If you believe something is true…

If you believe something is true – you will usually act in accordance with that belief.

If I am standing on the corner and believe I am about to be hit by a car, without question I will move from where I am standing!

If I believe I might be about to lose my job, I will no doubt touch up my resume and start looking for a new one!

If I have something broken and believe my friend can help me fix it, I will probably call my friend for help!

Over the next few posts, I will be looking at faith. Faith is our belief in God. We have faith in God. We have faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that through the work Jesus did for us on the cross, we can be saved.

Furthermore, I think that if I truly believe something, I will act on that belief!

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 ESV)

Most of you will have read or heard about these guys. I still remember the drawings in the childrens Bible I had showing the guys pulling roof tiles to get their friend in front of Jesus! Spend any time thinking about it, and it is a crazy scene.

You see, these guys believed something – they believed that Jesus could heal. And not just heal a common cold, or a skin rash, or even a minor disability – but that Jesus could make a paralytic walk. That is not a minor thing, not something that will be fixed by a skin cream or an antibiotic. It is still something that our medical profession now, 2000 years later, is trying to achieve – take someone who cannot walk and help them.

And it wasn’t just a passing belief either. They tried to get to Jesus the ‘normal’ way, but the crowd was too much, too thick, too numerous to carry their friend through. So they thought through the problem and came up with a solution. Can you imagine the conversation?

“Hey, if we climb up to the roof, and tear open the tiles right above Jesus head, maybe we can lower him through!”.

“Okay!”.

How did they get on the roof with a paralytic on a mat? How did they start tearing the roof off? Did they come prepared with rope to lower him? No, it wasn’t an easy task, but they had faith that Jesus could, and would heal their friend, and were willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths in response to that belief.

The had faith – and their faith was shown in their action.

What do your actions show?

Have a think about it, and we will look more in our next post.