Friends

You noticed I didn't get to fancy with the title of this post.  It just seemed right to me to highlight the idea of friends as a simple concept with profound meaning to our lives.

Beside from our relationship to God as being the primary purpose in our lives, there is also a very real and important message conveyed in God's Word about our relationship with each other.  The aesthetics (monks) who sequestered themselves away from other people in order to draw closer to God and lead a holy life, were pursuing a goal that is unobtainable.  How can we possibly have a close relationship with God and ignore others?

^{Mt 22:35} Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
³⁷ Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

We are to love our neighbors, not shut them out.  I could write pages on the trends in our society that break down relationships and are destroying communities.  Instead though I would like to focus on the passage we looked at last time where one of the major themes was the faith of the paralytics friends.

I am not going to include the quote from Luke 5:17-26 in this posting.  If you do not have a Bible handy you can refer pack to my posting on May 24th. In my last posting I mentioned 4 major themes from this passage.

• The challenge of the Scribes and Pharisees
• The faith of the friends
• The priority and power to forgive sins
• The healing

In the last posting we talked about the challenge of the Scribes and Pharisees.  We saw that they had a heart attitude that put them in opposition to Jesus.

Moving onto the second theme, what do we know about the paralytics friends?

• They were helpful.  They were willing to carry their friend. What a great picture.  Friendship here isn't about sports, hanging out, watching a movie or going out drinking.   Friendship is about helping.  Here we see a picture of friends literally carrying the burden of their friend to Jesus.
  
• They were willing to persevere for thier friend.  When the going got tough because of the crowds, they climbed on the roof of the house Jesus was teaching in.  The opened up the roof and lowered their friend in front of Jesus.  Their was a physical obstacle to overcome, getting to Jesus.  And a social obstacle.  I am sure some of the crowd were not happy with their bold move to get to the front of the line.
• They were faithful.  I think they demonstrate faithfulness in two ways.  First they were faithful in bringing their friend to Jesus no matter what the obstacles.   The paralytic had friends that he could trust to standby him and help him.   I also believe they demonstrated faith in Jesus, trusting that Jesus would take care of their friends needs.  Jesus acknowledged their faithfulness in believing that Jesus could heal.

 Some of you reading this post are my brothers and sisters in Christ.  I urge you at every opportunity to bring your friends to Jesus.   Your faith in Jesus to heal their broken souls will be acknowledged by Him.

Maybe you are my friends and family who do not know Jesus or you are a friend of someone who has forwarded this posting.   I would urge you to follow the link below and read how you can know the salvation message.

Bridge to Eternal Life