Rise, Take Up Your Bed and Walk

Christ performed many miraculous healings. What should those healings mean to us today? Does God offer us a similar miracle?

There was a pool of water surrounded by the lame, the sick, the blind, the deaf and mute. The rejected of the world gathered in this place, waiting and hoping to be healed. You see, this pool was no ordinary pool. When its waters were stirred up, the first person in it was healed! And so, dozens and dozens of people gathered around the pool hoping that their blind eyes or their lame legs would get them to the water first (John 5:4).

Then, along came a Man. There was nothing that made Him look different from anyone else, but He didn’t fit in with the crowd around the pool: He was healthy and strong! Imagine you were someone at that pool. You look up at Him as He walks toward you and asks an odd question: “Do you want to be made well?” (verse 6).

Of course you want to be healed! You want it more than anything else in the world. But maybe the question means that He wants to help you. Maybe He can get you to the pool before anyone else next time the waters move? Maybe your years of paralysis, of watching and hearing others come away from the pool joyful, are almost over? 

So you explain your situation, hoping He will offer to help. His reply is not what you expected. He says, “Rise, take up your bed and walk” (verse 8).

Suddenly, you feel different! You know immediately that, to your great amazement, your legs work again!

Spiritual ailments

You may not feel like you have much in common with the lame man longing to be healed. But I do, because I feel paralyzed sometimes. When life gets difficult and a decision must be made, or an action taken, I often find myself frozen—unable to speak and resolve a dispute or decide the right course of action. That man lying beside the pool was me, watching the opportunities that I could take to improve myself go by, unable or unwilling to change my life.

But there is miraculous healing in my story from the same God who healed him—the same God who wants to heal all of us.

When Christ ministered on earth, He didn’t only heal the lame. Matthew 11:5 says that “the blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up.” I was once spiritually lame, but there are also other kinds of spiritual ailments. There are also spiritual lepers, with such a sinful past that it still haunts them; spiritually deaf who try to ignore the call of God; and spiritually dead who have no hope and think there is no way that they could ever live again. I have been all of those things before, and maybe you have too.

Spiritual healing

But the apostle Peter tells us that Christ “Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). His sacrifice began the miraculous process that makes us whole.

But how does the process work? Remember the question that Christ asked the man by the pool? He asked him if he wanted to be made well. The first step to becoming healed is seeking healing by answering God’s call. We must repent of our failings, recognize our infirmities and ask God to be healed. In other words, we must begin the process of repentance.

The second step is working toward baptism. This step is necessary for our healing because it gives us access to the same powerful spirit Christ used to heal the sick and infirmed. After we are baptized, the Holy Spirit is at work in us, healing us spiritually. Titus 3:5 explains that salvation comes “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” God’s Spirit helps us begin the process of healing all our spiritual ailments.

Your faith has made you well

One more ingredient is needed for spiritual healing: faith. Christ told many people He healed that their faith had made them well. To keep on the road toward spiritual wellness, we must continue to build and strengthen our faith by following God’s commandments and making sure we stay close to Him through Bible study and prayer.

Christ told the lame man by the pool to rise, take up his bed and walk. That same instruction applies to us! We must understand that now is the time to repent and seek healing, to stir up the renewing Spirit within us and defeat the spiritual sickness that can only be cured by our Creator.

To learn more about spiritual healing, read our booklet Change Your Life!

Tammy Valley is a member in the Houston North congregation and a Foundation Institute graduate.