PROOF: October 2

PROOF: OCTOBER 2, 2022
PASTOR NATE LEVERING
JOHN 5 ... The Healing at the Pool

Happy Monday Church family. I don't know about you but I needed today. I needed to walk into a new day. For whatever reasons, my children all wonderfully bonded together over the weekend to push every last button of mine. Of course my husband was out of town and they capitalized on what they believed was an opportunity. At one point yesterday, I wanted to yell, "Listen children, do you want to be healed?" Even thinking this now, I laugh to myself at how easily I can go from 0-100 by the sheer disrespect of a child. My child. And yet how often, looking back on my life, do I consider the opportunities taken to capitalize on a situation?

Friends, what is the cost of being healed? For my children over the weekend, it was confession, apologies and then the consequence of missing out and the limitations of their freedoms. For the lame man near the pool of Bethesda it was a full surrender. In most of our lives, I would blanket the assumption similar. When God has told me to "get up" (John 5:8), I've moaned and thrown out handfuls, bucketfulls of excuses much like, "people keep going before me" (John 5:7). I can see it now with my head thrown back, mouth frowned and posture slumped, muttering "I don't wanna and you can't make me". 

You can't make me. And He doesn't. He doesn't force the hand. We have to want it. We have to recognize that His presence, wholly available, is waiting for us at we get up and move. Bethesda stands for House of Mercy. It is purely the mercy of our Almighty God who stirs in us the desire to know Him and trust Him and get well but we have to make the move. "When 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?'" (John 5:6). Jesus wouldn't have asked, I believe, if He didn't know that this man could. The heart of Jesus is far too kind than to humiliate. The lies we easily allow sound a lot like these:

• I would get well if I knew I could
• This brokenness is who I am
• I can get well on my own

Do you want to get well? Do you accept that the process of getting well may result in confession, the possibilities of missing out, making amends, making apologies matter, forgiving where there is resentment, and accepting the change that comes. Friends, I struggle here. I struggle in the "yes" because I know how painful it can be. I'm the lame man. My story is no secret now and praise the Lord for that statement. After the abuse in my childhood and abortion in my early adult life, my posture was grounded shameful and I was sure that there was no restoring me. "God, they keep going before me." "I'm waiting for the angel to stir the waters." "I just don't want to confess." "I don't want to be seen." It was anything I could throw at God each time He called. Until none of it held a candle to the hope of his mercy. I had to trust. We have to trust. We get to trust in this God who holds the promise of redemption in His grace. Get up and walk. Take your mat, you're never coming back to this place. We can learn to live whole, together.

Amen church?