How to Bring Your Friends to Jesus

I recently spent many nights in a hospital room with a close friend recovering from a major stroke. She was young and healthy before her brain bleed, and her sudden crisis was a shock. 

During the first nights, I’d sit next to her in the dark while she breathed through a ventilator, and I’d read the Songs of Ascent. Her favorite is Psalm 121: “I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

I developed a new appreciation for Psalm 130: “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning.” 

As she began to recover and breathe on her own, I found myself gravitating to the gospels. But I found myself unsure how much to read aloud. Especially when it came to the accounts of Jesus healing people: the blind, the deaf, and yes, the paralyzed and lame. 

Was this too much? 

We boldly pray for my friend’s healing, but we’re not exactly sure when or how Jesus will answer. At one point, I found myself thinking: If only I could put her on a stretcher and sit her right at Jesus’ feet. I’d even climb a ladder and cut a hole in the roof like the men who brought their paralyzed friend to Jesus in Luke 5.

But then I realized: that’s exactly what we’d been doing all along. Every prayer, every cry, every plea that she couldn’t make for herself, was us bringing her to Jesus, sitting her at his feet, and asking him to do her good. 

And we believe he will. Because he is good. He does good.

I also began to think about how much this applies to other people who need Jesus. People who are physically fit and financially secure and think they have everything they need—but don’t realize they are spiritually sick and just as helpless as my friend lying in a bed, unable to do anything to save herself. 

In fact, they’re more helpless. Because they don’t realize they need Jesus at all. 

What can I do for them?

The same thing I’m doing for my sick friend. I can bring them to Jesus. Just like so many people in the gospels who brought their sick friends and family and laid them at Jesus’ feet, I can bring my spiritually sick loved ones to him. I don’t know exactly what he’ll do, or how he’ll do it, but I trust his power. I trust his goodness.

That seems to be the essence of bringing our friends and family to Christ—not only in prayer, but in presence. When we speak about him. When we invite them to church. When we ask them just to read a simple book about him. 

It often seems like so little because we realize we have no power to save. But we believe in the power of the one who does. All we can do is bring them to him, and lay them at his feet. 

When Jesus healed the paralyzed man carried by his friends in Luke 5, the author says that Jesus saw their faith. That included the faith of his friends. So, I’m going to keep bringing my physically sick friend to Jesus in prayer. She already knows and loves him, and she trusts that he will be good to her, as he always has. 

But let’s also renew our resolve to bring our spiritually sick friends to Jesus, with our prayers and our presence. And let’s trust that Jesus sees our faith. That it matters to him. 

And let’s also trust that, however he works, a final day will come when “amazement will seize us” and we will “be filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’”

This article first appeared in The Commission, Radical’s biweekly newsletter featuring global gospel stories and encouragement from David Platt and others to help you follow Jesus and make him known. Subscribe today.