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[There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.
One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him lying there
and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him,
“Do you want to be well?”
The sick man answered him,
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.”
Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.] (Jn. 5:1-9)

“Do you want to be well?”  Jesus asks this odd question to the sick man confined to a mat.  The answer the man will supply is obvious to us and most likely to Jesus as well, yet He still asks it. Jesus does not assume the man wants to be healed. He waits for the sick man’s request.

Jesus poses this same question to you. “Do you want to be well?”  Again I’m sure the answer is obvious, “Of course I do.”  Yet, it’s ironic that many times we don’t ask Jesus to heal us.  We’d rather rely on ourselves or wait for the situation to fix itself all the while needlessly suffering alone.

What needs to be made “well” in your life?  Are you and your spouse going through a rough patch?  Are you trying to crawl away from the shackles of a certain sin(s)?  Are you having difficulties at work or with coworkers? Is your financial situation enslaving your every thought? Are you mourning the imminent death or the recent death of a loved one? Etc.?

Talk to Jesus about your struggles. You don’t have to go through it alone.  Jesus is waiting upon your request.

“Do you want to be well?”