Word Made Flesh:: John 5

Do you want to get well? 

The story from John that we're looking at this Sunday is centered around this primary question. 

Does it seem like a ridiculous question to you? 

If you have to ask this question than you can assume the person being asked the question has something in their life worth being made well from. There must be something wrong to be asked this question. So, who wouldn't want to be made well when something is obviously wrong? 

The most dangerous illness is the one we refuse to acknowledge. One of my professors once told me that people won't change unless the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. Put in another way, we live with all kinds of dysfunction and pain in our lives and we don't face our dysfunction until its presence in our lives becomes unbearable. 

Unfortunately most of us are living proof that we can hobble along with so much pain, dysfunction and illness. The cost of acknowledging the pain is usually greater than pain itself. We make it work. We find solutions to carry our dysfunction along in the journey before we ever consider facing it. 

Can you live with dysfunction, pain and illness in your life? Of course you can. We all do in so many ways. 
So the question, "Do you want to get well?", isn't about living.
It's about living with freedom.
It's about living in the wholeness we were created for.
It's about moving through life lighter because we've stopped carrying our pain, illness and dysfunction along for the journey. It's a deeply powerful question that's obvious answer causes us to look deeply into our own hearts and motives. 

Do you want to get well?