You have already done it. And I am coming to You to receive everything that I need.”

 

Key Verses:

 

•       John 5:2–8. “Do you wish to get well? … Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.”

•       Matthew 8:1–3. “And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”

•       Matthew 26:39. “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”

 

Quotes:

 

•       “There’s going to be a way that you find, in the anointing of the Lord, to have people really take responsibility for the will of God in their own lives, for the will of God in their own community, for the will of God in their own churches.”

•       “I don't want a lot of preaching. I want a lot of learning to do it. Christ was pretty simple here: ‘Pick up your bed and walk.’ We can do it if we do it.”

•       “Do you know what’s available on that cross? Everything. That’s the point at which nothing is impossible. Any one of our needs—any one of the possibilities that exist for us—is right there.”

 

Takeaways:

 

1.    Yeshua asked the ill man at Bethesda, “Do you wish to be well?” However, the man answered by saying, “No one will take me to the water to be healed.” The correct answer would have been, “Yes! You are the source of my healing. And I want it!” That is how we need to answer the Lord.

2.    At Bethesda the Lord did not listen to the man’s reasons for why he was not healed. He simply told the man to pick up his pallet and walk. God does not listen to our excuses. It is always our responsibility and never someone else’s to walk in what God has given us.

3.    We have to see that Christ is the source of all that we need to accomplish His will in the earth. And He is always willing. We lay aside our excuses and our waiting for someone else to do it and take what He is giving us now.