For thirty-eight years, this paralysed man waited amongst the sick and disabled at the pool of Bethesda for a supernatural moment that could change his miserable existence. But each time someone got into the pool before him and walked away healed. Time after time, when the opportunity came, there was no one there for him. The story was always the same; he couldn’t rescue himself from his pool of despair and his dwindling stock of hope and faith. Perhaps you can identify. Perhaps you know the story from personal experience. It may be about bodily illness, but it can also be about things like moral failure, addiction, divorce, abortion, remorse, parenting failure, etc. Like the man by the pool, your friends can’t rescue you, and you don’t have what it takes to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. But Jesus asks you the same question: ‘Will you be made whole?’ He offers you bodily healing – and more. He knows that you can’t do it by yourself. So when He asks, ‘Will you be made whole?’ it’s more than ‘Do you want to be made whole?’ It’s a question of your will. For things to be different, you must invest your will in the process. The faith that will make you whole is not an emotion or feeling. It’s an act of your will that chooses to stand on God’s Word, believing He will do for you what He says and make you whole! ‘Immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked’ (v. 9 NKJV). That can be your story too!

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.