The Paralytic’s Choice: Do You Want to Get Well?

• The Condition of the Paralytic 00:04:16 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor describes the physical, social, and hygienic realities of being a paraplegic in first-century Palestine to establish the severity of the man's isolation and suffering.
• Jesus' Question 'Do You Want to Get Well?' 00:06:39 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor analyzes Jesus' question as a diagnostic tool to distinguish between the man's need for healing and his actual desire or purpose to change his life.
• Munchausen Syndrome and Victim Mentality 00:09:41 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor uses psychological concepts like Munchausen syndrome and 'McVictim syndrome' to illustrate how people can become addicted to their own suffering or blame external factors for their condition.
• Personal Responsibility vs. External Blame 00:11:15 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor argues that the man's failure to heal was due to his internal rationalizations and reliance on others, rather than the lack of help from others.
• The Man by the Pool and the Question of Willingness 00:14:13 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor analyzes the man's attitude, contrasting his desire for a 'get-rich-quick' healing with the need to do what it takes to get well, framing Jesus' question as a probe into the man's true motivations.
• Comfort in Brokenness vs. Desire for Change 00:15:16 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor explores why people remain in their brokenness, using the example of a student who knew Jesus was the Messiah but refused to change his lifestyle, illustrating that people often prefer their familiar sin over God's healing.
• Faith-Creating vs. Faith-Resulting Healing 00:19:36 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor distinguishes this miracle from others, noting it was 'faith-creating' rather than 'faith-resulting,' as the man had no prior faith, and Jesus healed him to provoke a response.
• Spiritual Healing and the Danger of Sin 00:20:51 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor interprets Jesus' command to 'stop sinning' not as a cause of the paralysis, but as a warning that spiritual death is worse than physical affliction, urging the man to seek full well-being.
• The Choice Between Identity and Transformation 00:24:05 ▶️ 📄
  > Using C.S. Lewis's 'The Great Divorce,' the pastor illustrates that many prefer their miserable, familiar identity in 'hell' over the unknown transformation required for heaven, mirroring the man by the pool.
• Human Resistance to Change 00:24:26 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor describes how people often prefer their familiar, miserable identities over the unknown of healing, choosing comfort in dysfunction.
• Divine Knowledge and Inquiry 00:25:04 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor explains that God asks 'Do you want to get well?' not out of ignorance, but because He knows the human heart and requires a conscious choice for healing.
• The Necessity of Answering the Question 00:25:33 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor asserts that one cannot escape their current life or engage their intended life until they genuinely answer the question of whether they want to get well.

• Sermon Illustration 00:04:31 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor lists historical events from 1988 (Mike Tyson, Cal Ripken, MS-DOS, etc.) to illustrate the passage of 38 years, helping the congregation visualize the duration of the paralytic's condition.
• Sermon Illustration 00:05:51 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor describes the physical reality of crawling on dirt streets filled with animal excrement and the lack of hygiene for a paraplegic in the first century to emphasize the man's repulsive state and social outcast status.
• Sermon Illustration 00:11:25 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor cites David Gratz's concept of 'McVictim syndrome' and the obesity epidemic to illustrate how people blame external factors (food, urban sprawl) rather than taking personal responsibility for their condition.
• Sermon Illustration 00:12:28 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor tells a story about a man on a diet who blames a bakery's accidental display of cheesecake and God's provision of a parking spot for his failure to resist temptation, illustrating the absurdity of external blame.
• Sermon Illustration 00:12:18 ▶️ 📄
  > A story about a man on a diet who avoided a bakery but accidentally drove by it, prayed for a parking spot to get cheesecake, and got one, illustrating a misguided reliance on God for selfish desires.
• Sermon Illustration 00:15:33 ▶️ 📄
  > A story about a college student who verified Jesus' messianic claims through Isaiah but refused to follow Him because he did not want to change his active sex life.
• Sermon Illustration 00:24:05 ▶️ 📄
  > A reference to C.S. Lewis's 'The Great Divorce,' where souls from hell refuse to enter heaven because they prefer their familiar, miserable identities over the change required for paradise.
• Sermon Illustration 00:24:51 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor uses the metaphor of lying by a pool to represent a state of affliction or need for healing, contrasting it with the choice to remain in that state due to comfort with one's identity.

• Pastoral Charge 00:17:00 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor lists specific sins and broken areas, implicitly calling the congregation to examine their lives and desire for change in these areas.
• Pastoral Charge 00:25:29 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor calls the congregation to genuinely answer the question of whether they want to get well, implying a commitment to spiritual transformation.
• Pastoral Charge 00:26:34 ▶️ 📄
  > The pastor prays for the congregation to fully commit to seeking healing from God.

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:00] He gets the pressure, the heartbreak, the doubts we hide, and the battles we face.
[00:00:06] Through powerful moments from the life of Jesus, we'll discover someone who meets us where we are, with empathy, compassion, and understanding. Because no matter your story, He gets us.

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:00:23] Welcome to MEX Online Campus. It's been a few years for me, but I remember how one of the hardest things to do with another human being was to go out on a first date, particularly if it was
[00:00:33] was a complete first meet-up. Back in my day, that meant you were set up by a mutual friend. Today, maybe connected through an app or something else. But what do you say? Well, you ask questions,
[00:00:45] right? Get to know you questions. Woman's Health Magazine contacted a group of relational experts to ask them for a list of the best questions to ask on a first date. They came up with 150. Okay,
[00:00:58] that's a little unwieldy, but let me just read you the first five they had on the list.
[00:01:03] What made you interested in going out with me?
[00:01:06] The idea here is that by understanding what made you stand out to them, you can get to know what kind of sparks their interest a little bit better.
[00:01:14] What are you looking for?
[00:01:15] Now, the point of this question is to gauge whether your dating goals are aligned.
[00:01:20] Is this a casual thing or are you actually looking for a life partner?
[00:01:24] What matters to you?
[00:01:27] This can trigger anything from a TV show to how they're really into maybe health and fitness or wellness or even the spiritual side of things.
[00:01:33] It's more along the lines of values.
[00:01:36] Here's another one.
[00:01:38] When you think of recent big political events, is there something that stands out to you?
[00:01:43] Well, this lets you know how they look at the world.
[00:01:46] Relationship experts also say that the age-old dating rule to never talk about religion or politics on the first date, they say that's just outdated.
[00:01:56] Next one.
[00:01:57] What does your life-work balance look like?
[00:02:00] This question has a lot to do with figuring out if they have the skills to even be in a healthy relationship.
[00:02:06] Okay, that's a taste of what maybe some good questions on a first date would look like.
[00:02:11] Ready for a taste of what a bad question sounds like?
[00:02:16] Thought so.
[00:02:17] Here are some you might want to rethink, also from dating experts.
[00:02:23] Would you like to be my accountability partner?
[00:02:27] Is that your natural color?
[00:02:31] Why are you single?
[00:02:33] What was your name again?
[00:02:37] And I'm guessing you're a size eight.
[00:02:40] Am I right?
[00:02:43] There's actually all kinds of good and bad get to know you questions and lists, not just related to dating, but questions to ask your spouse on a date night or to ask a student about their day at school or for job interviews, and on and on it goes.
[00:02:59] We're on a series called He Gets Us.
[00:03:02] I look at five different scenes from the life of Jesus that show just how he really does understand, empathize, sympathize, get us.
[00:03:11] And today we come to one where he asks his own get-to-know-you question.
[00:03:17] So what do you think it might be?
[00:03:19] What would Jesus ask if he were to ask a question related to either his desire to know you or to demonstrate how much he already knows you or wanted to draw out of you how much he knew of
[00:03:31] you? What would his question be? Let's find out. At least find out what the question was for one person. The scene that I want to look at is found in the biography of Jesus in the Bible that was
[00:03:42] compiled and written by a man named John. Let me read it. Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now, there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called
[00:03:55] Bethesda, and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. Let's stop there for a minute. Think about the condition of this man. Let's just
[00:04:16] wrap our heads around him for a minute. He'd been paraplegic for 38 years. You know how long that is? I mean, let's see if we can kind of get the feel of 38 years. 38 years ago for us would have
[00:04:31] been June of 1988. Mike Tyson was in his boxing prime. Cal Ripken played his 1,000th consecutive game. Billy Martin was still coaching the Yankees. The Lakers, which featured Magic Johnson, and James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won the NBA championship. Microsoft released MS-DOS
[00:04:54] 4.0. There was no such thing as Windows, except for the ones you looked out of. George Harrison of the Beatles released a single, This Is Love. Ronald Reagan was president. We've had six other presidents since then. That's 38 years, okay? And he spent those years as a paraplegic.
[00:05:15] And being paraplegic in those days was very different than today.
[00:05:18] It's nightmarish now.
[00:05:21] If you can imagine it being worse then, well, it was.
[00:05:26] Society threw you aside as less than worthless.
[00:05:30] There was no health insurance.
[00:05:31] So not only were you on your own, but a social and relational outcast whose only means for survival would have been begging of some sort.
[00:05:38] There were no wheelchairs to help you get around.
[00:05:41] Unless someone carried you or put you in a cart to take you somewhere, you had to crawl using your hands or forearms, pulling yourself along the ground wherever you needed to go.
[00:05:51] And we're talking about crawling around on streets that were dirt, not paved, that were used for animal-driven carts or to herd animals over and through, so they were filled with excrement.
[00:06:02] Personal hygiene was almost non-existent. Most paraplegics don't even have bowel or bladder control to begin with, and you couldn't help but soil yourself, and then you'd be hard-pressed to do anything about it. So between pulling yourself along the ground and your own hygiene challenges
[00:06:18] in first century Palestine, you would smell horribly and you would be physically repulsive.
[00:06:24] This man had been afflicted this way 38 years. Okay, now let's keep reading. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him,
[00:06:39] do you want to get well? 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. Okay, we need
[00:06:52] to stop there again. We have the question Jesus asked him, okay? But let's bracket that off for a minute. We're going to get into that. But here's what this man had been doing. He would crawl to
[00:07:04] the waters of Bethesda. Now, here's a model of what the pools would have looked like in that day.
[00:07:11] You can see the pool surrounded by the columns and covered areas where he would have sat.
[00:07:16] You can still go to Bethesda today.
[00:07:18] In fact, here are some of the actual ruins that are still present.
[00:07:23] There was a legend around these waters that an angel would come and stir up the waters from time to time.
[00:07:31] And when the angel did, the first one in the pool would be healed.
[00:07:36] There was no truth to it and nothing in Scripture about it.
[00:07:39] but this man went to live by the water, hoping. Even though he was so relationally isolated, he didn't have anybody to help him into the waters, even if they ever were stirred by an angel,
[00:07:50] which makes what Jesus asks him a little out of touch or sound a little out of touch, doesn't it?
[00:07:56] Even insensitive. Let me read it again. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, do you want to get well? Can you imagine how
[00:08:08] that must have sounded? With the guy saying, seriously? Do I want to get well? No, I like it here. I like the way I smell. I like crawling through the streets. I like the way I'm taunted
[00:08:19] and mocked and ridiculed by everyone. I like having to beg for a living. I like being kicked and beaten and taken advantage of by those who are cruel. Do I want to get well? This isn't
[00:08:32] someone who gets me, he was probably thinking. This is someone who doesn't get me. Or was it?
[00:08:41] most important question Jesus could have asked him, and not only the most important, but the most telling, the most informative, the most bridge-building. Think about it this way.
[00:08:52] Needing to get well and wanting to get well are two different things. Even desiring to get well and purposing to get well are two different things. For many people, what has crippled them becomes their way of life, so much so they don't want to change. We've all read stories about people
[00:09:13] who've been in prison for years and years and years, and they don't want to leave. And when they're forced to leave, either they've served their time or come up for parole and they get it,
[00:09:25] they often will commit some petty offense, anything they can, within 24, 48 hours, so that they can get back in as fast as they can because they don't know any other life. They don't want any other life. Then there are those who are in a difficult situation or have a physical
[00:09:41] challenge or face an ongoing disease, and they like what flows their way, the gifts, the pity, the sympathy, the attention, the concern. It's why there are stories of people who fake having something like cancer or they purposefully hurt themselves. It's actually called, there's a name
[00:10:00] for. You may have heard of Munchausen syndrome. Have you ever heard of that? Or it's also called a factitious disorder imposed on self. It's used for people who fake or induce physical or psychological symptoms specifically to gain attention, sympathy, or to play the sick role.
[00:10:21] It can even be extended to somebody else where you receive it vicariously. It's called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. When someone who is a caregiver, like a parent, lies about a child being sick or even makes the child sick to get sympathy. And then there are those who are just full of
[00:10:41] rationalizations and excuses about their condition, like the man in this story. Someone who says, I'm not well because no one will help me get in the water. And that's been his only strategy.
[00:10:51] That's been his only effort for 38 years.
[00:10:55] I just wish, need someone to help me.
[00:10:58] His only thought is to crawl into the waters and hope to be the first one to be healed.
[00:11:03] And because no one will help him, that's why he's not well.
[00:11:06] That's the reason.
[00:11:07] It's not about him.
[00:11:09] It's all about the people who will not help him.
[00:11:13] It's all about something outside of himself.
[00:11:15] You know, the real cause is never in the room.
[00:11:18] It's something outside of it.
[00:11:19] I once read something by David Gratz of the New York Times where he talked about this syndrome in our world.
[00:11:25] He called it the McVictim syndrome.
[00:11:28] For example, he talked about our obesity epidemic, how we're getting fatter.
[00:11:33] So we have to find somebody to blame, anybody but ourselves.
[00:11:37] And what we blame has to do be anything but our choice to eat too much or exercise too little.
[00:11:44] So we point the finger at food being too addictive or that it's all too processed or that we blame urban sprawl or the availability of supersized soft drinks or the fact that Krispy Kreme light flashed on or that crumble cookies updated their menu again this week or that now we have Grubhub and, you know, DoorDash.
[00:12:08] The goal seems to be to find a way to make obesity anybody's fault but our own.
[00:12:13] We blame the drive-thru, but forget that we're the ones who drove through it.
[00:12:18] It reminds me of a story I ran across years ago about a guy who went on a diet who decided to take a different way to work in the morning to help out his weight loss
[00:12:28] because his old route, he would drive right by a bakery, and it had become his habit to stop and get something to eat there when he knew he shouldn't.
[00:12:37] So he would go a different way.
[00:12:40] One day, though, he came into work and he had this huge slice of cheesecake.
[00:12:45] And some friends at the office said, hey, they were kind of ribbing him a little bit in a good natured way.
[00:12:50] They said, hey, we thought you were on a diet.
[00:12:52] He said, well, I am, but I have to trust in God and do what he wants me to do.
[00:12:57] And they said, what do you mean?
[00:12:59] He said, well, I accidentally took my old way into work today and I drove by the bakery and this cheesecake was just right there in the window.
[00:13:07] And I couldn't believe that the cheesecake, my favorite kind, mind you, was in the window by accident on this day that I drove by the bakery by accident.
[00:13:19] So I prayed, Lord, if you want me to have that cheesecake, let me have a parking space directly in front of the bakery.
[00:13:26] And wouldn't you know it, the eighth time around the block, there it was.
[00:13:32] Well, that's not all about this man lying by the pool.
[00:13:37] Think about what this says about his entire attitude toward the way he was doing life.
[00:13:41] He was lying around the waters hoping for a quick healing.
[00:13:44] In other words, beat the odds by being the first in the pool.
[00:13:48] And when that didn't happen, probably spending the rest of his day begging for money.
[00:13:52] He was the living embodiment of searching for a get-rich-quick, anything-but-hard-work scheme and never doing what it took to really accumulate wealth.
[00:14:03] He wanted to win the lottery.
[00:14:04] He wanted to get it all with little investment, little effort, little skill, little risk.
[00:14:09] So for him, the question Jesus asked was a really good one.
[00:14:13] Do you want to do what it takes to get well?
[00:14:17] Or do you want to play for mega millions and Powerball and get handouts the rest of the day?
[00:14:24] Jesus knew this man well.
[00:14:26] His question was to help the man get to know himself as well as Jesus knew him.
[00:14:31] This is a part of God getting us that's a little different, isn't it?
[00:14:34] It's one that we don't think about, and quite frankly, it's a little uncomfortable to think about.
[00:14:38] We want to say, you know, we want God to get us, you know, we say that, but what if he really gets us, you know, at that level of motivation and really revealing all the rationalizations that we've made in our life?
[00:14:55] Now, think about what it would mean if God, knowing us the way he does, asked us the same question.
[00:15:00] Is there something in our life that has us lying by the pool, obviously broken, obviously hurting, in need of God's healing touch, but it's not clear we want to be up and walking about that badly or that we're willing to do what it takes to be up and
[00:15:16] walking around? Are there areas where we're just comfortable in our brokenness and we just do not want to change? I remember a story from Cliff Koneckley, who worked with college students through a campus ministry, and he would go around to various campuses and would dialogue with
[00:15:33] students in various forms about the Christian faith. In one of his books, he tells of dialoguing with a college student about the claims of Christ. And the student was intellectually intrigued, so Cliff challenged him to go home and read the prophecies about the coming Messiah in the book
[00:15:50] of Isaiah in the Old Testament and then compare them to how they were fulfilled in great detail in the life of Jesus as recorded in the book of Matthew in the New Testament, or see if they
[00:16:00] weren't fulfilled. In other words, compare the prophecies with the reality of Jesus.
[00:16:04] The challenge was to put Jesus through that test to see if he really was the Messiah or could have been the Messiah. The student said, okay. The next day, he came back, and Cliff asked him what he
[00:16:13] decided, and the student said, well, I did a careful reading, and I'll be honest, I'm stunned.
[00:16:20] I honestly had no idea that the prophecies were fulfilled in that degree, with that specificity, with that precise nature, I was blown away.
[00:16:32] So Cliff said, well, great.
[00:16:35] Then let's have another conversation about the implications of that and what Christ might mean for your life.
[00:16:41] Are you game to explore that?
[00:16:43] And the student said, not really, not really.
[00:16:46] I have a very active, and he kind of looked around, make sure nobody was listening, said, you know, I have a very active sex life.
[00:16:53] And I know Jesus would probably want to change that.
[00:16:56] and I don't want anyone to change that. Do you want to get well? How many of us could Jesus say, do you want to stop watching porn? Do you want to stop gossiping? Do you want to lose weight?
[00:17:17] Do you want to end that affair? Do you want to save your marriage? Do you want to be reconciled with that person? Do you want to stop drinking to such excess? Do you want to stop sleeping around?
[00:17:31] Do you want to run with the right crowd at school? Do you want to stop stealing? Do you want to be ethical in your business dealings? Do you want to clean up your language? Do you want to stop
[00:17:45] being racist? Do you want to get well? You've been lying by the pool day in and day out, year after year and you never quite make it in the waters. Why is that? Is it because you really
[00:18:00] can't get in the waters in time or because you're just waiting for some magic pool to descend into your life sometime somewhere? And the thought of that would be nice, sort of, but not enough to
[00:18:13] do what it takes to do something a little more tangible. If you have some kind of rationalization, some kind of excuse, some kind of acceptance of your life the way it is, it keeps you from
[00:18:23] opening yourself up to what it takes to get well? Asking if you want to get well is really asking if you want to leave your old life so that you can have a new one. Do you really want to let go?
[00:18:39] Your old life is the one you're living right now. It's very comfortable. I know. I know.
[00:18:42] It's known. It's familiar. You've lived it a long time. You don't particularly like where it's brought you, you don't like what it holds for you down the road, or what it's done to you to date,
[00:18:56] you know, some of the collateral damage. So you would say you want to get well, but you don't really want to leave the old for the new. Jesus knew the man by the pool very well,
[00:19:09] just like he knows us well. He asked the right question. So what happened? Well, let's keep reading. Then Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your mat and walk. At once the man was cured and
[00:19:24] he picked up his mat and walked. Now that's an interesting miracle for Jesus. Let me tell you why that was. That's one that stands out among miracles. And here's why. There are two kinds of
[00:19:36] healings in the Bible that were performed by Jesus or related to Jesus. Let's call the first kind faith resulting. In other words, someone was healed because of their faith. When Jesus would heal people, he would often say that it was their faith that healed them. It was their faith that
[00:19:52] made them well. But this one was different. There was nothing about this man that indicated that he believed in Jesus or even knew who Jesus was or that he had any faith at all. In fact, he didn't
[00:20:05] even ask to be healed. Jesus just did it. So instead of faith resulting, let's call this one faith-creating, meaning this seemed to be an act of God, not as a result of this person's faith,
[00:20:20] but in the hopes of causing faith or creating faith, both in the man who was healed and those who saw him healed. So did it work? Here's the last bit of detail we're told about this man and
[00:20:36] in his interaction with Jesus. Later, Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, see, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.
[00:20:51] Okay, first, Jesus found the man in the temple. That's a good thing. He had enough sense to go there to pray or to give thanks, maybe to show himself to the religious leaders, to have the
[00:21:02] healing confirmed, which would have been custom for the day. So at least some small spark of the spiritual had been ignited in his life. Jesus runs into him and says, see, you're physically well again. In other words, do you see that God did something wonderful in your life? You're ready
[00:21:21] to acknowledge you were healed? I mean, this was a miraculous thing that God acted in your life.
[00:21:29] But then what did he say? Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.
[00:21:34] what is up with that? Well, it's pretty straightforward. Jesus tells him that even though he healed him, he needs to stop sinning or something worse will happen to him. I mean, he said what he said. That could seem at first that Jesus was suggesting that the man had been
[00:21:51] a paraplegic due to some ongoing pattern of sin in his life, that he had brought this onto himself.
[00:21:55] And that can happen. We all know that. You can have lung cancer because you've been smoking two packs a day for 20 years. We can have our spouse leave us because we were in a habitual ongoing
[00:22:07] affair that we wouldn't leave. We can go bankrupt because we went crazy with Draft Kings or Fan Duel, but that's highly unlikely in this case. Since this had been going on for 38 years, which is longer than many people in ancient times even lived, it was an exceptional life expectancy
[00:22:27] for that era. This would more likely have been something he had been born with or that came from a childhood illness or from an injury as a young child. So this is more about Jesus telling
[00:22:39] him that his physical condition was nothing compared to his spiritual condition, his eternal state. And if he didn't turn to God in light of this healing, if he didn't let this be faith creating, then his life would be even worse than it was. Because his hell on earth was nothing
[00:23:00] compared to facing a Christless eternity. So do you hear what Jesus was saying to this man?
[00:23:06] Once again, on the deepest and most profound levels, he was saying, do you want to get well, fully well, completely well? Because it's more than your physical body. I know you, and you're still not there. You're still not well. You've been physically healed, but that's all.
[00:23:25] Do you want to get well?
[00:23:31] And again, that's a question for a lot of people.
[00:23:34] Maybe it's a question for you.
[00:23:36] You know right now what you would like from God, how you would like him to heal you or provide for you or rescue you or care for you.
[00:23:45] You know how you would like to get well, but do you know how you need to get well?
[00:23:53] And if you did, would you want to?
[00:23:57] You know, one of the most fascinating little books you'll ever read is by C.S. Lewis.
[00:24:01] It was called The Great Divorce.
[00:24:05] Here was the premise.
[00:24:06] It's about a fictional group of people who take a bus from hell to heaven.
[00:24:12] And they were people who died and went to hell.
[00:24:15] And they had this opportunity to go to heaven, the board of bus and go to heaven.
[00:24:19] And what happens is fascinating.
[00:24:20] No one who takes the ride wants to stay.
[00:24:23] They don't want to live differently.
[00:24:24] They don't want to experience life differently.
[00:24:26] They don't want to live apart from their sin and dysfunction differently.
[00:24:30] They're miserable, but they don't want to stop the life that's made them miserable.
[00:24:35] Even when given the opportunity to live in absolute paradise, they have chosen an identity.
[00:24:42] And it's the identity they want, the one they are comfortable with, the one they are resigned to, the one they don't want to change.
[00:24:51] They've chosen to live by the pool.
[00:24:52] God really does get us, which is why he asks the question. He wouldn't ask it if he didn't know us. You've been lying by a pool, some kind of affliction, some need for life change,
[00:25:10] some area where you need healing. Jesus comes to you, able to heal you fully and completely, inside and out. You can enter into that healing by entering into it with him and through him, But make no mistake, before that journey can take place, he is going to ask you a question.
[00:25:29] Do you want to get well?
[00:25:33] And until you answer that one, really answer it, you'll never engage the life you're supposed to live and never escape the life you have been living, ever.
[00:25:48] So once again, we find that we have a God that really does get us.
[00:25:53] And once again, we find that the question really is not whether he gets us, but whether we want to get him.
[00:26:04] Well, we have one more story to get to in our series of the five very specific ones covering all kinds of different things that I picked out.
[00:26:11] I'm really excited about the one that we're ending with.
[00:26:14] But until then, until next week, let me pray for us.
[00:26:19] Father, we say that we long for you to know us.
[00:26:22] Help us to mean it and for us to mean it when we say we long to know you.
[00:26:28] And have all that knowing you means take hold in our life.
[00:26:32] We need to get well.
[00:26:34] Help us to come to you fully to get well.
[00:26:37] I pray that for all of us.
[00:26:39] I pray it in Jesus' name.
[00:26:42] Amen.