Have you a difficulty—mental, physical, financial, emotional—that you've been living with for thirty-eight years? Or thirty-eight minutes? What would be your answer if someone asked you if you would be willing to be healed? Surely your answer would be "Of course I want to be healed. I want to be whole and perfect in mind and body." That, however, was not the answer given by the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years and was lying helplessly on a bed beside the pool of Bethesda.John 5:2-9. When Christ Jesus came by and asked him, "Wilt thou be made whole?" did the impotent man say "yes"? No. He gave an argument as to why his healing was impossible. Apparently he had virtually accepted incurability for himself.
In spite of this the Master must have discerned some degree of receptivity, because he commanded the man, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." Jesus didn't just see the man as receptive enough to be able to recuperate and eventually gain the strength to walk. He didn't even offer to help him carry his sleeping mat. Instead Jesus told him to pick it up and get on his way, and he did.
To heal ourselves and others in the way Jesus did requires us to understand the deeper meaning of healing. It requires our willingness to understand and accept our original integrity and purity as God's spiritual offspring—to identify ourselves as whole and complete even in the face of the most devastating material testimony to the contrary. Because the human mind seems reluctant to accept the fact of man's permanent health and perfection as the child of God, it often unwittingly resists healing. We might do well to ask ourselves many times, "Wilt thou be made whole?" Am I willing to put every aspect of my life on a spiritual basis? Am I willing to let a wholly spiritual concept correct my present sense of body and health, of home and relationships, of supply and career, of church, of government, and of the world?
