Quote for the Day
“Do you want to get well?”
Today's Prayer
This week pray for those traveling that they may allow Jesus to heal their loneliness, pain of separation, and anxiety. Pray for those at home who miss a spouse or parent, that each will allow Jesus to heal their emotions with HIS joy.
John 5:1-9
John 5:1-9 (NIV)1 Some time later, Jesus went up to for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called 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.
Message
The question is simple and so is the answer, or so should be the answer. Jesus asked the man at the well what appeared to be a very simple question. For someone who had waited for thirty-eight years to be healed we expect a very short response time with a very simple answer, “YES!” Maybe “please” might be added as well. What is the answer Jesus received from the man? It was more of an excuse of why he was unable to get well: he did not have access to the waters at the appropriate time. Maybe this man had given up all hope; maybe many others had asked him the same question and he had tired of it. But now the only person who had a real answer was here, and the man did not recognize it so he gave the only answer he knew: an excuse of why he had not been healed.We too do this same thing every day. We are asked by Jesus if we want to be healed, and yet rather than a simple “yes” accompanied by complete trust in Him we begin to give the excuse as to why we cannot or have not been healed. Jesus is the power of our healing. He is the one who controls the power and the process. Ours is simply to allow Him to heal. Too many times we try to help, and simply get in the way. He has not only the power, but the desire to heal, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual… all of our pain. We simply must allow Him to take care of it, and the only way to allow Him to care for it is to give it to Him completely, holding back nothing to ourselves.