A surprise in my garden 😊 Three characteristics of faith

Mark 2: 1-5

And when he returned to Caper′na-um after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and he was preaching the word to them. 3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 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 pallet on which the paralytic lay. 5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus saw their faith...

It’s apparent that this story emphasizes the faith of these five men.

And there is three parts I want to emphasize in this story.

First, these men dared to do the difficult.

That is where faith demonstrates itself. It wasn’t going to be easy to bring this man to the Lord.

They had to carry him through the streets to get to the house where Jesus was. And then when they arrived, they found that the entrance was blocked with crowds of people. 

But these men were so determined to get their friend to Jesus that they carried him up an outside stairway to the roof.

Now I would imagine that it wasn’t easy to carry a full-grown man up a flight of stairs, yet they dared to do what was difficult.

What an example this gives us of bringing people to Christ!

Second, notice that they dared to do something that was out of the ordinary.

After all it wasn’t customary to break up another person’s roof because their door is blocked and they can’t get inside.

No, they did what was necessary to get this man to Jesus and they willingly risked the disapproval of the owner of the house and also of every person there by interrupting everything in order to get their friend to Jesus.

The extraordinary thing is that Jesus never rebuked them. And He never does.

These men dared to do be unconventional.

  

And third, they dared to do the costly. Someone was going to have to pay for that roof.

Can you imagine the owner of this home, sitting with Jesus… when he hears a noise on the roof?  Only to look up and begin to see the tiles of his roof being lifted away, one by one until a large hole appears with daylight shining through.

As a home owner myself I can’t begin to think what would be going through my mind and since I’m sure they didn’t have homeowner insurance then… someone was going to have to pay to get the roof repaired.

Which I’m sure, these men understood that they would be footing the bill for the roof repairs.  

You see, they dared to do the costly. That is faith!

They laid it on the line, willing to pay the cost themselves.

And Oh, what a witness this is to what it takes to bring people to Christ!

A life lived by faith will at least have these three characteristics.

A willingness to do “the difficult” A willingness to do what’s “out of the ordinary” And a willingness to do “what may be costly”.