Can God Really Help You?

      “Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 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. John 5 1-9

This man had been ill for 38 years and he took his place with many others who shared a similar plight. After all, misery does love company. They gathered at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem where some said that every now and again an angel would disturb the waters and the first one in would be healed. But that's a mighty tall order if you can't get up.

After 38 years, this man’s problems had become a way of life. Surely, if he really wanted to get well he would have shuffled to the edge of the pool (he’d had 38 years to get there) and the very minute the waters stirred, fallen in. But no, he lay there year after year, feeling sorry for himself and bemoaning the fact that he had no one to help him. The reality of the situation was that he had given up and accepted that this was the way it was, paying lip service to wanting healing but really just living out his days in the life he had become used to. He wasn’t living, he was simply existing.

Then one day along comes Jesus and things don’t go quite as we might expect. The compassionate Jesus takes a look at the man lying on the ground and asks a very insensitive question: 'Do you want to be made well?" Talk about "politically incorrect" speech! What was he thinking? This poor sick man could have rightfully come back with some sarcastic response like, "Sir, I really enjoy being here completely unable to move!"

Yet there was something about the way Jesus looked at him, something about the way he asked the question that made it not so foolish a question after all. The answer was not as obvious as it must have seemed. Jesus wanted to know. Did the man really want to be made well or not?

"Do you want to be made well?" Maybe it wasn't such a dumb question after all. The man failed to give a direct answer. Why not a simple "yes"? 38 years is a long time to be able to settle into a kind of comfort and safety even in misery. But the man did respond quickly. He wanted to be healed, but he didn't see how since he had no one to help him up when the waters stirred within the pool. Besides, someone else always managed beat him to the punch when he did try to make his way down to those magical waters.

Still, Jesus had to know if the man really wanted to receive the gift of healing. So he quickly cut right to the heart of the matter: "Stand up, take your mat and walk."

The Question Behind the Question

Jesus spoke the word, but God's healing power could not be let loose until the man assumed the responsibility of choosing life and risking the possibility of transformation! What's true then is still true for us.

The deeper question Jesus asks is, "Do you really want to be changed?" If we are content to stay as we are -- no matter how miserable that may be -- there can be no change, no possibility of healing for us. It is almost as if Jesus said to the man: "Bend your will to it and you and I will do this thing together!" (William Barclay, The Gospel of John: 178-79)

The gospel truth is that we all must recognize our own utter helplessness apart from God. That is our shared human condition. But then we must realize it is also true that miracles can happen when our will cooperates with God's power to make them possible. (Barclay, 180) The question Jesus asks is the ultimate question each of us must answer, "Do you really want to be made well?"

Even God himself can do little for us if we are comfortable with our place in life. Too often we plod along in our debilitating condition, craving to be healed, yet resisting any change whatsoever. Carl Sandburg once said: "There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud." A part of me wants to fly like an eagle, but I get too accustomed to wallowing in the mud.

Jesus' question to the man was about physical healing, but the man's physical condition was not the main point. The question behind the question is about life itself: "Just what do you want from life? What is it you really need with God?"

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT?

Do you, or has being overweight become a way of life. Do you gather at the overweight peoples’ pool? Do you wallow in your misery with other overweight people, talking about food, calories, fat content and the latest diet plan? Do you resent people that lose weight, only to be secretly gleeful when they put it all back on (you knew they would didn’t you)? Are you waiting for someone to come and pick you up and drop you into the pool so that you can be miraculously healed, but while you are waiting how about another pity party?

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT?

What would life be like if you actually lost weight? Have you become too used to the wilderness? Is the Promised Land looking a bit scary?

If you really want to lose weight, then you must cooperate with God's power. Jesus said to the man, "Get up ... and walk." That is His invitation to you and me. "Get up ... walk ... put one foot in front of the other ... follow me."

Think about this very carefully.......DO YOU REALLY WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT?