Lk.5:18 – And some men were carrying on a bed a man who was paralyzed; and they were trying to bring him in and to set him down in front of Him.
This story is one of the best pictures of intercession in the Bible. An Intercessor is someone who takes up another’s cause and helps them and sees them through until what their need is realized. This paralyzed man was living his life in a miserable state. How he got in this place was anybody’s guess, Jesus said it had something to do with sin and forgiveness. The thing about this story is that some of his friends refused to give up on him. They were going to do whatever it took to get their friend to Jesus even if it meant damaging the fisherman’s house. This is what intercession and ministry is all about. We are compelled, no matter what, to get those we love to the feet of Jesus. Here is how Barclay describes this.
“A paralyzed man was brought to him, carried on a bed by some friends. Here is a wonderful picture of a man who was saved by the faith of his friends. Had it not been for them, he would never have reached the healing presence of Jesus at all. It may well be that he had become dully resigned and defeatedly hopeless, and that they had carried him almost against his will to Jesus. However that may be, he was certainly saved by the faith of his friends….If any one of us has a friend who does not know Christ, or who does not care for Christ, or who is even hostile to Christ, it is our Christian duty not to let that friend go. We must bring our friends into Christ’s presence.”
I believe intercession is yielding to God’s love for broken people and bringing them to the Lord. You can carry them to the Lord’s feet everyday in prayer. You can also bring them to the house of the Lord. There may be a price involved, somebody had to pay for that messed up roof. The price becomes irrelevant when you discover the value of a lost soul. Its time for the intercessors to get to work, its time to carry some broken people into the house of God.
1 thought on “THE POWER OF INTERCESSORS – THEY BROUGHT HIM TO JESUS”
Yesterday on the way to a funeral, I had to drop off one of my grandsons. His father was going to meet me at the funeral home parking lot. As I was explaining to Ledger (my grandson) where I was headed, dressed up with a suit jacket, he asked “how many people die each day?” I thought what an unusual question from an (8) year old. I had no clue. I said there are a lot of people on this earth today, so I’m sure more than a few pass away each day. I told him I would look it up. At a traffic light I googled it, almost (18) billion people on earth today, on average (150) thousand each day pass away. I was shocked by those numbers. Sure this is a big world we live in, but 150,000 gone each day, today their last opportunity. With God’s Spirit inside of me, doing nothing and having a to big for me opinion, cannot be my response.