Friends (part 2)

BFF...best friends forever...those folks are pretty special. They stick close when everyone else has left the building. Yesterday we talked about a man who could not move or speak and was paralyzed. It's a story in the Bible in Mark 2. He had four BFF's!
Picture for a moment this paralyzed man laying on a mat and unable to feed himself, get a drink, write a sentence or do anything. He was in desperate need of a friend. You and I were created for fellowship...to be connected to people. Like the man in this story, we can never be whole, never be well unless we have the right people in the right places in our lives.
I like to picture this man on a mat with a post on each corner and the only way the mat can be brought to the place where Jesus could heal him was to have someone on each corner. Let me give you the four corners...four posts that we all need to get us in a position to be saved, delivered and healed.
The first corner is FAITH. Without faith we cannot make God happy. Faith IS the substance of what we hope for and the clear cut evidence that what we don't see yet is coming. So FAITH is the first post. But we all know that faith cannot do it alone...it needs help...it needs HOPE.
HOPE is the second post. Faith and Hope always seem to work together. Faith without hope is nothing. Fact is that hope increases when faith is exercised. Christ in YOU is the HOPE of glory. Faith brings the hope level up and hope keeps faith moving. But Faith and Hope, though they can drag you to where you need to be, don’t make up all that we need.You can't carry this mat with these two alone. Tomorrow we will fill the other two positions...