‘“Sir,” the invalid replied, “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.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath.’
John 5:7–9
People would wait by the pool at Bethesda hoping they would be healed. There was an invalid man lying at the pool in Bethesda when Jesus came along and asked him if he wanted to get well. When the man responded to Jesus saying he did, Jesus the Healer simply told him to stand up, pick up his mat and walk. At once the man was healed.
The healing took place on the Sabbath and the religious leaders persecuted Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Their religion got in the way. They did not understand their religion and did not have any compassion for the sick man now healed.
Festo Kivengere, an evangelist from Uganda, Africa, said:
You can be orthodox and at the same time dead. Religious phrases and biblical language do not make a person alive. You can stock your head with the most evangelical vocabulary and be the driest Christian on earth – until God moves. I happen to live in an area where God has been visiting His people in a wonderful way. God moves in mysterious ways. Just as He moved in East Africa, He is moving . . . in other parts of the world. Do not make the mistake that God’s people often make, of scratching your head and waiting for God to move when He is moving already. God has already moved. All you have to do is to move with Him.2