When I am asked if I want to be healed, the answer should be “yes”

The most important message I picked up from today’s readings overall is when I am asked if I want to be healed, the answer should be “yes.”

My primary takeaway from each of the passages was this:

• Numbers 29 & 30:  More feasts and laws concerning vows. 
• John 5: Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, which provokes the Pharisees. Jesus asks us if we want to be healed.
• Psalms 73: A prayer of triumph and thanksgiving after having been vindicated of injustice.
• Proverbs 11: Advice and wisdom for those suffering injustice.

In John 5, we see Jesus heal a man by the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. This provokes the Pharisees, which we have talked about before when reading the previous three gospels. Jesus gives a long-winded speech in this chapter about why this provokes them, but to me that is not the most important thing in this chapter. The part I find the most interesting is when Jesus walks up to the man he is about to heal and asks him, “Do you want to be well again?” The man does not say, “Yes.” He gives Jesus an excuse for why he has never been able to be healed in the past.

Think about whatever it is in your life that holds you back, and ask yourself, “Do you want to be healed? Do you want to get better? Do you want this trouble to go away?” Whatever it is that is keeping you from moving forward, ask yourself that question and then notice what your immediate reaction to the question is. Is it an unwavering, “Yes!” or is it an excuse or recounting of the reasons you’ve been held back all this time?

God wants to help us. He wants to heal us. He wants to remove the obstacles that are in our way, whether others put them there or we put them there ourselves. But sometimes we’ve faced them for so long we don’t know what our lives would look like without them. Sometimes the problems we have are so familiar and comfortable that we have difficulty letting go of them. Or if they are removed for us, we often will just replace them with new problems of a similar nature.

How often do we actually clear the decks and wipe the slate clean, and then move forward? For most people, the answer is “not often, if ever.”

Now, let’s connect the dots between what happened to the man by the pool of Bethesda with the way that Jesus healing him on the sabbath angered the Pharisees. That long-winded speech is aimed directly at them, and speaks to exactly what I said here about people getting comfortable in their circumstances, even when they are negative. He accuses them of combing the scriptures, looking for the Messiah, but then not recognizing him when he is standing right in front of him. The juxtaposition of these two events, the healing of the man by the pool of Bethesda and the long-winded speech aimed at the Pharisees, is not mere coincidence. He is essentially asking them, “Do you even want to see the Messiah?” What ails them is their long search for the Messiah without finding him, and Jesus is the cure for what ails them, but they refuse to accept him. They are too comfortable in the searching to ever want to actually find what they are searching for.

When I am experiencing problems in my life, because of this chapter in the book of John I ask myself, “Do I want to be healed? Do I want my problem solved?” And if the answer to my question is a bunch of excuses and rationalizations then I know that I am holding myself back, and have become too comfortable in my negative situation. I need Jesus’ healing more than ever, in that situation. We need to let Jesus heal us, and accept his help.

Psalms 73 gives us a prayer of triumph. The Psalmist writes of having been subject to some kind of evil or injustice, and then having been rescued. He thanks and praises God for rescuing him. This could have been a prayer that the man by the pool of Bethesda could have prayed after suffering for thirty-eight years from whatever ailment Jesus healed him of. Most of us have experienced injustice of some kind or another, and if we’ve been fortunate enough to be vindicated, this is the prayer we should pray.

Coincidentally, Proverbs 11 provides us with wisdom and advice for how we should comport ourselves when we are experiencing injustice. There is a lot about karma in this chapter, and the advice is that we should continue to operate out of our integrity and faith in God while allowing God to sort everything out. We should not take revenge or retribution against those who wrong us. Rather, their own actions against us will come back on them.

In the martial arts, there is a branch called Aikido, in which the entire practice is to use one’s opponent’s momentum against them. It is an entirely defensive martial art in which you don’t make aggressive moves yourself but actually assist your enemy when they make aggressive moves, so that whatever they had intended for you to take you down ends up taking them down. That’s what this chapter in Proverbs has to teach us.

That’s what I got out of it. What did you get out of the readings today?

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This post is part of the series, “Read the Bible in a Year.”

To see other posts in this series, go to the Chronological Index of Read the Bible in a Year Posts.