Do you want to get well?

In our church right now we are in the middle of a series on the family. It also seems as if every week I'm confronted by another family experiencing difficulty, another marriage on the rocks, or another individual struggling with some addiction. Some have argued that perhaps our churches have gone too far on the end of felt-needs preaching, and while some of this concern is probably legitimate, if there were ever a "felt-need" or topic that a church must address today it is the family. While divorce, infidelity, and addiction rates are just as high within the church as they are outside of it, I think that it is the church's responsibility to speak into families with a prophetic voice.

All of this has led me to a question that Jesus asks a paralyzed man in John 5. This man has been lying by a pool for thirty-eight years. He isn't simply just lounging around a hotel pool sipping margaritas. This pool was different. Disabled people came to this pool day after day because it was believed that if one was the first to enter this pool after its waters were stirred then he would be healed of whatever disease he had. So every day for thirty-eight years this man could only lie there and watch others step into this pool in hopes of healing, while he was physically unable to move and without hope.

And then Jesus comes by and asks one question, "Do you want to get well?"

The more time I spend in ministry the more I find that the answer to this question is quite complicated for us. Its not that we don't want to get well. Who doesn't want restoration in their marriage, freedom from addiction, reconciliation with a loved one? The issue isn't that we don't want to get well, the issue is that one: we don't want to admit that we're sick and two: getting well is often painful and requires hard work.

Jesus wants to make us well. He wants to make me well individually, forgiving me of my sin and empowering me to live a holy life, and he wants to make us well communally, in our marriages, relationships, and families. The sad thing is that lying at the pool becomes all too familiar for us and we forget that we were created for something better.

I guess this is bigger than just marriage and family, but I am convinced that Jesus wants our individual lives and our families to express the vibrant abundant life he promised, but we have to truly want to be well in order for this happen. So if you've been lying at the pool for a while and you truly want to get well, Jesus invites you to get up and step into a new way of being, a new way of living; one that might be unfamiliar and painful at first, but it will be far more beautiful and compelling in the long run.

Sorry to get preachy, but this stuff has been swirling in my brain this week.