Breaking through your roof to be the Amazing Jesus to others

1. Please be seated. I’m going to take the offering at the end. And Sarah and Anton, I’m going to have you to share just a little bit your testimonies in Jordan. I won’t be very long. I’m not going to apologize for not having the Scriptures in the PowerPoint. Instead, you have a Bible near you, I think. You may not like the translation, but it’s the Word of God. If you need a different translation, raise your hand and Korina or Cecilia or Leto will help you.
2. Last week Pastor Brian preached about getting the church out of the building and into the marketplace, I personally think, the enemy is doing everything he can, to keep us content with coming to church on Sunday and Wednesday night for prayer, and worshipping the Lord and that’s good enough. But I don’t know about you, I’m so burdened for people who don’t know Jesus, because I do believe that we’re living on the edge of the last days, and many of those people aren’t going to come in here. And we need to take Jesus, the Jesus that’s inside of us, we’re Jesus to people outside these four walls. We have to take Him. Some people will hate you; some will ignore you; but there are some who will listen, and ask, and that’s why we’ve got to go out there.
3. If you’ll open your Bibles that are near you, please to Mark 2: 1-5, ​ “A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”
4. Jesus did a lot of miracles in Capernaum, I won’t take time to go through them, go home and read them. But today we’re talking about something being done through the roof. This is a very familiar story – through the roof – through the roof. Evidently many people had seen Jesus before in Capernaum. This challenged me very early this morning, they knew He was there again and they gathered where He was. So many people, that no more could get into the house. I was thinking about our local church, we have room for a lot more. We have room for the broken, for the hurting, for the people who don’t know who they are, we even have room for the proud, for the know-it-alls. You know what? We really have room for everybody. And I was thinking about how easy it is for us to come to church. And I believe that Jesus is here, His Spirit is here. Don’t you? Amen.
5. I believe Jesus is here in Glyfada, but I believe it’s time for us to get nearer to Jesus than we’ve ever been. Even if it means, breaking through your roof. Your schedule, your friends, your work, your laziness, your habits, we have to break through whatever roof, that’s holding us back, form being the amazing Jesus that people want to be so near, that they would slam on their brakes outside this building, or they would come to your door and they don’t know who you are. And they would knock on your door, ‘I don’t know what it is, but there is something here, in my heart, that I need.’ And many people don’t even know they need it. But we need the presence of Jesus, that is so drawing, so magnetic, that people may not even know why, but they’ll come and search us out.
6. You see I believe; I thought about this so much this morning, that difficult times are coming, we may think we’re going to escape them here. I know people that 20 years ago, moved and brought their children to Greece, saying, ’Oh, it’s not difficult there, it’s much more difficult in America, or South Africa, or wherever, but remember, it was just 3 weeks ago here in Glyfada that they stole all of Christina’s car, right in front of her house. 20 years ago, you would never have imagined that.
7. The Bible says that in the end days, there’ll be wars, and rumors of wars, plagues, all kinds of diseases, Families will hate one another. Men’s hearts will grow cold, and people will say, that won’t happen in Greece. These days things are changing, and the Lord is calling us, to get the roof off between the life here and the life in heaven. I live this story so much, and I’m sure you all know it, 3 says 4 men, they couldn’t get inside, but they had a friend, and they wanted him to be healed and I thought about that, how many of us would say if we came to the door, and we say it’s too hard. And we turn and take out friend back home. But 4 friends, carrying their friend, they brought this man to see Jesus. They were determined, because they heard that Jesus was there.
8. I sense the Lord so much calling us, to be so full of Jesus, that little children like Ola, would just suddenly so filled, with the Spirit of the Lord, they’ll begin to sing praises to Him;
9. people will begin to see such unusual things. See us caring for one another. That we won’t just call, but we’ll make an hour’s trip, to get to someone and say, I came to help you to go to Jesus. Jesus said the first and greatest commandment, ‘Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.’ And the second one is, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
10. Let me ask you something and I hope it makes you feel guilty, because it does me, how often to you tell somebody that’s sick or have a need, ‘I’ll pray for you’ – and you never do. Or, ‘Lord help them and that’s all you ever do’. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ but you’ve never offered to give them a ride to the doctor. I need a job, but have you ever refused to take a bag of groceries to someone who does not have a job. If we loved our neighbors, which is all those people out there, Russians. Jews, South Africans, Philippinos, Americans, Ghanaians, Brazilians, Chinese, Sri Lankans. If I love you as I love myself, then I would want to give you, what I would want myself. If I have one house, I want to give you the second house. If I have one car, I’ll give you a car. I started with the big things, because that’s the hard things to do, like paying your tithes and offerings. But I know personally and Kelly may know this too, pastors, that they trusted the Lord for their house, and they prayed to give someone else a house, and it happened.
11. I want peace, I don’t know if we can have peace in this world, but we can have peace inside. We need to help people to find the peace that passes understanding. I want my son saved, I cannot do it, but God can. I need to pray for your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, your husbands and wives. I’s hard sometimes to pray for someone you don’t know or have never seen their face. But Jesus before the foundation of the world, He saw every face of everyone, that would ever live. And I’m Jesus, Jesus is in me, for God so loved every person on this planet, that He asked Jesus to come, and Jesus said, ‘Of course I will, because before they were born, I knew if they would follow Me, they would know life and life abundant.’ John 10:10. We must get the roof off, who we think Jesus is, and who Jesus wants to be in us.
12. I love this story, because I can just picture when they start to dig apart this roof, probably some of the plaster and the twigs, fell on everybody’s head in the room. I imagine the people didn’t expect anybody to do that. But I wonder, perhaps those 4 friends thought, this is a once in a life-time opportunity. I must get my friend to Jesus now. We never know when it is someone’s last opportunity, and the Lord has placed them in your path to tell them who He is and know how He loves them. Oh, how He loves them. We have the Holy Spirit with us to do these once in a life-time witnessing times. To take advantage of these opportunities, we need to look around and say, ’Lord, take the roof off of my faith in You. Lord, use me to lay hands on someone and say to them, I know you’re sick, but I know the Healer, Amen.’
13. We need to seek the healing of others. The Bible says, ‘Love others more than yourself.’ I fail there a lot. I think more of myself than anybody else. I don’t think of you more than me ll the time; tell the truth, do you think more about me than yourself all the time? And I don’t think he is saying that you diminish yourself, he’s not saying that at all. But when we love what God loves, when we love whom, God loves, they will be in our prayers. Lord, I don’t know every Natasha in the world, there’s a lot of them in Russia, and Georgia and Ukraine, but Lord, you gave me that name today, And I’m going to stay here for a minute. Lord, I’m going to pray for Natasha. Maybe it’s for all the Natashas in the world. Maybe Lord, it’s one specific Natasha. Lord, you know that I don’t know. Oh, Lord, I come before You, I know that people need the Lord, people need You Lord. People need to know that You can heal. People need to know You can rescue. People need to know, that You’re the Savior. People need to know that You will never leave them, when they invite You into their lives. So, if it’s all the Natashas or just one, Lord, I pray a blessing, I pray a blessing on them right now, and I do believe that the Lord will bring showers back into our lives, when we bless others. It’s Biblical.
14. After all, didn’t Jesus sacrifice His life, so that we would receive blessings. I want to be like Jesus. I don’t want anybody whipping me across my back, but if it happens it’s just a quick entrance to heaven. But at the end of the day, if you’re like me, sometimes, we see the sacrifice of Jesus as a fact. But not as something that we are to live out, that we live our lives as a living sacrifice. Romans 12:1, open your Bibles there real quick. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship”. To present our bodies as living sacrifices. Life is going to be full of trials and tribulations, but too often we are like people who bring people from outside, or just ourselves, we come to the door – it’s too crowded, it would require me to spend time with the Lord to get an answer, but I’m going to give up at the door. But the Lord does not want us to have, ‘stop at the door faith’. If He’s the God of unlimited power, God doesn’t live by the words ‘I’m limited’, He lives by the words, ‘I’m Infinite. I’m unlimited’. And He wants to live in us, but we have to come nearer to Him. If the way is blocked at the door, there’s always another way. There’s always another way, but we have to have faith in this great and mighty God.
15. The world is waiting for us, to have faith in God, that will last, no matter what we face. These four men, didn’t stop at the door, they climbed on the roof, they climbed through the roof, and that kind of love, is kind of rare right now in the body of Christ. Nut the Lord is challenging us, and if you’re too lazy, and I’m just going to say it, ‘you’re too lazy to pray to get the heart of God’, so that people will go to heaven, instead of hell, you need to repent. Your main calling here on this earth, is not to make money, it’s not to own big homes, it’s not even to love your family the most. Your main calling, is that God would be above all, in all, through all. And He is looking for people in Glyfada, Voula, Argyroupoli, Kypseli, wherever you live, and will love the Lord your God, with all your heart, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Because everyone, is waiting to hear, John 4:36, we started this service with this Scripture, “Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.” When we stand before Jesus, I think about this a lot, I first heard this when I was a teenager, and He asks you, ‘Why should I let you in?’ but He won’t ask you, because He already knows. My answer would be, ‘Because of Jesus’, but with that, can we say, ‘I lived to love like Jesus. I lived to be a Jesus’. We are all going to fail at times, but that’s the wonder of Him. We just say ‘Help me, forgive me’ and He grabs a hold of us and we keep walking with Him.
16. Now Anton can you come share first.