If You Don't Have Faith, Find Friends Who Do!

Mark 2:3-5, 10-11

3 Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men.
4 And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.
5 When Jesus saw their [the four men] faith, He said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven you."
10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins" -- He said to the paralytic,
11 "I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house."
NKJV

James 5:16

16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
NKJV

My Comments:

The entire passage of Mark 2:1-12 gives the account of how Jesus was teaching in, and how it was so crowded that there was literally no more space to fit anyone else. Four men came carrying a paralytic and couldn't get to Him, so what they did was climb to the roof, still carrying the paralytic; broke through the roof, and lowered him down to where Jesus was.

It says in verse 5 that Jesus saw their faith. There is no mention of the paralytic having faith at all, and by reading through the passage, we could assume that it was through the faith of the four men that he was healed.

There will always be a point in life where you find that you just don't have the faith that you can be healed; or that your breakthrough is on the way. When that happens, you're paralyzed metaphorically. In times like that, when you find that no matter how hard you try, you just can't bring yourself to exercise your faith in God that He'll see you through, find friends who can help you with their faith!

Notice what the four men did:

1. "They uncovered the roof."

For them to uncover it they obviously had to climb up to the roof to start with. And consider the possibility that they brought the paralytic with them up the roof. That takes dedication!

2. "They had broken through."

In those days, the roof would most likely have been a thatch roof, a tight layer of dead stems, straw and dried roots. It may be assumed that such a roof would have been easy to break through, except that the Greek word for "broken" is the word "exorusso" of which the root word "orusso" means to dig or to burrow into the ground. By this, we could assume that the four men took time and effort to dig through the roof!

3. "They let down the bed"

In Greek, the impression of letting down the bed is compared as to lowering oneself into a gulf or into a void. It gives the idea of being lowered very carefully. Applying that comparison to the above, it could be said that the four men lowered the bed down very carefully. They had a choice of just dropping the paralytic down, he's already paralyzed to begin with, how much worse could it get?

By the three actions of the four men, we can see that they had a lot of faith that the paralytic could be healed, hence the emphasis on how Jesus saw their faith!

James strengthens this in his letter to the Church, where he encourage the believers to "Pray for one another, that you may be healed" and concluded that sentence by declaring that the "prayer of a righteous man avails much" or it makes "tremendous power available, dynamic in its working" in the Amplified Translation.

So if you find yourself at the end of the rope, unable to hold on and you see yourself paralyzed in your faith, find friends who can stand alongside you, add their faith to what you don't have, and see your healing come to pass!