There are passages in Scripture that we can read many times without stopping to think about one detail that does not quite seem to fit. Then one day that detail catches our attention, and suddenly we begin asking questions.

The account of the man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5 is one of those passages for me.

John tells us that Jesus went up to Jerusalem and came to a pool called Bethesda near the Sheep Gate. Around that pool lay “a multitude of those who were sick, blind, limping, or paralyzed” (John 5:3). Among them was a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years.

Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been in that condition for a long time. Then Jesus asked him a remarkably direct question:

“Do you want to get well?”

(John 5:6)

You would expect the man simply to answer yes. After thirty-eight years of sickness, surely that was what he wanted.

But he did not answer yes.

Instead he said, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” (John 5:7)

Jesus asked whether he wanted to be healed, but the man answered by explaining why he could not get into the pool.

That has always made this passage interesting, but there is another part of the story that can make it confusing. Some older Bible translations include words in John 5:3–4 saying that an angel periodically came down into the pool and stirred the water, and that whoever entered the water first afterward was healed.

Those words are not found in several of the earliest Greek manuscripts of John. That is why many modern translations omit the latter part of verse 3 and all of verse 4, or place the wording in a footnote. The evidence strongly suggests that the explanation about the angel was added later, probably as an explanation for why sick people were waiting for the water to move.

That distinction matters.

The passage clearly tells us that the man believed getting into the water when it moved was his opportunity for healing. His own words establish that. But the earliest manuscript evidence does not require us to believe that God had actually established a system in which an angel periodically stirred a pool and only the first sick person into the water was healed.

How the belief surrounding the pool began, Scripture does not tell us.

Perhaps the water occasionally moved naturally. Perhaps underground springs affected it. Perhaps someone entered the water after it moved and later claimed to have been healed. Perhaps a story grew as stories sometimes do until people came to believe an angel was responsible. We cannot know, and we should be careful not to state as fact what Scripture does not tell us.

What we can know is that this man had become convinced that the pool was the answer to his problem.

For thirty-eight years he had lived with his condition. We do not know how long he had been coming to Bethesda, but by the time Jesus spoke to him, his thinking seems to have narrowed to one solution: somehow he needed to reach that water before somebody else.

That is why his answer to Jesus is so revealing.

Jesus did not ask, “Why haven’t you gotten into the pool?”

He did not ask, “Do you have anyone to carry you?”

He did not ask, “Do you believe the water can heal you?”

He asked, “Do you want to get well?”

Yet the man immediately began explaining the pool.

His mind was locked onto what he thought he needed.

He needed someone to help him. He needed the water to move. He needed to get there before everyone else. In his mind, that was apparently how healing had to happen.

Then Jesus stood in front of him.

And Jesus never mentioned the pool.

He said, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” John continues, “Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.” (John 5:8–9)

The man thought he needed somebody to get him to the water. What he really needed was already standing in front of him.

There is something very human in that.

We often come to God not only with our need, but with our proposed solution.

We pray for God to help us, but sometimes we have already decided what His help must look like. We think, If God would just open this door. If He would change this person. If He would give me this job. If He would restore this relationship. If He would take away this problem. Then everything would be all right.

There is nothing wrong with asking God for specific things. Paul wrote, “In everything by prayer and pleading with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:6) Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11)

But there is a difference between bringing God our request and deciding beforehand how God must answer it.

Proverbs tells us:

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart

And do not lean on your own understanding.*

In all your ways acknowledge Him,*

And He will make your paths straight.”*

(Proverbs 3:5–6)

That passage becomes much harder when our own understanding has already decided which path God ought to make straight.

Isaiah reminds us why we must leave room for God to work differently than we expect:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.*

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,*

So are My ways higher than your ways*

And My thoughts than your thoughts.”*

(Isaiah 55:8–9)

God is not limited to the solution we can imagine.

The man at Bethesda apparently saw two possibilities. Either somebody would get him into the pool first, or he would remain as he was.

Jesus introduced a possibility the man had not considered.

He did not need the pool at all.

Something similar happened to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection. She went to the tomb expecting to find the body of Jesus. Instead she discovered that the stone had been removed. After Peter and John left, Mary remained outside the tomb weeping.

John tells us, “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and yet she did not know that it was Jesus.” (John 20:14)

Think about that.

Mary was grieving because she could not find Jesus, while Jesus was standing in front of her.

Jesus asked, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, Mary asked Him where the body had been taken. Then Jesus simply said, “Mary!” and she recognized Him. (John 20:15–16)

Mary's problem was not that Jesus was absent. He was present in a way she had not expected.

She expected a dead Christ in a tomb. She encountered a risen Christ standing before her.

The man at Bethesda was looking toward the pool.

Mary was looking toward the tomb.

In both cases, their expectations affected what they could see.

We should be careful here. This does not mean that every unanswered prayer has some hidden blessing that we ought to be able to discover if we just look hard enough. Scripture does not teach that. There are times when believers suffer and never receive an explanation in this life. Job never learned about the conversation recorded in the opening chapters of the book bearing his name. Paul prayed three times for his thorn in the flesh to be removed, but God's answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:8–9)

Sometimes God changes the circumstance.

Sometimes He does not.

But in either case, faith cannot demand that God work only through the solution we have chosen.

This is also where the story at Bethesda warns us about attaching too much spiritual importance to methods, places, objects, or people.

Human beings have always been capable of turning something associated with God into a substitute for trusting God Himself.

Israel did this with the bronze serpent. God had once commanded Moses to make it, and those who looked upon it were delivered from the deadly serpents in the wilderness (Numbers 21:8–9). But generations later the people were burning incense to that same bronze serpent, and King Hezekiah had to destroy it because something God had once used had become an object of false devotion (2 Kings 18:4).

The problem was not what God had originally done.

The problem was what people later made of it.

We can do something similar.

We can begin believing that we need the right preacher, the right place, the right method, the right prayer, the right experience, or the right religious object before God can work.

Yet Scripture repeatedly directs our confidence back to God Himself.

David wrote, “My soul, wait in silence for God alone, for my hope is from Him.” (Psalm 62:5)

Jeremiah said:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,

And whose trust is the LORD.*

For he will be like a tree planted by the water.”*

(Jeremiah 17:7–8)

Notice that our confidence is not merely in something God might use.

Our confidence is in the Lord.

God certainly uses means. He uses doctors, medicine, people, churches, circumstances, opportunities, and countless ordinary things. There is nothing unspiritual about receiving help through any of them.

But the means must never become our savior.

The pool was not the man's savior.

Jesus was.

Perhaps that is why this account deserves more than a quick reading. The man had spent so long believing he knew where his answer had to come from that when Jesus asked whether he wanted to be healed, he began explaining why his plan was not working.

We can do the same thing.

We can spend so much time staring at the door we want God to open that we fail to notice another door He has already opened. We can become so focused on the prayer we want answered that we miss what God is teaching us while we wait. We can become so convinced that relief must come in one particular way that anything different feels as though God has not answered at all.

James tells us, “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.” (James 4:14) We simply do not see enough to dictate to God how every situation must unfold.

What we can do is trust the One who does see.

The man at Bethesda could see the pool.

Jesus could see the man.

Mary could see an empty tomb.

Jesus knew resurrection had already changed everything.

And sometimes our greatest need is not for God to make our plan work. Sometimes it is for us to recognize that He was never limited to our plan in the first place.

The man thought he needed someone to carry him to the water.

What he really needed was already standing in front of him.