Healing Is A Choice

“Healing is a choice?”

Opening Video Illustration: Challenge the Ordinary Bluefishtv.com

Thesis: Healing can be hindered by the choices that we make in life so we need to evaluate our lives to see if something is blocking my healing.

Opening Scripture Text: John 5:1-15

1Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda£ and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.£ 5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

11But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

12So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

14Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Introduction:

I find it amazing that Jesus asked this man if he wanted to be healed – Why would he ask such a ridiculous question. Does not everyone want to be healed?

The truth is every single person alive needs a healing at some time in their life that is why God designed the body the way He did.

Stephen Arterburn states, “Surely God must love healing since He allows so much of it to occur every day. He created us with healing properties within us. A cut finger, in most cases, heals itself. There has to be something severely wrong with a person for a cut not to heal on its own. A broken limb has the ability to fuse back together. The cold virus is defeated and destroyed by the healing ability within our own bodies. Healing goes on all around us and within us. It is a miraculous ability that every person possesses to some degree or another. Although God has given us healing abilities, we can impair that process. Sadly, the ability to heal emotionally, spiritually, or physically has been destroyed or weakened for some. A physical wound must be cleaned and medicated rather than ignored. Emotional and spiritual wounds also need attention. They don’t just simply fade away” (page viii, Healing is a Choice.)

Beyond physical healing: Arterburn states, “The properties of healing are not found just within our bodies. They are also present in our minds and souls. God provided us with the ability to heal from emotional trauma and tragedy. When we lose someone we love, we are devastated; we mourn and grieve while wondering if our days will ever be full of light again. Our souls are sick from the loss of the love and from the pain that at times seems too much to endure. As our grieving progresses, we start to have a portion of a good day, and then a whole day or two good days come together. We start to sense a change from our constant agony and know that at some level, healing is taking place. God built that emotional and spiritual healing ability into most of us. If the ability to heal were not there, loss after loss, piling pain on top of pain, would lose our minds and could not go on. Almost everyone is fortunate to have the ability within to heal from hurts, rather than to be destroyed by them” (page x).

God’s moving through the power of divine healing all over the world today. See Video Clip from “Finger of God.”

T.S. – So let’s come back to our text Jesus asked the question “Do you want to be healed?” Let’s explore this question a little further this morning.

I. The choice: Do you want to be healed?

a. Jesus gave the man a choice at the pool of Bethesda to choose to be healed.