On This Day: The Faith That Prays for Paralyzed Souls

And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 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. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (Mark 2:3-5)

 

   Since God’s word is truth, our hearts must be honest. There is no value in a “trying to be good” meeting with God through his word. Longing to be good? Yes. But we don’t come to God trying to be someone or something, we come to God wanting what he would do with us if we were honest about how we are doing.

   With that in mind, when I read this familiar passage, the thing that stood out was the way four men united around a friend in need with the faith that if they could just get him to Jesus the paralyzed man would be made well.

   I would never advocate a prayer meeting where people ripped open someone’s roof hoping that would help their prayers reach the throne of grace. That’s definitely not the point!

   Instead, I would love to see prayer groups with this kind of faith. We do have the “problem” of not having physical access to Jesus. He isn’t here in the flesh as he was back in the day. He is “God with us” by his Spirit, but his Spirit hasn’t set up a physical residence where we can bring paralyzed souls to experience freedom in Christ.

   Which exposes the problem I need to pray about: that the church is now “a holy temple in the Lord”, and we “are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21-22), so the faith-barrier every congregation is dealing with is attaching to the Holy Spirit in our churches. 

   God dwells in his church, his holy temple “in the Lord”, and Satan’s great work is to keep people from uniting to meet with him there, and to have the faith that we can meet with God by his Spirit the same way those men met with Jesus through a hole in the roof.

   I’m going for my prayer walk at my usual time so it will be dark, at least for most of my walk. It is fitting to know that we are dealing with “the people walking in darkness” today as much as in Jesus’ day. They need to see the “great light”, which is the church as “the light of the world” because we have “Christ in us, the hope of glory”. Our faith really should reflect that reality, and our praying in faith should seek this with all our hearts.

   My prayer focus this morning will be an honest attachment to God about anything paralyzed regarding my faith because I want my faith to encourage and build up the faith of others. I want to see other believers unite, first for our own healing, but then so we can join God for the healing of any paralyzed souls who want us to bring them to Jesus. 

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)