🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I am sharing some of my favorite call to worships from the past during the month of January. Today's was originally sent on 7 May 2021.
The dramatic story of a paralyzed man being lowered before Jesus in Mark 2:1-5 always makes me wonder. The crowd was too big to get to Jesus, so his friends just went through the roof. I wonder how the man on the mat felt. He was fully exposed, could do nothing for himself, and the text never said anything about his faith. Did he believe? Was he afraid? What would Jesus say when he got down there? What would happen if He said no? It was a lot easier for his friends to lower him than raise him.
My family and I have been on a long, long journey of hoping for things to be different. For the last 7 years, I've also felt fully exposed, helpless, and paralyzed by circumstances out of my control. In my own circumstantial paralysis, I wrestled with hard questions, got angry, tired, shut down, and finally just stopped praying about it. It had to change, but I couldn't see it changing. I stopped taking it to Jesus because what felt like a silent response was harder than not showing up in faith.
My friends never stopped. They saw me on my mat, and they carried me with their faith. They lowered my hope-weary heart to the feet of Jesus even when I didn't really want to be there. It was the faith of the friends of the paralyzed man that moved Jesus to release a life-changing miracle. He only laid on the mat. It was his friends! It was mine too.
If you find yourself immobile, hope-weary, hurting or without faith today, tell a friend. Jesus sees you on that mat, and He holds nothing back from borrowed faith. If you can, carry someone's mat. Faith, hope and healing were never designed to be individual activities. Listen to Israel Houghton's "Jesus at the Center".