Uncomfortable Questions About Healing

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?”
- John 5:2-6

Do you want to get well?

That’s a strange question, isn’t it? And yet that’s how Jesus leads off his conversation with the man who was lying there paralyzed. Perhaps Jesus is still asking that question today. Perhaps that’s what he’d like to ask you.

So ask yourself today if you’d like to get well. It might mean reflecting on some of these things as well:

• Are there any benefits you get from not being well?

• What if Jesus’s invitation to get well requires something of you - whether it’s faith or taking the time to set up a doctor’s appointment - are you willing to pay the price?

• Do you spend more time complaining about being unwell than talking with Jesus about healing?

• Are there ways you are unwell that you are tying to hide?

• Instead of real healing could you be just looking for convenience instead? (they are not the same thing)