[Darris McNeely] Jesus Christ was healing many people on one occasion, as we’re told in the Gospels, in Luke chapter 5, beginning in verse 17. It’s a well-known story of Christ healing a lot of people and – so many, in fact, that one person who needed to be healed couldn’t get to Him. We’ve been talking about intercessory prayer and the fact that we can chain ourselves to others in prayer who are in need. We can and should lay down our life as an act of love in prayer for others through praying for their needs and taking people before God’s throne.

In this story of Christ’s healing, there’s a lesson for us, I think, that goes even beyond the actual act of healing. It’s in Luke chapter 5, beginning in verse 17. Let me read it. “It happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present to heal them. Behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him. And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd,” – so many people there that – they were crowded around the house and the doorway seemed to be blocked, they couldn’t get this man who they wanted to have Christ heal, their friend – what they did is something that is, again, one of these great stories from the Gospels. “They went up on the housetop and they let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus.” They actually went up on top of the house – flat-roofed houses in that day – took back some of the tiling, and carefully lowered their man right down to, obviously, right in front of Jesus Christ, in the midst. And verse 20 says, “When He saw their faith, He said to him, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you.’” (Luke 5:17-20) Christ’s power was manifested there in the healing of this man.

But think about the persistent action of this man’s friends. They would not be turned away. They actually took their friend and they made – they laid him before Jesus Christ, and he was healed. Christ marveled at that faith and devotion. Think about this in terms of intercessory prayer.

Is there someone, a friend of ours, a friend of yours, who has a need? Healing, help, encouragement, escape from a trial? Whatever it might be, they’ve asked you to pray for them. They’ve asked you to remember them in your prayers. Take that person to God’s throne. Lay them before God’s throne in the same manner, in the same way spiritually, that, like these men did with their friend in laying him before God, wanting the power of God to be manifested and to heal them. If we can have that type of persistence and that type of devotion with someone who has asked us to pray for them, and not be turned away, but go to whatever lengths is necessary, on our knees, to God’s throne, and to take that person, that friend, that need there and lay it before God, God can act in the same way that He did here and heal that man. God can intervene. God can answer your prayer – your intercessory prayer.

Think about that as a means by you and I – dealing with some of the problems that we have, some of our own inadequacies, our own insecurities – and let’s focus on others, and let’s see that we take them before our God’s throne to ask His intervention in their lives. And notice not only what happens for them, but also what might happen for you in your own spiritual relationship with God.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.