Do you want to be healed?

This is my first post here, I am testing the waters a bit... (pun intended). The richness of what is found in John 5 and the miracle by the pool of Bethseda speaks so well to attitudes of a kind of laziness of faith that can happen in all of us.

After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids--blind, lame, and paralyzed [waiting for the moving of the water;] [for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred the water: whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.] One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" The sick 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." Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed." But he answered them, "The man who healed me, that man said to me, 'Take up your bed, and walk.'" They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Take up your bed and walk'?" Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you." The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. (Joh 5:1-15)

Such a simple question "Do you want to be healed?"

What would you say? Yes, of course!

But the man said there was no one to help him down into the water. There he lay for so many years never finding what he sought, relief from his afflictions, just languishing away without hope. Well... hope in some superstition perhaps, but no real direction. Not only did he look to some supernatural myth but he rationalised that the problem was a lack of help and others receiving their healing when he could have gotten it. Maybe even a bit self centred.... focusing on himself like that, wouldn't you say?

It would even be easy to see that if he had gotten healed he might have ended up right back at the pool eventually seeking restoration. Back to square one, back to not believing and once again tortured by doubts and misery. Would it be that some Christians even fall into that kind of thinking? Don't we sometimes hear of those that have to "re-confess", "re-dedicate their lives", or even choose by their own will to believe and have faith. That is what the man thought he could attain, if only he could finally do it... and if someone would just help him even!

A funny thing happened on the way to Jerusalem... as Jesus dropped by the Bethesda pool... there was that man mired in his situation, and for a long time at that!

What if Jesus wasn't there? And what if one day the man just decided to get up and walk? Do you think he could do it and for how long? How soon the doubts might get the better of him, a little fatigue one day, a sore muscle the next day and he might think his "problem" is coming back and he needs to go down to the pool again.

Many want their sins forgiven but they go about doing this according to their own ideas. They go to church. They try to do good things. They want to hear "feel good" sermons that mask their condition. They seek out smooth talkers that tickle their ears with how to do it. Some go to great lengths to talk about their sins and how things just aren't working for them. Or worse, how they just need to turn their lives around and finally get right with God.

Ah yes, just choose the right path and all is well. And so they prostrate themselves around the pool of false hopes. Never mind that only the Holy Spirit can change them, that someone would come up to them and say "pick up your bed and walk", and that it would be effectual. The cure is not at the side of that pool but at the feet of Christ. The heart is convicted of it's sins when asked metaphorically by the Law "do you want to be healed" and with opened eyes it is confronted with the foreboding reality that those waters are unreachable.

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Gal 3:22-26 )

Through the Gospel we hear "Get up!, Get up and walk in the newness of life!". What Christ has done is sought you out and redeemed you through His death and resurrection. No longer at that other pool of despair need you go but to the fount of living waters that flows eternally. Throw off these shackles of the darkened mind, stop looking for an answer in rituals and rules crafted by depraved ingenuity, leave behind the old nature and the old man. It isn't your choice when told by Christ to pick up and go.

Or as it says in Gal 5:16 "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh."

So then what holds us back, is it sin? Then we repent and walk onward. We no longer are to live our lives filled with doubt and excuses, wallowing in our misery and failure. Reflect Christ victorious in our lives.