Lent, Day 32: Do you want to be healed?

The second night of YAR Cody Hodges spoke to us about how God wants to heal us. He basically waits for us to ask and He's right there ready and willing to make us whole! And, as an athlete, Cody has been healed from many physical injuries, but Friday night he was talking about the emotional hurts we carry. God sees those scars to our heart and He longs to remove them. But the devil likes to prey upon us when we slip up; when we go back to that comfortable sin, he likes to bring it up again and again and tells us that God wouldn't forgive us for that, that particular slip is just too much... But that is a blatant lie. God's grace covers us if we repent!

Of course, we cannot just ask for forgiveness and not allow Him to change us. Cody gave the example of the man Jesus healed at the pool at Bethesda in John 5:1-9. This passage tells the story of a man who was lame for 38 years! He sat by a pool with supposed healing powers, but was never able to or helped to get into the pool at the right time. When Jesus came passing through He asked this man, "Do you want to be healed?" You would think that the man's answer would be a swift, "YES!" but he answers with excuses as to why he wasn't healed already. How often do we do this? Jesus is asking if we'd like to be healed, but we go on carrying our emotional baggage and giving into familiar temptations because we're afraid of how much we'd change if we just let Him do His work in us! But Jesus longs to tell us to "Pick up our mat and walk!" So, how would you answer Him today - He's asking "Do you want to be healed?"