Welcome to Tim Men of Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon.

It's possible that you might have the wrong idea about what faith is.

You might think that faith is a feeling in your heart or an intellectual belief in your mind. Now faith involves your

heart and your mind, but genuine faith always results in action. To see the kind of faith that

Jesus commends, we're going to look at one of my all-time favorite stories in the Gospels.

It's found in Mark Chapter 2, 1 through 12.

The story takes place in a home. It's either Jesus' home or it's the home of Jesus'

friends, Peter and Andrew. That's whose house they were in at the end of Chapter 1.

Either way, crowds of people have packed into this home. Not everybody who wants to get in, can get in, and so people are standing outside the doorway. Jesus is inside and he's teaching about the kingdom of God.

A group of friends approaches the house.

They're carrying another friend who's paralyzed.

And the reason they're taking him to this house is because they know Jesus is there

and they want to get their friend to Jesus. But because of the crowds, they're unable to get inside.

So what do they do? Just go home? No, not these guys. Instead of going home, they climb up on their

roof. Now in this time period and in this part of the world, roofs or flat, they were the place that people would hang out socially or even maybe

get away to say their prayers. So it's not really all that unusual for this group of guys to

carry their friend up on the roof. But when they get their

paralyzed friend on the roof, they aren't content to hang out and wait for the

crowd to go home. Instead of waiting, they start digging. They make a hole and lower their friend down into the house right in front of Jesus.

And when Jesus sees all this, he responds to their faith by saying,

son, your sins are forgiven.

...