By: Dale Weckbacher
Mark 2:1-3
When he entered
Capernaum again after some days, it was reported that he was at
home. 2 So many people gathered together that there
was no more room, not even in the doorway, and he was speaking the word to
them. 3 They came to him bringing a
paralytic, carried by four of them.
(CSB)
A while back my family and I were driving home from church
and passed an old Pentecostal church.
The church parking lot was full because they were having an old tent
revival. The banner in front of the tent
urged people to come in for prayer for healing.
This brought back visions of watching faith healing evangelists on TV
growing up.
Jesus' encounter with the paralytic in Capernaum must have appeared similar to one of these old tent revival healing services (Mark
2:1-12). This huge crowd is probably
due to the many who came to Peter’s house in Capernaum after hearing word of
the healing of Peter’s mother (Mark
1:29-34). Even without the
technology of social media, Good news can travel fast.
However, there are also major differences between Jesus
healing of the paralytic and faith healing tent revivals once prevalent in the
church. Some differences are,
1)
This was not a hyped scheduled event with people
coming because of the hype. Instead
Jesus was returning home for some rest and once word spread that Jesus was
home, the crowd started showing up. These
people were not showing up due to some slick marketing and instead showed up in
expectation of either receiving or seeing a miracle from God. So intent was the paralytic on receiving
healing that he had his friends carry him and even convinced them to cut a hole
in someone’s roof to get to Jesus. This should
cause each of us to pause and determine if we have an equally burning desire to
get to Jesus.
2)
Seeing
the faith of the paralytic, Jesus speaks.
In a healing tent revival, the minister would usually lay hands on the
sick person and declare them healed as Jesus did with the woman that touched His
clothing (Mark
5:25-34). However, Jesus sensed this
man needed a more complete healing of body, mind, and soul. Instead of declaring the paralytic healed, Jesus
declares his sins forgiven (Mark
2:5). Jesus healed the sick
throughout His ministry, but the greatest healing miracle Jesus performed was
dying for our sins. Jesus is interested
in healing the entire person, not just their physical bodies.
3)
Healing tent revival meetings, like Jesus
healing the paralytic, meet with controversy and doubt. In the case of the tent revival ministers,
the controversy revolved around the genuine motive of the minister. While
Jesus can heal the sick today as He did when ministering on earth, many in
ministry hype miracles of healing to increase giving. Jesus, however, was not trying to hype His
ministry by healing the paralytic but show the power of God to bring complete
healing to someone. Ministry for Christ
must have the correct motive of bringing glory to God and not glory to
self. As the song “Only Jesus” from
casting crowns reminds us, the motive of anyone in ministry must be only
Jesus.
The servant Messiah Jesus provides the perfect example of
one ministering not for personal gain but to bring glory to God the father through
serving the needs of humanity. My prayer
is that all of us would remember we have a ministry from God. With that in mind, may we remember the
purpose of our high calling from God is serving God and those God places in
their life and not bringing glory or accolades to ourselves. God is interested in the complete healing of
fallen humanity, may we all find and carry out our role in bringing the
complete healing message of the Gospel to those God places in our lives.
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