0
0
A prayer for long-term illness is hard to start, because it usually starts with a number: how many months, how many years, how many scans. The gospels and Acts keep numbers like that too. A man sick thirty-eight years at the pool of Bethesda, a woman bent over for eighteen, a woman who bled for twelve and spent everything on physicians, a man bedridden for eight. This transcript follows those four accounts to ask why Scripture writes the length down, and what that changes about how a person who is still counting can pray. It ends with a short prayer you can use on a bad morning. For a prayer you can pray straight away, read A Prayer for Healing From Sickness You Can Pray Right Now, or these Bible prayers for healing. For the name of God first spoken over a group of frightened people in the wilderness, see Jehovah Rapha: the God who heals.
Chapters
- 0:00 The number on the intake form
- 0:40 Thirty-eight years at the pool
- 1:30 Four accounts, four numbers
- 2:20 What the years cost
- 3:18 Nobody says it has been too long
- 3:48 The one time Jesus asks how long
- 4:42 Eighteen years, said out loud
- 5:26 Why the number is kept
- 6:21 A prayer for the middle
- 7:17 A verse for ordinary mornings
The Number on the Intake Form
There’s one line on the intake form that stops people: Date symptoms began. You sit there with a pen, doing the arithmetic backwards. March. It was March. Two years ago. No, three. You write the number in the box, and on paper it looks worse than it ever did in your head.
Here’s the strange part. Scripture does the same thing. It writes the number down, and not just once. Once you see why those numbers were kept, the question you’ve been afraid to say out loud stops having the answer you assumed it had.
Thirty-Eight Years at the Pool
Start at a pool in Jerusalem, with five covered porches crowded with people waiting for the water to move. There’s a man there, and John tells you almost nothing about him. Not his name, not his family, not even really what was wrong with him. What John does record is this: “And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years” (John 5:5).
Thirty-eight years. The name is missing, but the number is not. When the man is finally spoken to, his answer isn’t yes. It’s an explanation: “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me” (John 5:7). Thirty-eight years of being beaten to the water by somebody faster. That’s what the number is actually made of.
Four Accounts, Four Numbers
That is not a one-off. In Luke, a woman “had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself” (Luke 13:11). In Mark, a woman had “an issue of blood twelve years” (Mark 5:25). In Acts, a man named Aeneas “had kept his bed eight years” (Acts 9:33). Thirty-eight, eighteen, twelve, eight: four accounts and four numbers, kept on purpose.
Think about that the way a writer would. If you’re telling the story of somebody finally getting well, the length of the illness is the first detail you’d cut. It slows the story down, it doesn’t move the plot, and it makes the case sound harder rather than easier. Nobody keeps a number like that by accident, and not four times.
What the Years Cost
Mark is the one who spells out what those years actually cost. The woman “had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse” (Mark 5:26). Read that again, slowly. She tried everything. She paid for all of it. And the direction of travel was down.
That is not an ancient sentence. Someone could read it this morning and recognise their own life in it. And that is where a number turns on you. When you’re the one counting (since March, since the second scan, since the year everything changed), the number stops being information. It starts to feel like something already decided about you, a verdict you were only late to hear.
So it is worth looking for the sentence. Somewhere in these four accounts, somebody should say it: that it has been too long.
Nobody Says It Has Been Too Long
Nobody says it. Not in any of the four. No one in these accounts is ever told that the length of their sickness counts against them.
At the pool, the text goes out of its way in the other direction. John writes: “When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case” (John 5:6). He knew. The text puts that before the man has said a single word. The number was already known, and it didn’t change the approach.
The One Time Jesus Asks How Long
There is one place in the gospels where Jesus asks about the length outright. A father has brought his son, who has been sick since he was small, and Jesus asks the father a question: “How long is it ago since this came unto him?” (Mark 9:21).
Notice who is asking. The question you brace yourself for, how long has this been going on?, Jesus asks before anyone is healed. Not as an obstacle, but as something worth knowing first. And he asks the father, not the boy, because the father is the one who has been keeping the count.
What the father says back is the most honest line in the chapter: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24). He doesn’t claim more than he has. He asks for help with the part he can’t manufacture. That is a prayer you can pray in year eleven.
Eighteen Years, Said Out Loud
Then there is the woman who was bent over for eighteen years. Luke gives her healing two sentences: “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight” (Luke 13:12-13).
Then an argument starts about whether it should have happened on a sabbath, and Jesus answers it by saying the number out loud, in public: “And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16). He doesn’t say only eighteen. He doesn’t round it off or wave it away. He holds it up. The length of it is the argument.
Why the Bible Keeps the Number
So, back to where we started: why does the text keep writing the number down? Not to measure how far gone somebody was. The number is the length of the waiting that got answered anyway.
Every year inside it is a year somebody was still there: still at the pool, still bent over, still carrying the boy. And it is kept in writing so that nobody reading it later, counting their own years in a plastic chair, can decide their number is too big to belong in this book. Thirty-eight is in there. So is eighteen. So is three, and eleven, and “since March.”
The man at the pool never got a shorter number. He got the end of it. And Luke tells the eighteen years and the woman standing up straight in the same story, so the record of the waiting and the record of the answer sit side by side.
A Prayer for Long-Term Illness: Praying From the Middle
That changes where the prayer starts. A prayer for healing that opens by explaining how long it has been is a prayer arguing its own case. The one Paul prays does not do that: “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Romans 15:13).
Notice what is not in it. No date. No mechanism. No conditions. It is a prayer for the middle, for the part where you are still counting. So pray plainly, in your own words. Something like this:
God, you already know the number. I don’t have to explain it, or defend it. I’m asking for healing. And I’m asking, today, for enough hope to get through this one day. Fill me with hope. Amen.
It’s short on purpose. You can pray it on a bad morning without preparing for it.
A Verse for Ordinary Mornings
Romans 15:13 is printed on the front of one of the MyCandlePrayers scripture candles, called Fill Me With Hope, Lord. There’s also a QR code on the label that opens more than a hundred written prayers, sorted by need (healing, strength, peace) for the mornings the words won’t come. No app and no account: you scan it, and the prayer is already written. It sits somewhere you already pass, a windowsill or a bedside table, so the verse is simply there at six in the morning, before you’ve found the strength to go looking for it. If you’d like to see it, you can find the verse candle here.
And if today’s number is the biggest it has ever been, it still isn’t the disqualifying detail. It never was. It’s just the length of the waiting.
Be blessed.
Questions People Ask About Praying Through Long-Term Illness
Q: How long was the man at the pool of Bethesda sick?
A: John 5:5 says the man at the pool of Bethesda “had an infirmity thirty and eight years.” John leaves out his name and even his exact condition but keeps the number, and adds in John 5:6 that Jesus “knew that he had been now a long time in that case” before the man said a word. The length of his illness did not change how Jesus approached him.
Q: What does the Bible say about being sick for a long time?
A: The Bible records several long illnesses by their length: thirty-eight years (John 5:5), eighteen years (Luke 13:11), twelve years (Mark 5:25) and eight years (Acts 9:33). None of those accounts says the length counted against the person. In Luke 13:16 Jesus names the woman’s eighteen years publicly as the reason she should be freed, not as a reason to doubt her.
Q: What is a good prayer for long-term illness?
A: A good prayer for long-term illness doesn’t have to argue how long it has been. Something simple works: “God, you already know the number. I don’t have to explain it, or defend it. I’m asking for healing, and today, for enough hope to get through this one day. Fill me with hope. Amen.” Short prayers like this can be prayed on hard mornings without preparation.
Q: What Bible verse can I pray when an illness has lasted for years?
A: Romans 15:13 is a strong choice: “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” It asks for hope and peace without naming a date or a condition, which makes it a prayer for the middle of a long illness. Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief,” is another honest prayer for long seasons.
Q: Is there a prayer candle with Romans 15:13 on it?
A: Yes. The Fill Me With Hope, Lord candle from MyCandlePrayers carries Romans 15:13 on the front label, with a QR code that opens more than 100 written prayers sorted by need, including healing, strength and peace. It is designed to sit somewhere you pass every day so the verse is in front of you before you go looking for it. You can see the Fill Me With Hope, Lord candle on the Christian Prayer Candles page.
Watch Prayer for Healing From Sickness: Why the Bible Keeps Writing Down How Long on YouTube.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.
