Skip to main content

How to Help Someone Find Hope and Healing, Part 1

By



Daily Hope Devotional Friday 19th August 2016

“Therefore [Jesus] is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” 
- Hebrews 7:25 NIV

I believe that small groups are a vital part of helping so-called hopeless people find healing. One of the parts I like best about being in a small group is that you can pray for one another’s “hopeless” cases. We can lean upon the faith of others when we start to doubt.

In Luke 5, there’s a great story of a small group of men who took a friend who was paralyzed and in need of healing to the feet of Jesus. In this account, we find seven characteristics of a small group that God uses to heal. Today we’re going to look at three of those characteristics, and tomorrow we’ll look at the rest.

Compassion: This man was healed because his friends cared. It all starts with us caring about people who are hurting. Romans 15:2 says, “We should help others do what is right and build them up in the Lord” (NLT, second edition). God used these guys because they were sensitive to a friend’s need. And he’ll use us when we aren’t preoccupied with our own needs and start caring more about others than we do ourselves.

Faith: The men believed God would heal their friend. Take a look at Luke 5:20: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven’” (NIV). It wasn’t the paralytic’s faith that made him well; it was the faith of his friends. How many people do you know who are so paralyzed they can’t believe in God? That’s when we have to believe for them.

Intervention: These friends didn’t just pray for their friend; they took action as well. It’s not enough just to pray for someone who is hurting and caught in sin. We have to take action. Jesus says in Luke 14:23, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.” There is a slew of examples in the Bible of people taking others to Jesus.

Talk It Over

  • What does hopelessness look like?
  • Do you believe that no one is outside Jesus’ reach? If so, what are you willing to do about bringing “hopeless” people to Jesus?
  • What hurting friend have you been praying for? What can you do to take action and help that person heal?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

You've been blessed through this reading share with Others. Share the DO's and the DON'T.

Popular posts from this blog

Dominion Mandate Daily Devotional Thursday,March 3

By
THEME: You Can Create Whatever You Desire John 16:21-27 The instrument with which you exercise dominion over creation is your mouth.You can create whatsoever you desire by speaking that thing into existence.Whatever you say begins to exist in the spiritual form.Jesus said in John 6:63,"The words that I speak unto you,they are spirit,and they are life". In like manner,you create whatever you say and the things begin to exist in the spiritual form.What you create through words also have life and they continue to live until they find physical expression.  This is exactly what happens when you pray.The things you declare in prayer come alive and begin to exist in their spiritual form.They remain in that spiritual form until they are converted to their tangible equivalent through work. Jesus said,"until now you have asked nothing in My name.Ask,and you will receive,that your joy may be full" (John 16:24). Don't make the mistake of relaxing after you have pray...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dominion Mandate Daily Devotional Friday, March 18th 2016

By
You Must Forgive Yourself Hebrews 12:1-11 You have heard quite a lot about forgiving those that have offended you – and that you must do. It happens often that the person you must really forgive is yourself. You may have committed an offence or a sin and your conscience has condemned you, just as the Holy Spirit has chastised you. You may also have repented of this sin, confessed it to God and resolved not to go back that way. But you discover that the heaviness, clouded vision, and the erosion of confidence occasioned by the sin you committed continue to weigh you down. At such moments, you need to make another type of confession to God in order to regain your liberty from the weight that holds you down. You have to confess your unbelief in His word that says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). When you have genuinely repented of a sin and confessed it to God; and you have pleaded ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sin Stained...or Blood Washed?

By
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.  (Hebrews 10:16-17) The Bible tells us that under Levitical law, an animal had to be offered every year to atone for the sins of the people. That word atone means "to cover" and it's used continually throughout the Old Testament. But let me tell you something exciting. It's never used in the New Testament. The Greek word used to describe what Jesus did for us on the cross is a different word altogether. It doesn't just mean "to cover"—it means "to remit; to do completely away with something." Do you know what that means? It means there is no longer a sin problem. Jesus solved it! When you made Him your Lord, He didn't just cover your sins, He put you into right-standing with God and re-created you by the Spirit of God a...
Post a Comment
Read more