Questions. You know God always throws these questions out at me. I "hear" them in my head and I know that they are not from me because they are too deep, cut too close to the bone and go right to the heart of whatever area the Lord wants to get me thinking about.
Rewind to a couple days ago. I get up, take care of my cats, pour my coffee and settle into my "God time." After that I do some chores around the house, and finally leave to run to the grocery store to pick up some items that I had forgotten on my last trip there, (isn't there always something we forget, even with the list!). All of this took place withing a few hours. And then it starts. The craving. The "I want another cup of coffee. I want Starbucks!" My grocery store has a Starbucks in it and it's a little bit too convenient for someone with a coffee addiction and low self control, lol!
But I don't need another coffee right then. I don't need it health wise nor do I need to spend extra money on a cup of coffee. But the craving persisted, calling out to me. Ugh. Lord help!
And then came the question. "Do you want to get well?" Now, 24 years ago the Lord broke the chains of drug and alcohol addiction in my life, a year later I was set free from cigarettes. I am grateful everyday for this deliverance and the freedom that I have only through Jesus Christ. Addiction is still a battle for me in the areas of coffee and junk food. I have successes, and I am thrilled for them, but I still fail more often than I would like, Perhaps many of you reading this can relate. So I pose to you the same question the Lord posed to me, "Do you want to get well?" This question came from Jesus when He healed the man at the pool of Bethesda. The man had be afflicted for many years, but never quite made it to wellness.
I think the problem lay more in my answer than in the Lord's question. I finally dug a little deeper when I answered this. The answer was a little hard to look at. My answer, "Yes, but I don't want to give up my stuff." I want to be healed but not at whatever cost it takes to receive that healing. I want to be un-addicted but not by laying my addictions on the altar and leaving them there. I want health and wholeness but I still want to hang onto my coffee and junk food. Literally, I want my cake and to eat it too and yes, I'll take coffee with that cake!
This can be applied to many areas of our lives and later that night Jesus asked the question a second time as I struggled at work with my attitude. I cry out for change. I want to be Christ-like. Loving, peaceful, kind. I want to be a good witness, to glorify God. I want others to see Christ in me and want Him in their lives. But.....do I want to lay down my pride? Do I want to lay down having things my way? Ugh. We really have to bring a lot of stuff, a lot of our baggage, a lot of our "self" to the altar to get this healing thing down.
Basically, I've discovered, I want healing and wholeness and growth in my life, but I want it easily, I want it with no sacrifice on my part...I want God to be like a fairy godfather and just "poof" it on me! I don't want it to hurt or to have work for it. Like the man at the pool of Bethesda, I have work today in order to be healed. This is not the answer I was hoping to see when I "heard" this question that day. But I'm pretty sure it's the answer I needed to know about. When God shows us the junk in our hearts it's never pretty, but He does so with love and with the plan for healing. So, I guess I have some praying and some letting go to do!
Lord, thank You for the hard revelations, And thank You that You always bring truth to light with love and with the intention of bringing us to a place of wholeness. Lord, give each of us the strength to overcome any areas in our lives that are not in line with Your desire for us. Thank You for the Holy Spirit's within us who convicts, encourages and enables. You are an awesome God and I love you!
Answer the question for yourself.
John 5:1-8 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 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.”
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