Friday October 13, 2023
John 5:5-6
Now a certain man was there [Bethesda pool] who had an infirmity thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that
condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”
Jesus has many ailing friends.
They have once been healed. They have received the antidote to sin into their hearts, the unmerited grace of God, which is effective both against the guilt and the power of sin.
But little by little they have neglected to make use of this means of healing. And unless one’s relationship to God is always right, peace with Him soon comes to an end, and one’s old sinful habits, quietly but surely, resume their dominion again.
There will still be striving, but not with victory in mind. One loses faith in the ability to become victorious.
There are more people lying at this pool than we suspect.
With unnumbered and unheard-of sufferings, and, worst of all, with hopelessness hanging clammily and heavily over their longing souls.
While others observe a festive occasion and go up to Jerusalem, these people lie in hopeless agony.
But then Jesus comes.
Today He asks you: “Would thou be made whole?”
Would thou? That is the question, for most of the people at this pool do not desire to be made well. They will not enter upon a decisive struggle against their sins. That would involve too great an expenditure of honor, strength, time, and money.
Would thou?
“Oh, it is impossible for me!” you sigh.
My dear friend, Jesus is not asking you if you can, but if you will. Jesus can if you will.
Tell Him the whole truth, how you have yielded and compromised until you have become the contemptible wretch that you are. Tell Him all, and He will forgive you all—without any merit at all on your part.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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