"Do You Want to be healed?"

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

DO YOU WANT TO GET WELL?

John 5:1-9

5:1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.   5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 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?"  7 "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." 8 Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."  9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

NIV

Do you want to get well? Those words seem a little odd to be asked of a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Why won’t he want to get well? Maybe that is the lesson we should be focused on. How long have some of us been burdened with some sickness, disease or other discomfort in our bodies and are just lying there, so to speak, because we have no one to help us into the pool? Sometimes it almost seems as if we enjoy having some infirmity so we can talk about it with everyone, even one upping others with ours being worse than theirs. Many conversations of believers are centered on our aches and pains, or health issues rather than about the blessing Jesus has done in our lives. Those words of Jesus, “Do you want get well?” ring so loud in light of all the illness today yet it seems many of us simply ignore them, or make some excuse why we can get to the pool. But Jesus is there ready, willing and able to say to us, “Get up! Pick up you mat and walk.” If we want to be healed we merely only ask Jesus. Maybe the reason some do not ask is they really do not believe he will heal them. Maybe some do not ask because they are afraid he will not heal them. Maybe some do not ask because they think they are unworthy of being healed. Maybe some do not ask because they like being sick. There are those who would tell us, we do not have enough faith, but that is so bogus, for God gives to every person a measure of faith. It is true faith is build bigger by workouts, and we need to exercise our faith daily. Maybe some simply have never exercised their faith and it has shivered up to almost nothing, so they do not ask. Whatever the reason that some are sick among us we cannot be certain, but we can be certain that Jesus is asking, “Do you want to get well?” 

Footnote:  

There might be something to not being healed because as we know if we ask with wrong motives we will not receive. If we are asking to be healed so that we can go about our own agendas, pursuing our own passions, desires and lusts without giving testimony to others about the healing power of Jesus, maybe, just maybe that is why we are not healed. We need to be focused on the fact that all our life should be about giving glory to God. 

Second Footnote,
We also should understand there is the sovereignty of God, there may be times God allows us to live with some infirmity as Paul with his thorn in his flesh, so that we can give credit to God, that his grace is sufficient for us. There may be times God wants to take us home, reasons we may never understand until we get there, but those words of Jesus still hold a truth.