"Do you want to be healed?"

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. 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.” John 5:1–9

Yesterday, our pastor gave us a sermon on John 5:1–18, where Jesus healed the man at the pool of Bethesda (meaning: house of mercy). This was a pool where invalids congregated because there was the belief that whomever stepped into the water first when it began to move would be healed. Were people really healed in this pool? I do not know. I only know that the man was by the pool of Bethesda, that for 38 years he had suffered from the same infirmity that kept him in bedridden, and that one day, he was healed when Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” I’ve read this passage before and seem to always get stuck on the first phrase spoken...Jesus asked, “Do you want to be healed? (John 5:6)” I remember thinking in the past, “What a silly question. Of course he wants to be healed. Who wouldn’t want to be healed?” I don’t know if I’m the only one who gets stuck on that question, but yesterday morning as I listened to the sermon and yesterday afternoon as meditated on the passage, I once again stopped on this question, but this time I didn’t think there was anything silly about it. Instead, it hung in the air above me as if Jesus Himself was standing in front of me asking me that very thing.

I empathize with the man at Bethesda. After 38 years of waiting by the pool, watching others push past him and receive the very thing he desire most, he still lay in his bed unable to walk. His response when asked if he wanted to be healed revealed a man who seemed to have lost his will to hope that healing was for him; a man who seemed to have accepted that his life was to daily attempt to make it to the water and to lament that fact that he never did and, if history showed anything, that he most likely never would; a man who was bitter at and resigned to both his situation and his inability to change it; a man who was alone with his weakness. I understand the man at Bethesda and his lack of a resounding “yes” to a question that seemed unnecessary.

So yesterday I came face-to-face with the Lord and His question.

First, it is very important to me that you know one thing; I believe, with every fiber of my being, that God is ABLE to heal me. I believe He is fully sovereign over all things; that all of matter, space and time bows to Him. I believe that He could restore my body to an image of perfect health (even though that means He would have to grow me a new thyroid...which He totally could do). I do not doubt, for an instant, that God is able to do all things, including make my body whole.

But, as much as it shames me to write this, I doubt His desire to heal me.

As I have adapted to my situation, I have grown to assume that healing is not in the cards for me. As I’ve considered my lack of an excited “yes,” I’ve discovered that there are actually several logical reasons for my hesitancy to this question (even though I possess a deep longing to be healed):
First, I know that I cannot control my own body. I mostly baffle medical science in general, so I am fairly certain that not only is it out of my hands, but it’s also out of the professionals’. Because I cannot change or control my body, I know that I must adjust my mind. That’s the beauty of the peace that God offers us; it isn’t contingent on our circumstances or our situations or anything on earth, it is solidly ours in Christ. I take much joy in knowing that while I am in a body that is crumbling around me, I am being renewed daily (2 Corinthians 4:16). God never said that I was assured a life free from health problems–I’m living in a decaying body of sin–but He did promise to be the strength I need to get through them. And so, as I have adapted to my lack of control and the seeming permanence of my health situation, I have relished the fact that God continually engrains the reality of His faithfulness to me as He carries me through these times again and again.
Second, I know the ways that God has used my health (or lack thereof) to bring me to Himself. In fact, that was the main tool He used to bring me to my face at the foot of the cross. Through acknowledging what He’s done for me through taking away my health, I have always assumed that, because of my sinful nature, it is necessary for me to be sick. Suffering and trial is only given or allowed if it is necessary (1 Peter 1:6–7), God does not “willingly grieve or afflict the children of men (Lamentations 3:31–33).” I have spent a good portion of the last 6 years (since I was saved) thanking the Lord for His grace in taking away my health; for the ways He drew me to Himself through showing me my lack (first physically, than spiritually), for the ways He (in His infinite wisdom in seeing and acting) has protected me from others and myself through my ailments, for the ways He has taught me to rely on Him and praise Him for the most basic things our bodies do that I cannot take for granted (for example, I once lost my ability to speak for 5 months). This may sound strange, but I have been grateful for my health problems, they have opened my eyes to blessings I would have otherwise never even considered, and I enjoy the humility I feel when He gives what I cannot give myself (a picture of the cross in the simplest form).
Third, I don’t deserve to be healed. I am aware that while this is "logical," it is also flimsy. I deserve nothing good from the hand of God (I never have and never will)...but He is merciful.

Do I want to be healed? Yes. Desperately bad, actually. I often wonder why God would want to use someone who is as broken as me...and even HOW He will be able to. The things my body goes through are not pleasant; they are often stressful, painful and/or discouraging (sometimes even scary). They make me feel useless and disgusting. They often make me want to exclude myself from life and people. They drain me of energy and, if I do not fight, my joy. They put me face-to-face with the fact that I am alone and vulnerable, that I am weak and falling apart, that I am an example of the decay of sin. To be in the center of prolonged health problems is not fun, I would not wish it on anyone...and do I want to be healed? Yes, yes, I want to be healed!

I don’t think the problem is necessarily in my desire for healing, but maybe instead in whether or not I would dare to hope in and believe God’s desire to heal me. Jesus often asked questions; they cut to the very heart, often revealing to us our lack of faith and our depth of sin. So when I look a little bit closer at myself, I see with clarity that I lack the faith, the hope and the courage to ask. I have accepted my state of being without the willingness or faith to wrestle with God for healing as the persistent widow did with the judge in Luke 18. I have chosen to overlook the heart of God by deciding He doesn’t want to heal me. I don’t even have the faith of a mustard seed when it comes to God’s heart for me and so, I don’t even think to ask. I think it’s interesting that I am thinking through this at such a time when God has been opening my eyes to behold His heart for the people and situations around me. Yesterday as I prayed through these thoughts, I said to the Lord, “Lord, You are sending me to the sick. You are sending me to look those infected by HIV/AIDS in the eye and proclaim to them Your heart for them. I know what it’s like to live with permanent sickness and to be sustained by You through it. But what if I could look them in the eye and proclaim Your power, ability and desire to heal to the uttermost the foulest of sinners with the testimony of my life. The smallness of my requests surrounding my health have reflected my small view of Your heart for me. Forgive me, Lord, and let me look into Your face as it looks into mine questioningly, and respond with a faith-filled, grateful “yes” that believes, with every fiber of my being, in Your heart and Your desire to heal me.”