Do You Want to Get Well?

Have you ever stopped yourself from allowing yourself to be healed because you’d grown use to the impairment and couldn’t imagine life without it?

Many years ago, I traveled on the road with a couple of singing groups. We spent out time doing between 3 and 6 concerts a week all around the country. In my 18 months of doing this, I went coast to coast many times and saw every state in the union – save North Dakota. It was quite a life, to be sure. I lived on a tour bus with 10 other people that had 10 seats and 6 bunks. We were on the move 22-30 days a month, coming home to Amarillo, TX only to restock and repair (which happened quite a lot with that old bus!).

If you’ve never lived this incredibly nomadic lifestyle, one of the major components to making it work is to constantly eat out and eat in a hurry. I remember a specific time, eating in a Cracker Barrel in Nashville late one evening; it was here that I bit down on something hard and broke a bottom molar. If you’ve ever done that, you know the sickening feeling that comes when you hear the noise and then muster enough courage to spit out the broken piece and explore what remains.

As I probed with my tongue, I discovered that the inside of the tooth had broken, leaving a very sharp corner. The next 24 hours was probably the most annoying I’d ever had. Constantly, I found myself feeling the broken place, adjusting to the new found hole in my mouth, and cutting my tongue on the sharp edge. Within a week, I had a full blown ulcer on my tongue where it had been repeatedly cut by the sharp tooth, and I found myself chewing only on the other side of my mouth to avoid further injury.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months until, finally, the initial shock and pain of breaking to the tooth gave way to adjustment and apathy. I learned to live with the break. In time, the break got more severe, chipping off a little more here and there. And then, after 3 years of living with the nuisance, I went to the dentist to have it checked. Upon inspection the dentist informed me that the nerves had grown over with skin to cope with the pain and that a root canal must be performed to stop any further deterioration.

At first, I was disappointed with the news. I didn’t want to get my tooth fixed. After all, hadn’t I adapted to living with it for over three years? Oh sure, I disliked being able to chew on one side of my mouth and loathed constantly being occupied with the hole in my gum line; but deep down, I had made the conscious choice to not to get well and move on with a normal life. However, after I had the procedure and got a gold crown placed over the tooth (thank you Dr. Tate!), I couldn’t imagine why it had taken me so long to get it done! Even months thereafter, I found myself not chewing on that side of my mouth – due directly to the years I’d learned how to adjust around the thing that was keeping me from being whole.

In the end, only a sick man knows what it’s like to resist healing. Conversely, only a healed person knows what it’s like to resist staying ill.

As you worship this week:

Meditate – on God as the Great Physician, the healer of both body and mind.
Contemplate – the ways in which you are sick and desire to be whole again.
Seek – the courage to confess your needs to a gracious God.
Find – the physical and spiritual healing, that you might praise God and be whole again.

Resounding Themes:

Faith In God’s Purpose
Physical and Spiritual Healing
Jesus, the Wonderful, Merciful Savior

Getting READY to Worship

Ready, Set, READ

John 5:1-15

Ready, Set, MEDITATE

- Where does this scene unfold? What do we know about the place from what John tells us in the narrative? What types of persons might you envision sitting by the pool?

- Why is Jesus in Jerusalem in the first place? Why do you think he would take time to walk by the pool? In your mind, what drew him to the paralyzed man?

- What was the first thing Jesus said to him? How is the man’s response shocking, given the length of his condition? After Jesus heals him, what does the man do? Why does he still carry his mat with him? What should he have done?

- Where are the “pools of Siloam” in your world today? Who sits around them? Why? Why would a sick person resist getting well? Have you ever resisted healing of some kind – physical or spiritual? Don’t you want to be well? Why or why not?

Ready, Set, PRAY

Sovereign Creator, we look our lives and see how lame we really are! The legs of are faith have shriveled, and the feet of our capacity to love You have grown numb with inactivity. In truth, Lord, it’s been so long since we walked and ran and jumped - that we don’t know if we can ever be whole again.

But, O, Master Healer, would You extend Your restorative hand to us once again? Would You reach into our pitiful existence and break the bonds of complacency, shame, and self-pity that have held us back from a full relationship with you. Bring back strength to our legs of faith, O God! And Great Physician, would you once again revive our once useless feet of love that we might run back to You!

It will be done! We believe it and voice it in Jesus Name – we want to be well!

And we agree in the promise of your faithfulness. AMEN.

Ready, Set, WORSHIP!