One of the things that you read in the Gospels is Jesus asking someone if they want to be healed. It seems a strange thing to ask a blind man, so pointless to ask a paralytic what he wants Jesus to do for him. The longer I am in ministry the more it makes sense to ask such things. The church should be a place where people get healed, therefore it should be a place for the sick in any way, the wounded, etc. What I experience is that often those people don't want to get healed and made whole, they are identified too deeply with the wounding to let it be healed, they are the guy wounded by the church or by ministers or whatever and they don't know how to live any other way.
In every church I have ever worked I have seen the same pattern, someone comes in who has been hurt by the church and people begin to reach out and offer sympathy and then the person gets influence at some level. Soon, they begin to share their expertise in how the church should really be operating and that this church doesn't really care about people. Along the way, they drive people away because no one wants to hear the constant complaint and criticism, wounded guy becomes lonely, isolated guy and it is now the fault of this church and the pattern continues at another church.
Jesus didn't waste time with people who didn't want to be healed. Maybe we should start asking the question in churches.
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