John 5:1-9

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 

3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 

5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 

6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 

7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 

8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 

9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. 

Now that day was the Sabbath. 

Main Idea

It’s easy to live in such a state of sickness that we’ve learned to be accustomed to it, rather than live for the higher standard of God’s will and His desires.

Have we become so used to our sickness that we don’t even know what we want?

Some examples of Chronic Spiritual Sickness today:



• Chronic bitterness — carrying an offense for years until resentment becomes part of one’s identity.
• Chronic unforgiveness — continually rehearsing what someone did and remaining unwilling to release the debt.
• Chronic shame — believing past sin or failure permanently defines who you are, even when grace is available.
• Chronic fear and anxiety — living so long under fear that trusting God begins to feel unnatural.
• Chronic spiritual apathy — losing hunger for God, prayer, Scripture, worship, or obedience and eventually becoming comfortable with spiritual numbness.
• Chronic compromise — repeatedly tolerating a particular sin until conviction becomes quieter and the behavior feels normal.
• Chronic victimhood — allowing what happened to you to become the controlling explanation for who you are and what you can become.
• Chronic disappointment with God — unanswered prayers, loss, or unmet expectations gradually hardening into distance from God.
• Chronic dependency on others — continually looking to another person, relationship, leader, or circumstance to provide what ultimately must come from Christ.
• Chronic hopelessness — after waiting a long time for something to change, no longer believing change is possible.

Matthew 13:16-17

16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 

17 For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

1. What have I lived with for so long that I have begun to accept as normal something Jesus wants to transform?
2. Have I become more committed to explaining why I am stuck than obeying Jesus when He tells me to get up?