Do You Want to Get Well?

This is a story of sin and misery. Something is broken in this man’s body, and for 38 years he has missed family events, sunrises, trips, and conversations. Then on a random day the King of Kings walks into his space and sees him.

The man was friendless, helpless, and hopeless, and Pastor Brady said that is the usual order. It starts with friendless, then helpless, and it ends in hopeless. Every person needs friends, help, and hope.

Jesus saw a man everyone else had ignored. Over time, sin’s conditions harden us until we can walk past people and not see them. No one can help everyone. The question is whether you see them, whether you see the image of God in every broken soul, and whether you are open to God tugging on your heart to get involved.

Jesus asks a question that sounds obvious, but the answer is not always yes. Many of us have tried to help someone with money, food, or a job and watched them keep choosing the old path. Pastor Brady offered that as a prayer point: sometimes the pain of trying to get well is more severe than accepting a new normal and staying sick.

Getting well can be a long road. A young man in the congregation spent months in intensive care and rehab after a massive car accident. He had to decide whether to stay sick or take the first step toward getting well. He took it, and today he has a job and is thriving.

Therapists call the alternative prison thinking. We get so accustomed to living with our sickness that healing feels impossible, like the character in The Shawshank Redemption who cannot function outside prison. But you have been set free, and the call of Jesus on your life is freedom.

The man’s answer is an excuse, and a revealing one: he has no one to help him into the pool. This was not a healthy community. When the water stirred, people ran past each other to get in first.

Pastor Brady joked that Colorado’s state motto is leave me alone. After 19 years here, he has noticed how independent and private the state is. But we need people who will help us. The first step for every addict is admitting they need help, and most people stuck in cycles of abuse and poverty could escape if they had someone to help them.

When Pastor Brady led New Life, the church bought Mary’s Home, and the first women who came off the streets with their kids stood in the doorway sobbing. It was the first place in years where they felt safe. They had never had anybody give them anything. Most of us, he said, are two relationships away from that same spot.

That is the mission of the church. Not entertainment, but belonging to one another, seeing one another, and serving and praying for one another. It is why church starts at 9:30 and the service at 10:00. Before you leave on Sunday, ask someone at your table how you can pray for them, then follow up the next week.

Jesus answers with three commands, and each one means something. The first, get up, is salvation language. He is offering a complete change of life: after 38 years of defeat, a 180-degree turn.

This was the man’s moment of faith. Pastor Brady said most Sundays he will stand up and say that Jesus has already paid for your sins, and you do not have to live in shame, misery, guilt, or condemnation. Sin has been paid for; what keeps people from salvation is unbelief. Someday, he said, you will have the faith to believe it.

No one knows what happened in the man’s mind. Maybe he twitched a muscle. But his body responded in a way it never had. Some people believe they are stuck with bad muscle memory. The moment you put your trust in Jesus, your thinking, attitude, and behavior begin to change, not by your strength or goodness but by the grace of the Lord.

Then Jesus says pick up your mat, which Pastor Brady, a self-described germ freak, admits sounds gross after 38 years by the water. But the mat was the man’s story. Carry it so people can see where you used to lie and who you are now.

Every scar is a story. Pastor Brady has one from age 15, when a box opener nearly took him out in aisle nine of the Dixie Dandy where he stocked shelves. Scars say there was an injury, it hurt, it could have killed you, and you were saved. You do not have to share every detail of your past. You do need to tell people about your mat.

The last command is walk. The man had been in the same place every day, and his world had become very small. Illness does that. People who were world travelers, soldiers, and leaders of big families and companies can end up with a world the size of a room and a hallway.

Grief, hurt, and trauma keep us in small spaces too. Jesus says get up and walk: go explore, quit thinking so small, take a step. Your life no longer has to be centered on the pain.

The charge for the week is two questions to bring to the Holy Spirit: Where do I need healing? Who do I need to ask for help? Admitting brokenness is hard in a highlight-reel world, but The Village wants to be a church where people are honest before the Lord and honest with each other.