11/06/2026
What you tolerate, you’ll never change
Tolerance paralyses change. When we tolerate our negative attitudes, our lack of self- discipline, the mistreatment of others towards us, the destructive self-talk, we will slowly be corroded away from the inside out. Unless we are prepared to do what it takes to arise within ourselves and say, ‘No more!’ we will continue to live in a cycle of destruction.
Look at this man in John 5: 5-8:
‘One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”’ (New Living Translation)
I find it interesting that Jesus asked this man if he wanted to be well. Why did He? I believe it’s because Jesus knew this man would need to be at the point of no longer wanting to tolerate his condition in order to be healed.
We can find excuses for our dysfunction and in doing so, create a space for it to exist. Then Jesus comes along and offers us hope. He asks us if we want to get well. Even when we reply with our reasons for not being well.
But Jesus knows the reasons you’re still sitting down waiting for your life to change; and yet He says the same thing to you and me that He said to that man 2000 years ago: ‘Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!’
We are never meant to try and get up in our own strength; all we need to do is be obedient to His Word. The cripple didn’t say: ‘Heal me first and then I’ll walk.’ He simply believed and obeyed, and in his response to the Word of God, the miracle came.
If you feel you cannot rise up, that you simply have no strength of your own, that’s ok. Jesus will give you what you need. All you need to do is believe, respond, and decide in your heart that when Jesus says, ‘Stand up’, he will give you the ability to do so.
