A question Jesus asked

Do you want to be made well?

Q: Where did Jesus ask, Do you want to be made well?

Jesus asked this in John 5:6, at the pool of bethesda, a man sick 38 years. A man has been an invalid for thirty-eight years, lying by a pool where the sick waited for healing. Jesus asks him a strange question: Wilt thou be made whole? It sounds obvious,

“When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?”John 5:6 · At the pool of Bethesda, a man sick 38 years

What Jesus was really asking

A man has been an invalid for thirty-eight years, lying by a pool where the sick waited for healing. Jesus asks him a strange question: Wilt thou be made whole? It sounds obvious, but it is not. Wholeness would change everything, his identity, his excuses, his whole way of surviving. Jesus asks whether he truly wants it.

How the question still finds us

Sometimes we are more at home in our brokenness than we admit. Healing asks something of us; it takes away the story we have told about why our life is the way it is. Jesus meets the man's tangle of excuses not with impatience but with a direct question and then a direct command: Rise. He offers wholeness to people who are not even sure they want it.

Sit with it

Is there a place where you have stopped hoping to be made well, and quietly settled into the ache instead?

Jesus, where I have given up on healing, stir hope in me again. I do want to be made whole. Do what I cannot do for myself. Amen.

He is still asking

Jesus is not only someone people debate. He is someone who asks, and waits for your answer. You can answer Him now.

Begin with Jesus · Ask someone to pray with you · Who is Jesus?

More questions Jesus askedWhat are you seeking?Why are you afraid?What do you want me to do for you? All the questions