Do You Want to Get Well?

Use these materials to go deeper into this message on your own, or with your small group. 
Passage Breakdowns, SOAPS Format & Instructions (Weeks 1-12)
Passage Breakdowns, SOAPS Format & Instructions (Weeks 13-26)

If you’d like to follow along with us using the Gospel of John Scripture Journal, you’re welcome to purchase a copy here

8:40 Service | 10:00 Service | Sermon Audio

Well, good morning, Chapel family. It’s great to be here with everyone. Thank you for anyone who came out a little bit early today. We we appreciate you coming and changing your plans to be here and we’re just excited to be here together this morning as we celebrate yet another snowy Sunday here in North Jersey. So, I’m thankful that you’re here.

We are continuing our slow and our steady verse by verse walk through the Gospel of John. And each and every week, more and more openly, we are seeing Jesus share about who he is as the Son of God. Both by what he says and by what he does. And today is no different.

We’re going to encounter Jesus and his offer to heal a man who is dying to be healed and his offer to heal those who were dying who didn’t think they need to be healed. So we’re going to be reading from John 5:1–30. It’s a pretty big scripture passage. So I’m going to read it and you can follow along.

So scripture John 5:1–30. It says this:

Sometime later Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 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. A colonnade is a porch with a covering over it. 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 38 years.

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he said, 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’m 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.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath. And so the Jewish leader said to the man who had been healed, it is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.

But he replied, the man who made me well said to me, pick up your mat and walk.

So they asked him, who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, see, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.

The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.

In his defense Jesus said to them, my Father is always at work to this very day, and I too am working.

For this reason they all the more tried to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Jesus gave them this answer: very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself. He can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.

For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.

Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will live.

For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge, because he is the Son of Man.

Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.

By myself I can do nothing. I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. This is God’s word.

And because this is a big narrative, I think we should break it down into a few parts. How many? Three parts, right? That’s what we do. So we’re going to break it down in three parts today. So first we are going to look at our search for healing. So we’re going to look at our search for healing. Then we’re going to look at how we are healed. And then finally, we’re going to look at the depth of healing that we need.

So first let’s look at our search for healing. John 5:1–3. It’s going to be up on the screen. And some really interesting things are happening in this passage. And most importantly, what we always need to do when we look at scripture is look at the cultural context of what is going on here. So we’re going to look at that first. So kind of in a big picture way, John 5 is a really important chapter in the scripture. And a long time ago, some people were looking to disprove the historical reliability or the credibility of the Bible, saying that it’s not true. So they looked at John 5 and because John 5 is very specific in some places, it says it’s in Jerusalem, there’s a gate and there’s a pool. You can find these places. So they looked at this and they said, we’re going to take John 5 and we’re going to look to disprove the credibility of the Bible. So they went to this place and they began to dig. And when they dug, all they found was an old church. And they said, see, the scripture is not true. There’s just a church here. So they began to build this argument against the reliability of the scripture. A little bit later, they dug a little bit deeper and what they discovered is this pool area that we’re talking about, but they only found four porches. And they said, well, the Bible’s kind of true, but there’s some inaccuracies. But then they began to dig a little bit deeper and they found the fifth porch. It was like a rectangular pool with four of the covered porches around it and then one of them was kind of offset and higher up. So they found the fifth pool and what looked like a big push to go against the historical reliability of the gospels and an argument for that actually became a really good turning point to show the truth and the reliability of the gospels. So apologetics lesson aside, let’s move on.

The pool where we are in the scripture is really interesting. It’s the pool of Bethesda. Bethesda is the Aramaic term for house of mercy. And this place was a place of deep spiritual significance for both the Jewish people and pagan people as well. For the Jewish people, it was a place to wash sacrifices. Notice the name Sheep Gate, right? Which meant if you were a sheep, you did not want to go through the Sheep Gate because you were destined to become a sacrifice. And the sacrifices are what the Jewish people used to keep themselves clean and to keep themselves in good standing before God. Also, as they dug historically, you can see right at the same spot, there was a small hospital-like place there as well. So the pagan people also came there for healing.

Also, when we read scripture, we read verses 1 through 30. But when you read it, we saw verse one, we saw verse two, and we saw verse three, and then it went to five. That was not a mistake. Some of the early documents have verse four in there. Some of them don’t. Some translations have it now, some don’t. And it was more of a commentary of what would happen. And what that verse says, if you can go and look it up, it says that occasionally an angel would go and stir that water, and then the first person in that water would be healed. So there was a lot of healing at this place. So there’s angel activity here. And then later it was actually discovered that this pool of Bethesda was actually connected to Herod’s palace. And once or twice a day, that palace would open its gates and allow fresh water to come in, which would then stir the water and move the water through. So all that to say, this was a place that was very sacred for both the Jewish people and the pagan people. It was a place of mystery. It was a place of expectancy. You could kind of feel it there. And it was a place for potential physical healing.

And what stands out to us, what stands out to me is that Jesus went there, right? Just like last week when he went to the woman at the well, Jesus deliberately goes to the places where people who can’t go to him are. So Jesus goes to this place, this sacred, this healing, this expectant place and he meets a man. So let’s learn a little bit about this man. So it says in the scripture that this man was paralyzed for 38 years. And for a person listening to the story, for a Jewish person listening to this story back in the first century, that number would have been very significant because it corresponds to the idea of the Israelites and their wilderness wanderings. The number of 40 years in the wilderness is really significant, but some scholars say 38 to 40 because there’s a little bit of pre-wandering and wandering. So when a Jewish person would hear that this guy was sick for 38 years, they would automatically kind of think back to this idea of the wilderness wandering. So their ears would kind of perk up.

And as we talk about this guy, it says he was there for 38 years. So we don’t know if he was 38 years old and born with this disability. We don’t know if he was 20 and had a really bad accident when he and now he’s 58. We don’t know that. But what we do know and what we can bank on about this guy is that he was in an extremely vulnerable and difficult position in life. You know, today if you’re in a hard thing in your life and maybe you have an ability that limits you a little bit, there’s a lot of resources here and there’s a lot of movement and you can have a lot of support. But if you leave here and go to a third world country or another area of the world or a different time like this, it looked like some people thought you were cursed by God. You were pushed out of community. It was a big shame culture. They thought maybe you did something wrong to get yourself into this position. So it was a big deal.

What we do know is this guy was in a bad spot. And I wanted to think about this guy a little bit. The scripture doesn’t say much about him, but I think it’s important for us to humanize who he is, right? So what we know about him is that based on scripture, he couldn’t move on his own, right? He couldn’t do anything on his own. The paralysis that he had, most scholars think it was from his chest down, like a 75% limitation that he was experiencing. So that would make him unable to control when and how he went to the bathroom. So he’s sitting there. He’s totally dependent on people around him to meet his every need. If you were a mom or a dad walking with your kids near him, you would probably lean over before you got there and tell them not to stare. Because of the sanitary situations, you would probably smell this person before you got near them. So this is a bad thing. And the beautiful thing about this is Jesus goes exactly right to him. Jesus goes to him. And that’s powerful because we don’t need to be cleaned up before Jesus comes to us. He comes to us when we need him the most. And as I think about this scripture, there are some questions that stand out to me. And I think we need to ask ourselves when we talk about this pool and this mystical place of healing. I had to ask myself and I want to ask you this morning is where is my pool? Like where is your pool? Where do you go when you need healing?

You know, sometimes we go to the pool of culture and we dig deep and we try to find the healing within ourselves. Or maybe we go to the pool of podcasts, right? And we try to just learn more and more and we just go to this pool. Or maybe we do meditation or it’s obsession with eating healthy and being healthy or the newest pill that comes out, right? And I’m not knocking any of those things. Those are all good things that can help us. But here’s the thing. We need to keep room for this. See, in our desperate search for healing, Jesus actually comes to us. So Jesus seeks us out. We don’t need to be healthy before we get healed. Jesus comes to the sick. In other places in scripture, Jesus says it’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. And that’s why he’s here.

It’s just like when we talk about baptisms, right? We don’t need to get our lives in order before we do this. We do this simply because Jesus came to us and we responded in faith to what he did. He did that privately and now we declare that publicly. So Jesus comes to the sick.

The second thing that kind of stands out when I think about that number 38 that man was talking about. The second question that comes to mind is maybe you and I sometimes we sit by that same pool over and over again. We sit there and what we’re trying to do to make ourselves better, to heal ourselves is just not working, right? We go to the inner strength pool or that idea of self-help or this pool of trying harder or this pool of trying to be moral and better and we just sit there and we’ve been there for a really long time and it just isn’t working. Maybe it’s an addiction that we’ve been struggling with for 38 years or 10 years or two years and it’s just what you’ve always known and you’re trying to get yourself out of it. But the question that comes up is how long is long enough? How long is long enough?

You see, Jesus offers healing and he’s longing to reunite and heal you and heal me in the deepest parts of us where we need that healing. See, Jesus seeks to heal.

One of the ways in which I feel like God kind of softens my heart and it’s kind of funny is when I’m online watching reels or videos sometimes and I watch some of these and I feel my heart softening when I see someone who’s sick like a kid who is very very sick and they get the opportunity to meet their hero. Right? So a lot of times it may be a professional athlete goes to a hospital and meets a kid. It may be a famous person. It may be a musician. Whatever it is, there may not be anything spiritual about it, but whatever it is, when they go and they meet that kid, it always kind of moves me and I’ll be watching this and then sometimes I feel like my allergies are acting up and my eyes get all watery and I try to play it off, even if I’ve seen it a bunch of times before. Another thing that gets me is watching videos is when men or women who are deployed, they come back and they reunite with their families. I see that and boom, I just start cry. I don’t even try to fake it. I just start crying. We got to be a part of that one time. It was just a moving experience.

But the things that stand out to me and I ask why does this hit me so deeply? And I think it’s two reasons. See, those kids who are sick, they have absolutely no way of getting to their hero. The hero has to go to them. And then those men and women in the military, they return, the soldiers or the marines that return, they go and they do their job. But the thing that drives them more than anything else is the longing to return to the ones that they left behind.

See, when we read this scripture, that’s exactly what Jesus is doing. See, we could never get to him, so he had to come to us. And his mission was driven with this longing to reunite us with him and his father and heal us in the deepest ways possible. You see, Jesus seeks to heal.

The second part as we move through the scripture is how we’re healed. So how are we actually healed? This is really interesting because this is verse five through nine. It’ll be on the screen. Jesus goes to this place. He encounters this man and two things jump out of this interaction. Number one, Jesus’s question and number two, the man’s response. So let’s look at those.

Jesus says to the man, do you want to get well? Now, this is either the most obvious question in the history of questions or there’s something bigger that we might need to see.

A few years ago, I was with my friend Mike and we were in the woods and we were cutting some trails that were there and they had become overgrown and we were going back there with big hedge clippers and we were kind of just chopping away all the stuff and we had finished the dangerous stuff that we were doing with these big hedge clippers and we were walking out and I was holding the hedge clipper in my left hand. It was off holding it and then on the trail in front of me was a piece of junk that I wanted to move off the trail. So I leaned down and I grabbed it and I went to throw it underneath my other arm, but whatever it was was super heavy, so I had to use more force. And when I let it go, my arm went up and hit the blade of the hedge clipper. Now I didn’t realize it at the time. I just felt like a bump and I put my arm down until I looked at my buddy Mike. And my buddy Mike was kind of white and he had his hand over his mouth and he just pointed at my arm. And at the time he pointed at my arm, I felt my arm become very warm and very moist. I’ll spare you the details. Right away, I looked down and I had a big triangle-sized gash in my arm. And we knew right away that this is not something that we can superglue. This is not a quick fix and we needed to go to the hospital. So we’re going to go to Morristown. Then we decided that we should probably go somewhere a little bit closer. So we went to Chilton and I went in and fun fact, if you want to skip the line in the ER, have your arm pouring out blood. So I don’t suggest that, but you can skip the line really quick. And they said, oh you can sit over here, sir. And I just let go a little bit, and they’re like, actually come back. So it was interesting. So what happened was I wound up went through really really quick and wound up with 13 really nice stitches in my arm. First time I ever got stitches. So I had 13 nice stitches. Can you imagine if I went through all of that, came in a mess, and the doctor went to me and said, do you want to get well? I would be like, dude, what are you talking about? Like, who are you and why are you here? It would so throw me off. Right? But here’s the thing. We can dismiss Jesus’s question as that pretty easy thing to answer and think it’s just a no-brainer for this guy to say yes. But there’s actually really deep and really significant beauty in the question.

You see, by Jesus asking him, do you want to be healed? Jesus has given this man agency probably for the first time in his life.

You see, agency is a big counseling term and it’s really important for us to understand this and it’s really important for us as we interact with other people. The idea of agency means for a person to have agency. It means that they possess the capacity to make their own choices, to act intentionally and influence their own life and surroundings even when facing constraints like social structures, laws or personal challenges. People like to say there’s four C’s of agency: choice, consent, collaboration and clarity. And for the first time in this life, Jesus gives this man the opportunity to make his own decision. It’s pretty powerful when you think about it.

But look at the man’s response to Jesus. He says, sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I’m trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me. Remember in that verse four thing when the angel would come and stir it, the first person in would be healed.

And it’s really interesting what Jesus does. Jesus simply says to him, get up, take up your bed, and walk. And the scripture tells us in verse 9, at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and he walked.

This is probably the most important kind of interaction in this passage. It’s really big because it follows along what we’ve been talking about through the Gospel of John. Remember a few weeks ago in John 2 at Cana in Galilee when Jesus saw those big six water basins jars, right? Stone jars of water. He saw those and he begins to change and he changed the water into wine signifying that he is the new and better wine. He is the new and better way to be made pure before God.

So he does this miracle. He changes the water. And then last week we see in John chapter 4 when Jesus is talking to the woman at the well. She is looking for water that you normally drink. And Jesus says, uh-uh. I am the new and living water that will make you never thirsty again. And Jesus is doing the exact same thing here.

Jesus is declaring that he is our healer. And so much happens in this interaction like Jesus just going and healing this man. There’s so much packed into it. And what Jesus is saying and what he is showing him by simply healing him is this. He’s saying to the man, I’m not here to assist you into the water like one of your buddies is going to do.

Jesus is saying, I’m not here as a means to an end. I’m not here to help you get to where you want to go in life. I’m not here to help you get partially clean in that pool. And I’m not here as a crutch for you to lean on.

But what Jesus is saying and what he’s showing him by what he does, he’s saying, I’m here so you can be fully cleaned and that you can be fully healed. I’m here to be your everything. I am both the sacrifice and the solution to your uncleanliness.

He says, I’m here to be your life.

You see, it’s not about the pool and it’s not about the water anymore. Jesus is saying, I am the living, cleansing, and purifying water. And it’s only through me that you can be fully healed and cleansed on the inside, which is way more important than looking good and clean on the outside.

You see, water dries up, pools get buried, porches fall down, empires will rise and fall, but Jesus is the living water, and he is the living pool that never stops providing us with the water that we truly need.

As I read this section and this interaction again, some questions kind of rise up that I have to ask myself and I want to ask us this morning. And the first one’s very practical. And it’s simply this. How do we treat the marginalized? Right? How do you and I treat the marginalized? Do we avoid them at all costs? Do we look away? Do we see someone who’s down and out and do we assume their story? We know how they got there and why they got there.

It kind of stirs my heart as I look at this and I see this imbalance of power. I see the creator of the universe standing with, touching with, rubbing shoulders, interacting with this broken and utterly sick guy. This man had nothing he could do to help himself or earn favor. Jesus simply gave it to him.

You see, Jesus offers to be our healer and how he treats the marginalized is a great example for how we should treat the marginalized. He extends the offer of healing to us as well. And we can accept or we can dismiss it.

The second thing that stands out to me and the question about this interaction is kind of a little more nuanced but it’s really important and it’s the idea of do we treat our relationship with Christ simply as someone or something to help us get into the pool of where we want to go? Right? Someone who helps us a little bit on our way like a spiritual assistant to make our life a little bit better. Do we treat Jesus as a means to get to where we go? A means to an end? A little like spiritual energy drink to help us get to where we go in life? Or is Jesus our utter and complete and total healer, our everything?

You know, I think all of us do this. I sometimes I treat Jesus and my relationship with Jesus as a way to help me get out of a mess that I’ve gotten myself in or a way to improve my life. I treat Jesus as a way to get me into the pool. And Jesus is simply saying, I am not your way into the pool. I am the pool and I need your everything.

You see, Jesus is our healer.

The last thing I want to look at is the depth of healing we need. And we spent a lot of time in the first nine verses of our scripture. So there’s 21 other verses. And there’s some really deep interactions that happen here. So the big picture is what happened is Jesus heals on the Sabbath. He heals this man on the Sabbath. The Jewish leaders are upset, not because he healed, but because the man picked up his mat and walked, which is illegal to carry things like your bed mat on the Sabbath. So Jesus is doing these things and the religious leaders are really mad and they turn up the heat.

So here’s what’s happening. The Jewish leaders, they understood they had this idea of Sabbath to rest, but they understood that God worked on the Sabbath, right? He did but in certain ways. He did only big God-sized things on the Sabbath. So for instance, people are born on the Sabbath, right? We have no control over that. God is sovereign over that. So God is working in a sense on the Sabbath with people being born.

Not only are people born on the Sabbath, but people die on the Sabbath as well. So God is working and over that as well. And people are healed on the Sabbath. So God does work on the Sabbath just in the big God-sized things that only he can do.

So now Jesus is coming along calling God his father which is equating him with God. And he’s doing the things that only God can do by doing these big God-sized things on the Sabbath. And the Jewish religious leaders are hot and they turn up the heat trying to persecute and kill Jesus.

So those 21 verses are his response and his dialogue with those religious leaders. In 19 to 23 it simply says Jesus is saying like look this isn’t me just simply doing this because I want to do this. He says I don’t do this on my own. I do what God my father does. The same God that you are trying to relate to with your laws and with your cleanliness. I’m showing you what this looks like and I’m doing it.

Jesus is saying God loves me and he’s showing me all he does and I’m going to do even greater things like raising people up from the dead and giving them life and I’m pleased to do this.

Jesus is telling him I’m the judge and I seek out those people who desire to honor the father. So he’s inviting these people who are highly looking to God the Father, trying everything they can do to connect with God the Father. He’s inviting them into this relationship.

He goes on in verse 24. He says, very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.

And everything we talk about, all the messages that we’ve talked through so far through the Gospel of John, that word believe is the main point, right? Jesus is doing these things not to be amazing, not for people to be wowed, but he wants them to believe in who he is as the Son of God.

See, the word believe is used 98 times in the book of John, and that’s more times than all of the other three gospels combined. The whole thing is that people would see Jesus and believe in who he was and who he said he was.

He goes on and talks to them in verses 28 to 30. And he says, here’s the thing. My whole goal is for you to believe me. And when they do, and if you do believe me, it moves you from death, the ultimate sickness, to life, the ultimate healing.

And Jesus does all this radical work, not simply just to please himself or to show off, but he simply does it to please his Father who sent him.

Ultimately, what he’s telling these religious leaders is the way that you guys are trying to relate to God, you’re doing your thing. You’re doing it in a certain way, and to an extent, it’s good, but I’m here to show you something different. He says, the way you’re trying to relate to God is making you sick. You see it this way, but you are thinking in black and white, and I am here. I am Jesus. I am here in full color offering you a heavenly perspective. And I’m inviting you to join me in this way of relating to the Father, but you just won’t do it. And the way that you’re trying to push the rules and regulations and relate to God is killing you.

I mean, think about it. Think about it practically, right? If the way that you are relating to God, the way you perceive God, prevents you from loving people, from restoring people back to community, from healing people, from doing generally good things that anyone would do any day of the week, then Jesus is telling these guys, maybe you need to rethink your idea of Sabbath.

And ultimately, what we see is he’s saying, you religious people are actually sicker than the guy that just got healed.

The beautiful thing about that is it sounds kind of harsh, but he’s not condemning. He’s not judging. He’s inviting. He says, join me. Jesus is telling me, it’s not about the pool. It’s not about the Sabbath. It’s all about me. And I’m inviting you to join me in this brand new way of relating to God and relating to people.

So, I hear that and it brings up a question for us. You know, we live in North Jersey. A lot of us have different backgrounds, religious backgrounds. What is the depth of healing that I need? Right? Are we here and we live by forcing traditions? Do we try to keep ourselves clean through confessions and making our own kind of personal sacrifices? Do we believe that just coming on Sundays or being part of a Bible study is what is going to actually make me clean?

You see, the Sabbath means to stop or cease. And sometimes that even means to stop or cease being overly religious.

You see, the Jewish religious leaders were so consumed by following the Sabbath that they missed the true Sabbath standing right in front of them, offering true rest, true cleanliness, and true freedom. Their rules and regulations wanted to make them keep getting back into that pool.

And Jesus is here saying, no, no, it’s much deeper than that. It’s all about me.

It’s like baptisms, right? We’re going to do baptisms in a few minutes. Can you imagine that if every time you screwed up, every time you messed up, you needed to get rebaptized? I’d be in that pool every week. I’d be in there every week. I wouldn’t get out. I’d be in there all the time. We would have a line out the door and most importantly, we’d probably run out of those blue shirts really quick.

But here’s the idea is that Jesus offers a once and for all deep healing that cleanses us right out of rules and right out of religion and simply moves us into a deep and meaningful relationship with him.

Jesus offers then and offers now an invitation to get swept up in what he’s doing. It’s not about rules. It’s not about religion. It’s not about looking good on the outside. It’s all about being so gripped by his love for us and so grateful because of what he’s done for us that moves us into the truest measure of health.

You see, you can be the sickest person in the world. You can be on death’s door and through Jesus, you can be truly healed even when we die.

We’ve talked about us doing baptisms today. If you haven’t been baptized before or maybe you were baptized as a baby and you feel like this is your time, I invite you to go and meet with our team. I’m going to invite our band up. Our team is going to be out those doors and kind of in that hallway. We have everything you need to move forward and I invite you to take that step.

We’re going to have two songs and then following those songs we’re going to have our baptisms. And just to tell you this, like back then, the pool doesn’t make us clean. This pool doesn’t make us clean either, but Jesus Christ and what he has done is our true healer and he makes us clean in the deepest areas of our life.

Would you join me as we pray?

God, thank you for your word to us. We thank you that we have the opportunity to experience your healing not only from things that are affecting us from outside but mostly from the sin and the things that separate us inside. We thank you that you extend the offer to us, that it’s an invitation, that you don’t force it on us, but all we have to do is simply respond to what it is that you’re doing.

I thank you for your word to us. I thank you that it’s living and active and meets us where we need to be met. And God, I pray for every person that’s going to come forward and take the step of baptism that you would just meet us all where we need to be met today. And thank you for their bold choice of faith. It’s in Jesus’ name. Amen.