He Wants To

Matthew 8:1-3 (The Message)
Jesus came down the mountain with the cheers of the crowd still ringing in his ears. Then a leper appeared and went to his knees before Jesus, praying, "Master, if you want to, you can heal my body."  Jesus reached out and touched him, saying, "I want to. Be clean." Then and there, all signs of the leprosy were gone.

What it is that you want Jesus to do for you?  You may think that sounds selfish, but there is nothing that I have that I didn’t receive from Jesus.  If there is anything good I can contribute to the world, I first received it from Jesus.  So like Peter I also say “OK, in that case, baste me!”  You want to give, that isn’t the issue.  The issue is whether you are in a position to give something that is truly authentic, helpful and life changing.  

So if you could ask, what would you ask for?

“Master, if you want to, you can...”

“I want to.  Be...”

“But if He wants to, why doesn’t He?”  Tough question.  We could spend hours speculating about why God’s purposes aren’t prevailing in the way that they should, but would that really make you feel any better?  The helpful part of this question is “Well, what then can I do so God’s purposes can take shape in my life?”  Better question.

John 5:1-9 (NIV)
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.  Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called 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 thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "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."  Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

We’ve had our “conditions” for a long time you see and our current realities have even become incredibly comfortable – we’ve accepted them, made peace with them, and sometimes we’ve even become good friends with them.  The question Jesus asks here addresses the core of what is keeping His purposes from flowing freely in our lives: “After all these years, do you still want to get well?”  That is the question.

Don’t get offended.  I know you want to get well, but it’s going to take more than just “of course”.

The problem is, we’ve developed a number of defence mechanisms.  These defence mechanisms are ways in which we help ourselves feel at ease with our current realities.  It’s the ways in which we explain to ourselves why our situation and the world as we know it is OK, so we can feel that things make sense, God is in control, and everything is going to work out fine.  But when we reduce things to a place where we can understand it all we limit what God can and wants to do.

So if you ask God to do something once, and He doesn’t do it, then it must be His will not to do it, otherwise He would have done it, right?  But what about timing?  What about your role?  What about the role of others?  What if you don’t correctly understand what needs to happen before...  and so on.

Do you still believe that God wants to?  Do you really want God’s purposes in your life?  Do you really want God’s purposes in the world?  Then let’s not get complacent and try and explain things.  Let’s seek after God’s Kingdom and every good gift with a passion and commitment!

Let’s refuse to settle for anything less than God’s Best.