Sermon Central
-
How To Bring A Friend To Jesus
Contributed by Mark Aarssen on Aug 18, 2007 (message contributor)
Summary: Do you know someone who you want to introduce to Jesus? Have you tried your best to get them to come to church or read a bible or attend a Christian event in the hope it might change their life?
How to bring a friend to Jesus
Do you know someone who you want to introduce to Jesus? Have you tried your best to get them to come to church or read a bible or attend a Christian event in the hope it might change their life? Is there someone on your heart whom you know would love to be here with us today but for some reason can not due to a physical restriction of some kind?
Well lets look at scripture and see how we can get our friends to Jesus even when they themselves are unable to take the first step.
This passage is one of my favorites as it tells of the love, faith and hope of true friends and demonstrates how Jesus deals with self righteous religious leaders.
It seems the first thing that is necessary is that the person actually wants to meet Jesus but for some reason they are physically unable to do it for themselves.
This reminds me of my sister-in-law who lies in a hospital bed and she cannot move hardly at all. For folks like her and others they rely on us to do the walking for them.
In todays scripture we see four friends mentioned, the first thing they do is agree together to take on the task on behalf of their friend. From their example we can learn to agree together in prayer when someone we know needs to see Jesus.
Jesus Heals a Paralytic
4Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?
Mark 2:1-12 NIV
Jesus Heals a Paralytic
1A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. 2So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. 3Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them.
4Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. 5When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven.
6Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7"Why does this fellow talk like that? Hes blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?
8Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? 9Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Get up, take your mat and walk?
10But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . He said to the paralytic, 11 I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home. 12He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, We have never seen anything like this!
The next thing we would need to do is to come together and lift that person up in spirit before the Lord. The friends in our scripture passage had to lift their friend high over the crowd. Now we get into the fundamentals of the task.
This is going to take the strength of everyone involved; its going to take commitment, a common goal and team work. It will take unity of purpose.
Just as in todays scripture we see that there will be crowds of people in the way. There will be those who want to keep us at the back of the line. Those who will not let us pass forward easily. In a way it demonstrates the spiritual battle that we can encounter as we pray for someone who needs to see Jesus.
But we like the friends in the story must press on using our united strength to break through the crowds. Through all this we must realize it is not for our benefit that we seek Jesus but it is for the sake of our friend. That is the measure of our love we display it through our faithful undertaking.
The next problem the friends encounter is the doorway. It is blocked.
We realize that so many people have the same desire, the same need, and the same goal. Many people want to be close to Jesus, as close as they can and few will be willing to give up their position for someone they do not know.
In the scripture passage the friends evaluate their situation. The door is blocked; the walls of the house stand in the way. There are many walls that we face as we try to bring others to Christ and there are doors that sometimes get slammed in our face. The enemy does not want one more person coming to Jesus. The enemy will do everything to discourage us and make the effort greater than we imagined.
