Is your heart knotted with worry over someone whom seems paralysed in regard to direction in life, and prospects for a bright future? If only that person were to have faith in God, there could perhaps be hope for the person to follow God’s leading? If that person’s openness to the Lord seems paralysed too, is there any hope left? This was Mishpathy’s question over her grandson, Rico. Despite feeling helpless and weighed down by the sense of hopelessness, Mishpathy nonetheless opened her Bible for her morning devotion, and from where she had stopped the day before, she began reading from Mark 2:1, and encountered these words:
A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that He had come home. 2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and He preached the word to them. 3 Some men came, bringing to Him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone? 8 Immediately Jesus knew in His spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and He said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9 Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So He said to the man, 11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all.
Like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Mishpathy did not realise that the Lord’s eyes would be upon her, or His ears would be open to hear her, or that His Heart would be inclined towards her. But the Spirit of the Lord drew her attention to those words: “Jesus saw their faith”. Mishpathy immediately sensed a fresh wind of faith lifting her heart to see that although the paralytic could not come to Jesus on his own, yet he came before Jesus because such was his friends’ faith in Jesus that they spared no effort to put him before Jesus, and they would not let any obstacles stop them. And Jesus, seeing their faith, honoured their faith and spoke those words that set their paralysed friend free from paralysis.
Friends, are the persons you are worried about unable to come to Jesus on their own? You can carry them to Jesus with your faith. Not only in prayer, but also in ways that your faith will inspire you, even in roof-breaking ways. Jesus will not fail to see your faith, and He will respond.
Rev. Joseph Goh
Comments