Get Up and Walk!

Growing up, I had constant access to a slew of books, given my dad's job with Choice Books as a Christian book distributor. The small storage shed outside our home was packed with boxes of books, and one of my favorites -- one that still has an impact on my prayer life even today -- is Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness. It's a novel, fictionalized and a bit dated now, but there are some key concepts in it that I think are often overlooked, namely the reality of unseen spiritual warfare and the importance of intercessory prayer. 

In the story, set in the fictional town of Ashton, events happen in the physical, seen realm with certain characters, but there's another story line that interweaves this thread, one that features the unseen war among angels and demons. 

One demon is a small, weak demon named Complacency. His job is to follow a man named Marshall Hogan around, and if Marshall Hogan gets too riled up about anything, too motivated to make waves in his little community... Complacency is supposed to wrap himself around the man and drag him down, to keep him numb, apathetic, and still. Don't make waves.

And in that sense, Complacency's job is perhaps one of the most dangerous, one of the most important of the enemy's plans. If the enemy can keep the warrior weak, if he can make the believer uncaring, if he can convince the masses that nothing really matters, that there's no point in fighting the enemy...

He's won.

In the beginning chapters of the book, I want to reach into the pages and shake the man. Wake up!! Spoiler: He does. The story plunges into the waking up, and the fight in the heavenly realms explodes over this man named Marshall Hogan.

Today, in John 5:1-15, Jesus heads to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews, though it's not clear which one: Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, or another one. We know, at least, that these three feasts are ones where Jewish men almost always attend, or at least are expected to attend. 

While Jesus is there, He happens to stroll by the Sheep Gate in the northeastern section of the city, outside of which is a pool called Bethesda. The pool rests beneath five covered colonnades. Now and then, the waters in the pool will stir, and the people believe that an angel of the Lord moves the waters. The first person in the pool after the waters begin moving is supposedly cured of their disease or sickness. So goes the story anyway. The Scriptures don't say whether this actually happens or if it is mostly superstition.

So. Jesus comes out to the colonnades. The place is packed. "Here, a great number of people used to lie -- the blind, the lame, the paralyzed" (John 5:3). 

Jesus notices a man. Maybe there is an air of discouragement that clings to this man, maybe it's something different that calls attention. Whatever it is, Jesus sees him and "learns that he has been in this condition for a long time." I don't know if that means that Jesus asks someone about the man or if His Father tells Him in His Spirit. Either way, Jesus knows this man before He approaches him.

Jesus walks up to the man and blows right by the superficial, ostensible reason the man has for being there. Figuratively, Jesus dives into the deep end and bypasses the shallows, which is typical of Him. "Do you want to get well?" He asks. 

The man looks up. Here, in this waaaay-pre-internet era, the invalid has never seen this Man's face splashed across the news with the accompanying headlines: Jewish Rabbi Heals Many: Pharisees shocked and dismayed. Or Sabbath Healer: How far is too far? The invalid has no idea Who is addressing him. He has no idea He is facing the Creator, the Son of Man and the Son of God, the One Who holds all power and authority in heaven and on earth. 

He simply sees a passerby Who asks him a rather strange question. The words ring in the air. Do you want to get well?

To clarify context, this man has been in this condition (whatever condition it is) for thirty-eight years. The Scriptures don't equate thirty-eight years with the amount of time the man has waited by the pool, but we get the idea that he has been one of the pool-goers for long enough to either a.) get discouraged because someone always gets into the pool before he does when the waters are stirred, or b.) make some income from his position at the side of the pool. Either scenario is valid.

The man answers the Stranger. "Sir," says the man, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."

The man, however innocently, misses the point, the focus. He misses the Healer. He turns his attention from the Healer to the pool. There is my salvation... but I can't reach it.

Jesus, the Healer, pulls the man's attention back to where it needs to be. "Get up!" He orders. "Pick up your mat and walk."

And the man does it. After thirty-eight years of trial and discouragement, the Healer steps right into the man's despair with him... and obliterates it. Get up! Wake up! Shake off the bondage to decay and feel the new life in your spirit! 

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the One Who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:20-21). 

I can put myself in this man's place, feel the frustration that surely must have been a part of his daily existence. I can feel his temptation to let it go, bury himself in the complacency and apathy that comes as a result of discouragement piled on discouragement.

And that's why I think Jesus began the conversation with: "Do you want to get well?" He switches on the spotlight and shines it right through the layers of despair, right to the heart of the issue. If I give you My hand, will you take it? 

I admit that I'm a victim of this same complacency. I can feel the numbness creeping in as the haul gets long and longer. How I need Jesus, every morning, to walk by my mat, look at my paralyzed limbs, reach out His hand, and say: Get up!

We have a choice, y'all. We can choose to sit in our circumstances without budging an inch. We can look down at our hands, or anywhere else but at Jesus, our Healer. We can allow the bright movement of the rippling waters to pull our attention away from the One Who stands, hand outstretched, saying: "Get up!"

Get up! Wake up! Rise up! Leave behind the complacency, the numb deadness, the feeling that this battle has been too hard, too long, too weighty, and realize that God is in the business of healing hearts, souls, minds, and circumstances. He's doing a great work!

Don't look for answers in the shallows. Dive into the deep with Him, where trust is without borders. Where there's no perimeter around faith. Where we can absolutely trust Him to do the miracle He wants to perform in our lives.

In this season of dark and waiting and... and numb...

See the vitality He offers. Get up!