Just get up.

When we want to slide like a fish into the water.

It was 1979. Sheffield City Hall. An evangelistic crusade. I was just another face in the crowd. The text that night—the one that burned into my soul, that cracked open my heart—was John 5:1–9. The Pool of Bethesda.

The preacher was Alex Tee, a member of George Jeffreys' evangelistic team. Jeffreys was something of a giant of the faith, moving in a powerful sense of anointing after his visit to the Azusa Street revivals, and now a man who had seen miracles first-hand. That September night in an audience of 2,000, the message was very simple but seismic: Jesus shows up when you least expect Him. And when He does, everything changes.

Everything.

Bethesda. The name means “house of mercy,” but if you had stood there, you’d have seen anything but mercy. It was a place of suffering, of waiting, of dashed hopes. Five columns at regular intervals supported the base of a roof structure, and it was filled with the blind, the lame, the paralysed. These were the forgotten ones—the ones who had been there so long that hope had started to rot in their bones.

And in the middle of it all lies one man with a haunting thirty-eight years of paralysis. Thirty-eight years of watching other people get their breakthrough, of hoping for a miracle that never came. He had no one. No advocate, no helper—just a body that no longer obeyed him and a belief system that told him the only way he’d be healed was if he got himself into the water first.

But how do you get yourself into the water when you can’t even move?

And then comes Jesus. No announcement, no angelic choir or warning. Just Jesus, stepping into that place of suffering, walking through the mud and dust, through the crowd of the sick and the desperate, fixing His gaze on just one man. And the penetrating, awkward, almost offensive question He asks? "Do you want to be healed?"

Healed? "Want to be...?" Read the room!

Thirty-eight years of waiting, and now this stranger asks him something so obvious, so unnecessary. But this is no ordinary stranger. Here He is—this is Jesus—and when Jesus asks a question, He’s never just after information—He’s exposing something.

You'd be advised to put down your tablet, turn off your phone, and give the stranger your best, undivided attention.

The man doesn’t answer with faith—he has no idea who Jesus is or why He has suddenly turned up. And who are all these people gathered excitedly around Him? He doesn’t cry out, “Yes, Lord! Heal me!” Instead, he explains why he can’t be healed. The reason is simple: No one helps me. Others get there first. He’s still thinking in the old system—the mythical system that said healing was for those who could scramble fast enough, who had the right connections, the right strategy, the right effort. Just enough to slide into the water like a fish.

But… you have to be first. That was the rule of the myth. But grace doesn’t work that way.

And Jesus—He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t give a sermon on faith. He doesn’t ask the man to believe harder, to pray longer. He just speaks: "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once—the man is healed. Just like that. No process. No effort. No faith recorded on his part. Just the sheer, unstoppable power of Jesus.

This is what the apostle John calls a sign. Miracles aren’t just miracles; they mean something, they point to something beyond themselves.

Pointing to what? That Jesus isn’t just another healer or another religious teacher. He is the source of healing, the one who speaks and reality bends to His will. He is the fulfilment of everything the Pool of Bethesda was meant to be—a house of mercy, but now with mercy in the flesh, walking among the broken. God walking in their midst...

And notice, as I have already mentioned: the man doesn’t even know who Jesus is. He gets up, picks up the weathered mat, walks away, and later, when the religious leaders interrogate him (more concerned about the paralysed man being healed on the Sabbath than the fact that he was now whole like them), he still can’t tell them who healed him.

This wasn’t about the man’s faith; it was supremely about Jesus’ grace. Astonishing, undeserved, sovereign grace. It's the kind that doesn’t wait for us to be ready, that breaks in uninvited—that walks into the middle of human brokenness and says, “Enough.” The kind you have been waiting for.

All this time...

He hasn’t changed. This wasn’t just an event in history, a mere nanosecond in world history; it is who He is.

He still walks into places of suffering, still speaks healing, still finds people who have given up—people who have been waiting so long they don’t even know how to hope anymore.

And maybe that’s you. Maybe you’ve been waiting by your own Bethesda. Maybe you’ve been watching other people get their breakthrough, their healing, their answer, and you’ve started to believe that it will never come for you.

Maybe you think it’s too late—that you missed your moment, that you’re stuck in a system where others always seem to get there first.

Jesus, the unexpected Jesus, is not bound by the system, not and never limited by the rules. He does not wait for perfect faith. He comes when you least expect it.

He still speaks. And when He does, the only thing left to do is get up and walk.

Seriously.