Jesus Wants to Heal You

“All healing is first a healing of the heart.” ~Carl Townsend

Like a lot of lucky little girls, I learned to dance by standing on my father’s feet while he waltzed me around the room. My dad was no slouch as a dancer, either. He was a musician at heart—rhythm made his feet tap and his shoulders sway, as it does mine still. While there were parental duties my dad didn’t take joy in (discipline, homework, midnight pharmacy runs), I always knew he danced with me because he wanted to. He delighted in that bond.

In a relationship where the other person always makes you feel wanted and welcome in their world, you know you’ve found something worth keeping. It could be a parent, friend, spouse, mentor, sibling, or child. For at least one person in Scripture, this “person” came as a surprise.

“Jesus was in one of the towns where there was also a man covered with a skin disease. When he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged, ‘Lord, if you want, you can make me clean.’ Jesus reached out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I do want to. Be clean.’ Instantly, the skin disease left him.” (Luke 5:12-13 CEB)

Look at this man’s words, and let’s see them first in light of his background. He has a skin disease—this means he’s an outcast. He probably lives outside of town with others in the same situation. Making a living is rough when you can’t interact with others. He hasn’t felt a human touch in we don’t know how long. I know I barely survived a little over a year without the hugs of my family in 2020. I can’t imagine his grief.

He comes to Jesus and humbly begs, “If you want, you can make me clean.” Notice how the man has no doubt at all that Jesus is able. He shows complete faith in Jesus’ power. His lack of faith is in his own worth. Maybe years of being called unclean had made him feel like no one would want to help him. His lack of employment perhaps made him feel like a burden. Shunning by others who believed he must have sinned terribly to merit his fate had wounded him so deeply he didn’t believe he deserved to be healed.

He trusted that Jesus was who he said he was. He simply wasn’t sure God cared enough about him personally to bother. No one had taken delight in this man’s presence in so long, he’d forgotten his value as an image of the God he stood before. Jesus was about to remind him.

The four words Jesus utters in reply startle me with their beauty: “I do want to.” He didn’t have to say them. He could have just said, “Be clean.” He didn’t need words at all. But Jesus chooses to touch the man not only physically—a huge gift as well—but verbally, where his heart is broken. I do want to.

The verb “want to” can mean only to intend, but it can also mean to love, to take delight in, to have pleasure in doing. Jesus says to this man, essentially,  “You are a precious child whose presence I delight in, and I not only can and will—I would love to.”

Can you imagine how healing those words were? I imagine the mental balm they provided was more healing than the physical one. In one moment, not only was the man cured of his skin disease, but he was affirmed as beloved and valued.

I feel like so many of us are living in that man’s space.

I wonder how often we say or think, God, you can’t want to do that, can you?

You can’t want to heal that scar deep in me.

You can’t want to reconcile this relationship.

You can’t want to give me the courage to start over.

You can’t want to do any of that for me.

If you’re in that space today, hear Jesus say to you, “I do want to. I delight in taking loving action for and with you. You are not a burden. You are not undeserving. You are not irrelevant in my eyes. You are not cast out from my notice or care. Oh, I do want to.”

It ought not surprise us that Jesus is the one person who can always make us feel we’re wanted and welcome.

What if we notice the people around us who feel unheard, unseen, untouched? How can we convey to them that God delights in noticing and healing their wounds? How can we do our best to ensure they don’t feel like an untouchable burden to us?

Dad and I won the father-daughter dance contest my senior year, a couple weeks after my mom’s death. The victory felt like a testament to one thing still able to make us both smile. We delighted in one another’s presence, despite the grief and the years that had passed since I had been a little girl in shiny shoes standing on his work-worn ones.

We both needed healing, and we would have done that for one another if we could. I had a very, very new faith. Over the next several years, I would feel Jesus’s loving touch on my own heart. So when I come to these words, “I do want to,” I know they’re true. If your heart, will, dreams, identity are broken, they’re true for you, too. He does want to care for you.

Jill Richardson is a writer, speaker, pastor, mom of three, and author of five books. She likes to travel, grow flowers, read Tolkien, and research her next project. She believes in Jesus, grace, restoration, kindness, justice, and dark chocolate. Her passion is partnering with the next generation of faith. Jill blogs at jillmrichardson.com.

Photograph © Priscilla Du Preez, used with permission