Jesus said to him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the sick man answered, “I don’t have a man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.” (John 5:6-7)

Jesus asks one of his famous questions, and the crippled man’s response seems almost patronizing. Like, “Clearly you don’t understand how this thing works. Let me explain it to you. These are the steps necessary for me to achieve healing, and yet clearly they aren’t working for me.”

He is answering with methodology and inability. Jesus is asking a question of desire and faith.

How often I have this same idea in my mind about how things should work, how to get from A to B. How to be healed. How God’s promises should be fulfilled. But, like this man’s idea, many of mine are rooted in works, not faith. Jesus offers a gift, but so much more than just the gift of the end result – Jesus offers freedom from a crippling, enslaving way of thinking. Jesus offers the freedom of faith. Jesus offers freedom through and through.

Jesus asks a question that cuts through to desire, to worldview, to understanding and perception of God – how he works, his character. He wants to reveal to us how small our view is of his love and his graciousness. He wants us to see that his gifts are better than anything we could earn.

May Jesus open our eyes to who he really is. May he awaken faith in us, trust in him and his goodness, not some formula or process. May our hearts be opened to his gifts – more than we can ask, more than end results, but a new creation from start to finish.