Jesus Asking: Do You Want To Get Well?

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR John 5:2–9 NIV 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. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 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?” “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.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, CONSIDER “Do you want to get well?” I'm tempted to just end it there today because that question says it all, doesn't it? Thirty-eight years. He had accepted his lot, and yet he was still showing up at the healing waters spa complex. It's like he had been coming to church all these years—which felt like the thing to do—but he would never get down to the altar and do business with God. He had gone halfway but not the other half.  And when Jesus pressed him, he had an excuse. In short, he played the victim card. And it's not like Jesus was telling him it was his fault he was sick. Jesus was helping him identify the real problem. Watch the telling exchange. He begins with the real question: “Do you want to get well?” Notice how the guy doesn't answer the question: “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.” It's the system's fault.  So many of us have slowly settled into a type of chosen malady that actually has little to do with the originating problem. It didn't start that way. We didn't choose for the bad thing to happen, but we slowly accepted it along the way and accommodated it in such a way that we no longer have the condition—because the condition now has us. We gave up our will to the condition instead of surrendering our will to God; therefore, the condition dictates the terms of our wellness, and we settle into the slow and predictable burn of the victim plot.  This is why Jesus asks the piercing question before moving forward with him: “Do you want to get well?” Do you want the response-ability that real life requires? Do you want to get a job again? Do you want to put down the must-do list of managing your condition and take up the get-to-do list of real life again? Here's the thing. You get to decide. In fact, the truth is you have already decided. And one more turn here. On this day, the well of Jesus showed up at the pool of Bethesda. It was miraculous in every sense of the term. That is rare. It doesn't often turn out that way. Here's the beautiful, powerful thing about Jesus. A person can be devastatingly sick and completely well at the same time. There is a "wellness" that transcends sickness. It comes from the "well" that is deeper than our sickness. It is the well of Jesus, which is filled with the living water of faith and hope and love. Some of the sickest, most disabled, most devastatingly handicapped people I have ever known are some of the deepest wells of living water I have ever seen.  PRAY Lord Jesus, you are the well of living water. And I know you would bring streams of living water from within me. I am tired of living at the surface level of my sickness and its symptoms. I am ready for the deep well of your wellness. Can I just say it, "I do want to get well," even if it means I am not fully healed. I want the well of you. It will be for your glory, for others' gain, and for my good. Praying in your name, Jesus, amen.