Do You Want to Be Healed?

John 4:28 NLT

The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he possibly be the Messiah?” So, the people came streaming from the village to see him.

“Thirst is the pain or discomfort of unmet need.” – Chip Judd

Unhealthy patterns are established by trying to:

• Defend or protect ourselves from something
• Find comfort or security for something
• Find healing or relief for something

John 4:10 NLT

Jesus, replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask ME, and I would give you living water.”

Unhealthy patterns create:

• More thirst 

Jeremiah 2:12-13 ESV

“Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

Isaiah 58:11 NLT

“The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.”

Unhealthy patterns create:

• More thirst 
• Idols in my life

An idol is anyone or anything that takes the place of God in my life.

Idolatry is established when we give a person, a pattern, or belief a higher place of superiority than God in our lives.

Unhealthy patterns create:

• More thirst 
• Idols in my life
• Walls of separation

John 5:2-9 ESV

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

Stronghold means both “fortress” and “prison.”

A prison is designed to keep others from getting in and keep the one inside from getting out.

Acts 3:19-20 NLT

Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away. Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord …