Do you want to be healed?

"Do you want to be healed?"

It seems like such an odd question...

Who in their right mind, after dealing with any kind of pain or sickness, wouldn't want to be healed?

Who, if given the choice between pain and healing, wouldn't choose healing?

Who would answer, "No thanks. I'm pretty attached to this mat. I've been here a long time, I think I'll just stay."


Yet, Jesus asks a man who had been unable to move for 38 years...paralyzed, helpless, dependent, hopeless..."Do you want to be healed?" 


And, as I sit in the story with Him, I hear Him ask me the same question.


It seems to me that when God/Jesus asks someone a question, it's not that he asks to find out the answer for himself, He already knows the answer. Why would an all knowing, all seeing God who knows our deepest thoughts and the state of our heart need for us to answer anything?

He does it so that we can see for ourselves what is in our hearts. He reveals to us, through our answer, who we are at our very core. We can so easily deceive ourselves, deny what we are feeling, put on a good show for others and never really look at what is really going on in our hearts. We know the 'Sunday school answer', but that is many times not reflective of what is actually in our hearts.

So, this morning, as I hear Him ask me, "Do YOU want to be healed?" I am forced to answer the question for myself...to look into the depth of my heart as he shines the light of His Truth on my truth.

And the answer isn't as easy as it might seem.

When Jesus asked the man at Bethesda that question, the man answered him,

"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me". John 5:7

He was full of excuses as to why he couldn't be healed. This response drips of self-pity, victim mentality, helplessness, blaming, fragility and woundedness...or maybe I just hear myself in this response.

Jesus tells him, "Get up, take up your mat and walk."

As the pastor said this morning, the word 'get up' is literally 'arise'. It is a resurrection word.

The same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead, is what gave the healing and the power to this man to get up and walk.

And at once, he did just that.

And He asks me again..."Do YOU want to be healed?"


Sure, I want to be free from the pain, the ache of loss, the disappointment, the anger, the grief...the things that paralyze me.


But, as I sit with this...if I'm honest...I have to say that maybe I have become a little too comfortable with my mat of self-pity, victimhood, fragility, helplessness, woundedness and blaming.

To get up and walk would mean that I can't sit on that mat and blame all of those who hurt me and wouldn't help me get to the water. I can't tell the story to everyone who comes by, how I ended up on that mat and how much it hurt and how I would be better if I just had some help. I can't wallow in the self-serving fragility of helplessness.

To be healed means that I have to choose to believe in the resurrection power of Christ, take up that cross shaped mat, and follow him to the pool of forgiveness, grace, mercy and love.

And then, offer that story of freedom and hope and healing to all who ask how it is that I am able to walk now.

And maybe...even to the ones who did the wounding, and the walking by and the getting in front of me when I tried to get to the pool myself.

See, I now realize that I have no power to make it to the pool myself. I have no power on my own to 'just get over it'
       'forgive and move on'
              'pull myself up by my own bootstraps'.

Apart from the resurrection power of the words "get up, take up your bed, and walk", I can't get over it.

And, unless and until I decide to take up my bed and walk, I will stay on my mat paralyzed.


So again, I hear the words, "Do you want to be healed?" 

And I want to be able to answer yes...

       and I pray for strength to carry the mat.