By Melissa Shaver

 -  When you pray for healing, do you really want your prayer answered?
Do you think it cruel for me even to ask? Before you question my questions, think about what is required of you if you’re healed.Several weeks ago, I prayed for healing. Not from physical illness; I prayed for emotional healing—the internal handicap that keeps me from my full, God-ordained potential.

Immediately, I felt God lovingly question my prayer.

Do you really want healing? If I heal you, the responsibility will now be on you. You’ll have no more excuse for struggling. No more reasons for not fulfilling My plan in your life. No more explanations of why you can’t do it. Ouch.

In John 5, Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to participate in a festival. While there, He went to Bethesda. Known as the house of mercy, Bethesda was a pool shaded by five colonnades that sat near the temple. For years the community of invalids made Bethesda their home as they waited for healing. Their misdirected hope stood in the belief that when the water stirred, the first person in the pool would be healed.

One man had been there for years, waiting day after day for healing. The few times the waters stirred, he desperately tried to drag his lifeless body toward the water. As he struggled to make it to freedom, another would step in front of him, claiming the miraculous healing and blocking him from a new life.

One day, the invalids watched others participating in the celebrations, worshiping God through sacrifice and festivities. Jesus—knowing their hearts—came to them. He stepped outside of the temple walls and ministered to those in need.

Jesus walked up to this sick man and, without introduction, asked, “Do you want to be healed?”

The man, not knowing Jesus, spoke of his desire to be whole, but the miracle seemed impossible with no one to carry him to the pool.

Jesus healed him instantly.

What was it about this man that made Jesus choose him?

Pure Grace.

The invalid’s healing was fully an act of grace. This weak, powerless man had no idea who Jesus was. He didn’t deserve healing. He didn’t request healing. He could’ve grown so accustomed to his affliction that he forgot he even had a problem.

But Jesus knew everything about him. And He made a point to go and heal—to wholly restore.

Jesus often spoke of why He came to earth. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17) In Titus 3, Paul speaks of how Jesus saved us, not because of righteous things we have done, but because of his mercy.

Like the invalid, there is nothing you and I can do to earn Jesus’ attention. We can’t buy His love. We can’t earn His favor through our athleticism or achievements or by being the most financially secure. God knows our heart. And deep under all the “things” we think we can offer is a powerless, sin-stained child who desperately needs help.

Just like when God lovingly questioned me during my prayer time, Jesus spoke directly to this man. His question made the invalid take his eyes off of what he believed to be the source of his healing—the pool—and instead put his eyes directly on the True Healer.

If we listen, God will pull us back to the basics of truth. I can give every excuse as to why I am weak and powerless and needy in my emotional state of being. And I can look for every “pool” that promises healing—self-help books, support groups, and all types of makeovers that promise to hide my dysfunctional ways. But, until I look to the Savior, I will never find the promised abundant life. I will always be thinking that someone stepped in front of me and got the cure to happiness.

Many who lived at Bethesda accepted their lot and had lost any will to overcome their sickness. Accustomed to the stares of people outside the gates, they begged for food and identified themselves as emotionally and physically worthless.

Does that describe you? Do you continue to wrap yourself in an identity that’s covered in years of emotional scars from all types of abuse? Your handicap has left your will to live in a state of paralysis, and the stench you live in—jealousy, bitterness, hate, self-pity—has created a wall of separation.

When Jesus healed the invalid, He told the sick man to pick up his mat and walk.

You were sick in your sins, but when you came to know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you gave your sickness over to Him in exchange for His grace. As a child of God, you have been redeemed from the pit and crowned with love and compassion. (Psalm 103:4) Act like it!

What type of healing are you praying for today? Many become like the invalids who laid at Bethesda under the shaded colonnades. They’ve settled for their condition and accepted begging as a lifestyle.

Do you continue to ask God for help but you’re not willing to help yourself? That was me a few weeks ago when I prayed for emotional healing. And I’ll speak to you what God spoke to me: Stop making excuses for your actions and falling back into an old lifestyle of self-doubt. Take responsibility. Identify with the healing, not the handicap. Live in the present: redeemed.

It’s time for you to pick up your mat and walk.

Melissa Shaver is director of Walking in Grace Ministries. Go to www.walkingrace.org to learn more.





Photo of The pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem by: http://thumb16.webshots.net/t/61/161/1/79/47/405017947PEmtOt_th.jpg