Let’s take this to heart – there are days when the needs of our friends are greater than their own faith – and they need our faith to hold them up, to pray them through, to pave the way for their miracles — they need our faith and deeds combined for their bodies to heal, for their marriages to reconcile, for their failures to stop drowning them in sorrow — when that day happens, are we moved by conviction or by mere convenience? That’s the question that sets the scene for one to have this bold, roof altering kind of experience — and not only that, it’s a question of the quality of trust we have on the love that God has for our normal lives and our broken friends – does God care? Is He kind? Will He touch us beyond the mere superficiality of the acceptable standard of our culture? And will we show our friends our trust in God by moving according to the heartbeat of God that long to reach back out to us?
Guest Post by the Husband
“And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.”
(Mark 2:4)
I”ll be honest, if I was one of those friends and saw the crowd in the way, I would’ve probably given up. I would have rationalised that we could try to get to Jesus tomorrow, or maybe find another faith healer another day.
Yet these friends were determined. They had bandied together, obviously with great love for their paralysed friend, and had decided, “we’re going to get you to Jesus no matter what”.
Maybe it was doing it in a group that gave them more courage to climb to the roof and let him go down. Maybe they had already planned it as a back up plan (unless it was normal in those days to carry around ropes too…).
These friends went out of their way, and went through some adversity, perhaps public embarrassment to get their friend healed. They also trusted that Jesus was the kind of man that would not be complaining about the roof, or the jumping of the queue so to speak. They trusted that He would see the paralysed man, and his need above the rules and protocol.
They trusted that somehow He would know that they really did care about their friend, and they had faith in him.
Whatever it was, Jesus was impressed by this bunch of bold roof altering faith in those men.
“Oh Lord, let us be like those men, ready to break from protocol in faith, believing that You would do something – for someone today. Help us to love others so much that we are ready to carry around rope and climb roof tops for our friends and families to see you move. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”