Change Your Mind, Change Your Situation

“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’” - John 5:6


Yesterday, we began unpacking the story of the man by the pool in John 5. A man who had this “condition” for 38 years. We learn that in the Greek version of the text, it just says the man is there. It does not say he has a “condition.” We see the shocking question Jesus asks the man in verse 6, “Do you want to get well?”

What Jesus wanted to do was to get his mind right because if he could fix the man’s mind, then the man could fix his own reality. The problem that many people face is not in their physiology, but in their psychology, not in their body, but in their brain. If you can get your mind right, you would be able to take the requisite steps to change and transform your life.

You know people like that who are restricted by the shackles on their wrists and feet, are actually shackled by the chains on their brain. James Allen writes in his book, as a Man Thinketh (the title derived from Proverbs 23:7), that “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you… The visions you glorify in your mind. The ideals enthroned in your heart… This you will build your life by… This you will become.”

So, when Jesus asked the man, “Do you want to be made well?” He is trying to get us to tap into the power our thought life has in shaping our future. As a man or a woman or a teenager or a child thinks in his or her heart, Proverbs 23:7 says, so are they. It is just that simple. It is not to deny the reality of our external circumstances, but it is to point to the power God placed within us to rise above our circumstances.

This fresh look at the problem at the pool suggests that you and I might have more power within us than we think. We might have more at our disposal than we realize. That is what Jesus was trying to say to the man then and to us now, that if you change your mind, you can change your situation.

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