Mark 2:1 – 12 1And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house. 2And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them. 3And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. 4And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. 5When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. 6But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, 7Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? 8And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? 9Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? 10But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) 11I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. 12And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.
Somewhere in my library is a book that I have enjoyed since my high school years, it has a title that is something like “Desperate Hours”
It was a story about escaped convicts on the run from the law. They are seeking a place to hide out until things cool down. They find a house and it looks to be just the right place. Although it’s occupied they believe they can control the situation until it’s safe to move on. They invade the house, take captives of everyone in there and try to lie low for a few days. Only, they don’t take account of the people in the house and how they will react to their captive situation. Eventually, the innocent create an environment of opportunity where they are able to create confusion among the law breakers and are eventually rescued from these “Desperate Hours…”
I want to share with you today that I have been carrying this feeling of Desperation…
I want the church in Lacey to have a revival, I want to see souls won to the Kingdom, I want to see miracles happen for us and with us, I want to see this place not be big enough to contain the crowds. I have started feeling desperate that we will never see these things.
Just last week I happened to glance at the little battery clock to the side of my computer.
It is a “Countdown to the Next Millennium” clock – something I’ve had since working on the Y2K project while in Alaska. It caught my attention and I begin to analyze what I was seeing. After the Countdown ended at the start of the next 1000 years, the clock changed modes from counting down to the typical thing that clocks do – it tells time. Yet, what caught my attention more on this particular day is that the numbers on the screen were just about faded out and it was hard to read. I picked it up and realized that it was probably just the battery about to be extinguished. So, I pulled out the 12 year old battery and put in a new one. Do you know what the clock did? It went back to a time in late 1998, somewhere around December, and began counting down to the Y2K date all over again. It was almost as if I was reliving those project years of fixing computer programs to recognize correct dates into the future, making good money all over again, and enjoying the challenge of the meeting the need!
I began to think, “What if we could just plug in a new battery into our Spiritual Clock and become infused with the race to get things done before the Lord Comes Back…”
What would we do? Having already lived the future, we would get Desperate to accomplish more than we ever thought possible because we saw the ending of the clock ticking down to an ending. The things we just sort of haphazardly live through today would take on new meanings as we truly connected them to the need of the hour. New priorities would spring up. New energy would avail itself to the moment.
Procrastination is waiting until the last moment to do something in a rush that could have been accomplished more easily over a longer period of time. What if this desperation is nothing more than we’ve been procrastinating for too long and now it seems like we are fast approaching some yet unnamed event and we must rush to get the things done we should have always been doing!
What do we need as a church today?
- More than money – we need desperation to find God.
- More than more hours in the day, or days in the week – we need people who are hungry for revival.
- More than advertising in the Yellow Pages – we need it noised abroad that “Jesus is in the House…”
More than just a good program – we need a gathering to take place where people’s spiritual and natural needs are being met.
If we are going to build a church, it is going to be because we let people know one simple fact. Jesus is in the house. When Jesus is in the house, desperate people show up. And desperate people do desperate things. In a world that is increasingly searching for answers since the attacks of September 11th we need to let them know the name of the answer, Jesus Christ.
Desperate Times Demand Our Best
It is not time to play around. Notice what these men in scripture did when they couldn’t get to Jesus through the door. They climbed on top of the roof and began tearing a hole in it. They looked for extraordinary ways to get the infirm into the presence of Jesus!
- We must seek God like never before.
- When we come to church, we must Touch HIM.
- We cannot afford to come to church and allow distractions to keep us from touching Him.
We need to stop making excuses and start acting desperate.
Notice what it says, “And when Jesus saw their faith”.
It’s not the faith of the infirm that Jesus was speaking about, but it was the desperate faith of the men who were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to bring the need to Jesus. In other words, not when he saw the faith of the sick man, but when he saw the faith of the bearers, he said unto the man sick of the palsy, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”
We need to desperately to understand this. God isn’t waiting for the faith of a stranger to increase before he moves. He is waiting for the faith of His people to increase. He is waiting for the faith of this church to increase. And then He will move.
Desperate Times Demand Our Best