When Grace Interrupts Hopeless Religion

Do You Want to Be Made Well? (John 5:6)

Last week, we looked at how Jesus met a condemned woman with a grace-awakening question that helped her realize that the only One who could condemn her had chosen not to. This week, we turn to another question of Jesus, spoken to a man who had waited 38 years beside the pool of Bethesda: “Do you want to be made well?”

John 5: ¹After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ² Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. ³ In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. ⁴ For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. ⁵ Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. ⁶ 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?”

⁷ The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

⁸ Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” ⁹ And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.

And that day was the Sabbath. ¹⁰ The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed.”

¹¹ He answered them, “He who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’ ”

¹² Then they asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” ¹³ But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place. ¹⁴ Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

¹⁵ The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

A man had been sick for 38 years. He was lying near the pool of Bethesda, surrounded by many others who were blind, lame, and paralyzed. They were all waiting for the water to move. They believed that when the water was stirred, the first person to enter the pool would be healed.

Then Jesus saw him. One interesting thing to note here is that this man didn’t call out to Jesus or ask for healing. He didn’t even recognize Who was standing before him. 

Jesus saw him lying there. He knew he had been in that condition a long time. And still asked him the question: “Do you want to be made well?”

At first, the question sounds unnecessary. Why else would a sick man be lying beside a pool of healing? Why else would he stay there year after year, watching, waiting, and hoping?

But Jesus does not ask empty questions. So what was He asking?

Was He asking whether the man still had desire left in him? Was He asking whether 38 years of disappointment had done something deeper than afflict his body? Was He asking whether the man had become so accustomed to waiting that he could no longer imagine walking?

If we think about it, we can remain so close to the place of healing, know the vocabulary of faith, hear stories of miracles and transformation, and yet quietly stop believing that grace can still make us whole.

Not necessarily whole in the sense that every sickness disappears or every wound is removed, but whole in the deeper sense where we are freed from despair, released from shame, restored to hope, and awakened again to the possibility that Christ can still give life where we have stopped expecting it.

Maybe that is why Jesus asked the question.

Not because the answer was obvious, but because it was not.

The pool was not just a place. It had become a system.

John tells us that a great number of disabled people who were blind, lame, and paralyzed were lying there. They were waiting for the movement of the water. So everything depended on timing, strength, help, and competition. Who could get there first? Who had someone to carry them? Who had enough strength left to move? Who would be left behind again?

For 38 years, this man had lived inside that system. Healing was always close enough to see, but never close enough to receive. Hope was always moving, but someone else always reached it first.

That is a cruel kind of religion. Isn’t it? 

It keeps healing in front of you, but always slightly beyond you. It tells you that life is possible, but only if you can move faster, try harder, believe better, or find the right person to help you at the right moment.

And after a while, the system begins to shape the soul.

The man does not seem shocked by his condition anymore. He has an explanation for his predicament. He knows how the pool works, why others are healed, and why he is not healed. His disappointment has become organized. His hopelessness has become reasonable.

That may be why Jesus does not ask him about the water or help. Instead, He asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

Because the deepest problem may not have been the distance between the man and the pool. It may have been the distance between the man and hope.

When Jesus asked, the man did not say Yes, I want to be healed. Instead, he said, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am coming, another steps down before me.”

It was a reasonable answer and probably true. He had no one, and others did get there first. The system had failed him repeatedly. But still, he did not answer the question.

Jesus asked him about his desire, but the man answered with an explanation and the 38-year history of why wholeness had not happened.

Isn’t that what disappointment does to us?

After enough unanswered prayers, enough failed attempts, enough recommitments that did not last, enough shame that did not lift, we learn to explain why nothing changes. We know the reasons. We know the pattern. We know why others seem to move forward while we remain where we are. And the explanation may even be true. But a true explanation can still become a prison.

The man was not lying. He really had no one to help him. But Jesus was not asking him whether the pool had worked for him. Jesus was asking whether he could still receive life from a place he had not expected.

That is where grace begins to disturb us.

Grace does not first argue with our explanation. It asks whether our explanation has become our identity. 

Do we still want to be made well, or have we made peace with the story of why we cannot be?

When Grace asks that question, life gets uncomfortable.

We think that people lose hope because they don’t believe or didn’t believe enough. But the reality is that many lose hope because they believed, prayed, tried, waited, and were disappointed.

They asked God for freedom, but the same weakness remained. They asked for peace, but the anxiety came back. They asked for transformation, but the old patterns returned.

They listened to testimonies, watched others speak of breakthroughs, and tried to be happy for them. But somewhere inside, a quieter voice began to say, “That may happen for them, but not for me.”

This is one of the hidden wounds of works-based religion. An obvious trait of works-based religion is that it produces pride in people. But sometimes it also produces despair. 

When religion becomes a system of trying harder, surrendering better, praying longer, believing stronger, and proving readiness, the soul eventually grows tired. And when the promised change does not come, the person does not simply doubt the system. They often begin to doubt themselves.

Maybe I did not pray correctly or did not believe enough. Maybe I did not surrender fully, or God is testing my faith. And after a while, hopelessness begins to sound like humility.

But Jesus does not ask the man to explain the system or to defend the pool. He does not ask him to diagnose why others were healed, and he was not.

He simply asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

Because grace does not begin by measuring whether we have succeeded inside the system. Grace begins by standing before us in Christ and offering what the system could never give.

It is also possible that not everyone loses hope because they try too hard. Sometimes people lose hope because they have learned to be careful. They have seen religious exaggeration. They have heard testimonies that felt too polished. They have watched people use miracle language carelessly. They prayed for things that did not happen. They have seen suffering remain. 

So they become cautious. They do not reject Scripture. They do not mock the stories. They may still come to church, sing the hymns, listen to the sermons, and nod respectfully when someone speaks about healing or transformation. But inside, they have quietly lowered their expectations.

They believe God can forgive in some general way. They believe religion can provide meaning, community, and moral guidance. 

But do they still believe Christ can interrupt a life? Do they still believe grace can awaken what disappointment has buried? Do they still believe a person can be made new?

Personally, I recognize both of those impulses in myself. I have tried hard, and I have also become cautious. Part of me still wants to believe that Christ can interrupt a life, but another part has learned to lower expectations so disappointment will not hurt as much.

This story in John 5 does not ask us to explain how miracles work. It asks whether we recognize the One standing before the man. The man was waiting for the water to move. But Jesus did not stir the water. He spoke to the man.

That is the scandal of grace.

It does not always come through the system we have studied, defended, doubted, or trusted. It comes through Christ Himself. And when Christ speaks, the question is no longer whether the pool is realistic.

Paul says in Romans 3: 21-22 

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

The question is whether we still believe Christ can give us life.

Going back to the story, Jesus does something surprising. He does not improve the man’s chances within the system. He bypasses the system altogether. 

He simply says: “Rise, take up your bed and walk.”

That is the turning point of the story.

The man thought healing depended on reaching the water. But Jesus showed him that healing depended on hearing His word. The man thought his problem was that he had no one to help him into the pool. Jesus showed him that grace does not need the pool.

This is what grace does.

It does not merely help us succeed inside the system that has exhausted us. It interrupts the system altogether.

It does not say, try harder, wait longer, or prove that you are ready. It speaks life where life has been lost.

For 38 years, this man had been waiting for the water to move. But that day, the water did not need to move. Jesus had come.

So maybe the question is not only for the man at Bethesda. Maybe it is also for us.

Do we want to be made well?

Not merely healed from pain, but made whole by grace?

Do we want to be made well from the religion that exhausted us, from the shame that named us, from the disappointment that taught us not to hope, and from the quiet belief that transformation happens to other people?

That is a hard question.

Because after enough years beside the pool, waiting can feel normal. Explaining can feel normal. Even disappointment can become familiar. And sometimes familiar misery feels safer than unfamiliar freedom.

What would it mean to rise? What would it mean to stop organizing our life around the story of why nothing has changed?

What would it mean to believe that Christ can still speak life into places where we have stopped expecting anything new?

John 5 does not permit us to promise that every sickness will disappear now. But it does confront the deeper paralysis that can settle over the soul when hope has been disappointed too long.

Jesus’ question reaches that place.

Do you want to be made well?

Do you still want the life that grace is offering?

Or have you only learned how to survive beside the pool?

But the story does not end with the man walking. It moves immediately into controversy. The healing happened on the Sabbath. So when the religious leaders saw the man carrying his mat, they did not first ask, Are you the man who could not walk? They did not rejoice that a man who had suffered for 38 years was now standing. 

Instead, they noticed the mat. A system built around measurement will often notice the violation before it notices the miracle.

The man had been made well. Grace had interrupted 38 years of waiting. But the religious imagination was trained to ask a different question. Why are you breaking the law?

This is one of the dangers of religion without grace. It can become so committed to order that it no longer knows how to celebrate life. It can defend the Sabbath and miss the Lord of the Sabbath. It can protect the rule and fail to see the restored person standing in front of it.

And if we are honest, this is not only their problem. We can do the same. We can hear a testimony and question its form. We can see transformation and inspect its timing. We can watch Grace raise someone and still wonder whether they are carrying the mat correctly.

But Jesus did not come to make the man more acceptable to the system. He came to make him well. And when grace makes someone well, the first response should not be investigation. It should be wonder.

Later, Jesus finds the man in the temple and says, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

That warning should not be ignored, but the order matters.

Jesus does not say, “Stop sinning, and then I will heal you.” He heals him first. Grace comes first. The warning comes after.

So “sin no more” does not mean, “Become worthy of healing.” It means, “Do not return to the life from which grace has just raised you.”

Grace does not require transformation before it comes. But once it comes, it refuses to leave us where it found us.

For 38 years, the man waited for the water to move. He knew the place. He knew the system. He knew the explanation. He knew why healing had not happened.

But that day, grace did not come from the water. Grace came in the Person standing before him.

Maybe that is still the question for us. Are we waiting beside pools that cannot make us whole? Are we trusting systems, formulas, explanations, and religious effort to do what only Christ can do?

The man thought he needed someone to help him get into the water. But Jesus gave him something greater. He gave him life without the pool.

That is grace.

It does not reward the successful. It raises the hopeless.

It does not ask whether we have tried hard enough, waited long enough, or understood enough. It asks the question that reaches beneath all our explanations:

Do you want to be made well?

Discussion questions:

• When Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well?” what part of us might resist answering yes?
• Why is it often easier to explain why we are not well than to receive the possibility that Christ may still make us whole?

Anonymous: I felt this discussion was made for me. It is so real in my situation with the cancer lately. I experienced exactly what you’re talking about.

Thank God for the grace that prepared me to face my sickness in a different way. My trust, which I had previously placed in the practice of medicine and religion as well, proved to be nothing important, nothing I could lean on. But grace came to me and changed me. It changed my body and changed my soul. I could see the results.

That’s exactly the struggle of everyone. Do you want to be whole? Do you want to be made well? And if you have this conviction inside of you—“yes, I want to”—no matter what the hindrances are, then everything changes.

You could think very practically and come up with answers like this man by the pool. Of course, medical practice had failed him. Do I still want to be made whole? Well, of course I do. I want to. And now I know another way. I know what grace can do. I don’t need the old systems. They didn’t work. They will not work.

I believe very convincingly that grace can accomplish what we cannot, what systems cannot, and what everything else cannot. The change is so deep, so sustainable. It cannot go away as long as we lean wholly on grace and on the Word of God. His promise is true. He can do it.

It’s none of my beliefs. It’s none of my effort. I completely lean on Him and His promises. That’s why I believe I’m where I am now.

Donald: There is structure, or there is a system. The man was next to the pool, and that was the structure. He knew that if he could make it to that pool, potentially he could be well. Apparently other people had made it to the pool and had been healed, which is an interesting thing to consider as well. What about the people who, during those 38 years or so, actually made it to the pool? Whatever their disease was, whatever their challenge was, what evidence was there that the system worked for at least some people?

Religion is kind of a system. It’s form. It’s practice. You go to a hospital—it’s form and practice. This is where you go in, this is what happens, this is the routine of that system. Maybe religion is the same thing, and this story actually represents God interrupting that. Jesus never said, “Let’s get you over toward the pool.” Of course, Christ knew He could make him well.

It is interesting that He asked him, “Do you want to be made well?” Kiran, I think you’ve tried to explain why that question was asked. But when you go into a hospital, when you go into a church, and someone asks, “Would you like to be made well?” we might look up and say, “What kind of question is that? That’s why I’m here.”

But the system doesn’t always seem to work. So maybe we have to be very careful about putting our faith in a system. We tend to find God within the system.

Don: Donald makes an important point, and that is that there must have been enough evidence that the system was effective to keep people there for 30 years.

David: It shows that there must have been some hope left in him for him to stick it out, to stay there and not just pack up and go home. I see some remarkable linkages between the book of Ecclesiastes and what Kiran has presented today. Ecclesiastes too looks rather glumly on the world, as though nothing is going to change. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’re not going to make it to that pool, so forget about it.

But Ecclesiastes has one thing: hope. He expresses it very clearly when he says that God has set eternity in our hearts. To me, that is what redeems the entire book of Ecclesiastes. It is the most remarkable statement in the book. It’s what gives you hope. And I think that is what this man at the pool had. It was the eternity in his heart that kept him at the pool, that kept that hope alive that he could be saved.

Donald: If you were to go to a hospital and, during the little time you spent entering through the emergency room, all you saw were gurneys going out instead of wheelchairs going out and people stepping into their cars, you would feel quite differently about the success of being in that system. And at church, how do you feel when you’re walking out? Do you feel better? Does it improve your life? Does it provide hope? Probably providing hope is really the number one reason for going to church, for going to the system. I don’t know.

Sharon: I have a social-work perspective on this. If that had been his community for 38 years, he’s got to be a little frightened. He obviously had no family and no support system. If that’s where he’s been all that time, it’s kind of like the homeless community, where everybody knows everybody else. Obviously somebody was feeding him, and for him to have survived, I think maybe Jesus asked the question because this was going to create major disequilibrium for him. Moving him out of his 38-year comfort zone meant leaving not just the pool, but the support system he knew.

So one of my perspectives is that maybe Jesus was asking, “Are you really ready to get out of your comfort system?” To be made well meant that everything he had known for 38 years was no longer going to be valid.

The other issue that strikes me about the question itself comes from behavior-change theory. Stanford has developed a model suggesting that whether you want to lose weight or make any other major change, desire is the critical trigger for behavior change. So the question is also interesting from that perspective. Without the desire for something to be different, are you really ready for the change you want to happen in your life? I’m fascinated by this question because it really asks, “Am I ready to have an experience that is way outside my habituation and comfort zone?”

Donald: I look back at when my mom was in the hospital during her last few days, and the question came up whether we should do hospice care and take her back to the place that she was familiar with, which connects to what I think Sharon just said.

A friend of mine who was a physician—I asked him what he thought of that idea—and he said, “For sure, get her out of the hospital.” For my mother, who still understood what was going on, he said it would be like being on the moon. It was so far out of her comfort zone: the lights, the nurses, all this care coming in and out. It was completely unfamiliar. So put her back in the comfort zone she was familiar with.

Now that is a big step to take—to leave one’s comfort zone and go into a system or environment that is totally unfamiliar. It might be easier, even if it wasn’t as good, simply because it’s what you’re familiar with.

Don: Welcome, Carolyn. I understand you’re home. That’s good news. Kiran, give a two-minute update for Carolyn’s sake on the question you’re working on.

Kiran: Today I talked about the story where Jesus goes to the pool called Bethesda, where many sick people were lying, and He finds this one man who had been sick for 38 years. Then He asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”

The first question is, why would you even ask that? Why would he be lying there for 38 years if not for healing? Why would Jesus ask that question? Probably because Jesus wanted to see whether the man still had desire in his heart. Did he still have hope in his heart? And the man, instead of responding, “Yes,” gives an explanation. He says, “No one is there to put me into the pool. When I try to get there, someone else gets there before me.”

So this pool is like a system. It is about who gets there first, who has help, who can move faster than everyone else. There is competition to reach the water first because, despite all the people there, only one person gets healed when the angel comes. It is a works-based religious system. And it’s kind of a cruel system because it always keeps hope in front of you, but never within reach. When you’ve been in that system long enough, when you’ve been disappointed long enough, you become hopeless. You develop despair. You don’t outright reject religion, but you stop believing that miracles can happen to you. Then Jesus comes and says, “Rise up, take your bed, and walk.” Jesus doesn’t heal him within the system. He completely interrupts the system and gives him grace directly.

Coming back to us today, we’ve been in this works-based religion of Seventh-day Adventism, whether we like it or not. We’re here because someone brought us here, or because we were born into it. The system is very well designed. You have to read Ellen White. You have to witness. You have to do this and that. Be vegetarian. Do all these things. They’re all good things, but it is no longer about Jesus. It becomes about who gets there first, who has the strongest will, who can keep all these things for the longest time. The focus becomes you.

Then Jesus comes to a person who has been there long enough, failed enough times, and lost hope. He says, “Do you want to be made well?” When I say “made well,” I don’t mean never getting sick or never sinning. I mean being whole. Having the peace that comes from knowing God has given you grace, accepted you, and does not condemn you. When Jesus comes to people like us, we have explanations for why the system failed us—or why the system is still good but we failed.

So the question for me today is this: Jesus is coming to me today. I’ve been in the system long enough. I’ve tried long enough. I’ve worked hard enough. I know all the things Ellen White tells me to do. I know the devotions and everything else. But I’m tired. I’ve failed enough that I’m dead inside in some ways. And Jesus is asking me, “Do you want to be made well?”

Will I still give an explanation, or will I simply say, “Yes, Lord, I want to be made well”? Do I still trust that the miracle language of Scripture can be true for me? Do I still believe that God’s grace can touch me, transform me, and give me a future of serving Him and His people in ways I never imagined? Maybe not in some dramatic way like Paul, but in small ways that give meaning, hope, and purpose.

So that’s the story today: Do you want to be made well?

David: I think that focus on explanation is a key part of this whole story. Jesus asked the man about his desire, but instead of answering, the man launched into an explanation of why he was there and what was happening at the pool. 

There was also a remarkable line that Kiran gave: even a true explanation can become a prison. We have to ask: Is that what religion is doing? Is it creating a prison? Is it placing people into a spiritual prison that they find difficult to escape?

Luckily, I think grace is represented by that Ecclesiastical phrase, “eternity in the heart.” That is what was clearly present in the man, and it was that which Jesus was able to touch. I think the message is that He can touch it not only in the man at the pool but in all of us, if we allow Him to.

Don: But the question still lingers: Is there a role for the system to play in this story?

Kiran: I think the system’s role is supposed to be pointing us to Christ. But it miserably fails because it points us to ourselves—to our own doing and our own performance. In a well-meaning way, it keeps asking, “Have you flexed your spiritual muscles today?” when it should be asking, “Have you focused on Christ today?” That’s the problem with the system.

The more I read the Bible with this new understanding—I’ve just finished Romans—I see Paul talking about eating meat offered to idols, special days, and all these kinds of issues. He seems to break down the entire Adventist mindset right there. Sometimes I think that if people seriously took what Paul taught, we shouldn’t even exist as a denomination.

Yet here I am in this system. Why am I still here? Why would God bring me into this system? There must be a reason. Maybe our task is to discover that reason and then reinvigorate the system instead of abandoning it. I think I’m struggling with that.

Sharon: For me, the system creates community. I can’t imagine where I would be without community. The paradox is that the community that should function as a safety net can sometimes become coercive or unhealthy. But if Christ is at the center, and if we have a system of tolerance, forgiveness, and grace, then the system creates community. 

I can’t imagine wanting to do away with the system altogether. What would my grandchildren have as a sense of community if everything were simply between them and Jesus? So while the system is flawed in many ways, I think that if the focus is on Jesus, then the system can become a highly nurturing community—the kind of community I think God intended the church to be from the beginning.

C-J: I think part of it is just one’s time and place in life. It’s not unusual for a person to get to where you are on the timeline and say, “I’m lost. I’ve done everything I know how to do. I’ve reached my goals, but there’s something missing. I’m not sure whether I should turn left, turn right, or just keep moving forward.”

I think that’s a pretty typical place for people when they get to your age. They have to reinvent themselves and find different kinds of mentors who are farther down the road. And sometimes it’s okay to sit by the pool for 38 years, because God will bring to you the people who need to understand why you’re still at the pool. They may say, “I don’t want to look like you.” And you may say, “But God has put me here to teach you wisdom. I don’t have to seek you out. God will bring you to me.”

Then you can share your story as they share theirs. When you were at this point, how did you get through it? When you lost so much, how did you get through it? When you asked those really hard questions and saw the hypocrisy and the failures, how did you get through it?

And the answer is relationship. If I wait upon You, Lord, until I hear Your voice, then I will say nothing. Eventually, you hear that voice. God will bring to you, just as He did to the man at the portico, what you need to hear. Sometimes you need time to be quiet within yourself—not seeking, not doing, not reinventing, not trying to force all the puzzle pieces into place.

It’s a difficult time. Around your fifties you begin to say, “Wow. I’ve lived a good life. I’ve done good things. I see my child flourishing. My marriage is solid.” All those things you’ve worked for and invested in are there, and yet something changes. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’re different. You need more. And it will come. Just keep living by faith, and God will reveal it in a different way.

Donald: I believe what Sharon said is very, very important—how important community is to one’s life. As we age, we sometimes ask, “Should we move?” But really, the first thing we think about is what we would lose by doing that. We would lose our community. We would be uprooted and have to go somewhere else and try to build another community, which is very challenging.

To lose one’s community seems to be near the top of the list of things we fear losing. For years I worked at the university in retention, and it was expressed over and over again that one of the main reasons students stay is a sense of belonging. What we’re really striving for is to belong to a community. That is something spiritual, I believe. It’s not simply a matter of feeling good because good people are around us. It’s important to be surrounded by people with whom you share history, time, and place.

So I think there is something to be said here. Don is always asking, “Can you hold both things at the same time?” Can I have the system and also have a direct relationship with God? Can I do both concurrently? I think it’s important not to let go of the system because you lose your community.

C-J: Yes, I think Maslow would support what Sharon said. But speaking personally, I never really had community. The communities I experienced were always brief and transitional. So my relationship with God was different. I expected things to change. I expected long periods of being alone. I expected that what I was learning and how I would be used were all preparation. I never became attached. I just understood that life was transition, and I tried to remain prepared and receptive.

There is loss, of course. We mourn loss. But we also wait. When the man left that pool, he left old thinking. He left old ways of being. He left dependency. He left the messages that reinforced why he was there. So when he left, it wasn’t simply an event of trusting God. It was a transformation. It was the beginning of an entirely new relationship.

We are crippled by narratives. We are poisoned by narratives. Some things exist in environments that allow us to survive but not to thrive. But Jesus came and said, “You can thrive. Take up your bed and walk.” That’s a huge transition. It had no roots in anything familiar to him. But relationship gives us power. When the Holy Spirit comes in, it gives us authority through relationship.

Don: It’s the end product of grace, which is transformation into a new birth.

Carolyn: As I have been transferred into a new situation myself, I’ve experienced a great deal of transition during the last year. One thing I’ve noticed with the people who have come to care for me is that, this weekend in particular, I had two caregivers who spoke very little English. I spent several hours with them, and at first I had no idea about their faith. I didn’t know where they were from or anything about their background.

But as we gradually peeled back the layers, the moment I discovered that they loved Jesus, I immediately felt that I had community. I had no idea where they were in their walk with the Lord, but we used Scripture to get us through. That was the one thing we had in common. They would read Scripture on their phones in English, and I would help them with their English. In turn, we were able to have meaningful discussions, even though I didn’t know their language or their cultural background.

It was a wonderful experience for me. It was joyful for them as well. We even ended up singing together because we had that relationship. Jesus was at the center of it, and we both knew that we needed to keep our hands in His.

Kiran: My desire is not to leave the community. My desire is to have a community where everyone receives the grace of God and then shares that grace with others. I think that’s what we need. We need to be less judgmental and more grace-oriented. Then the church will flourish.

Don: More to come.

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