Crazy Enough to Believe It, Part 1

Doors can be crowded, roofs can be fragile, and faith can look reckless right up until the moment it works. We walk through Mark 2 and the paralytic’s friends who refused to turn back, showing how rooms fill when Christ and his word are the center—not the music, not the hype, not the extras. That hunger for Scripture is what sustains us when life lands its hardest hits, and it’s the difference between a momentary lift and a life that endures.

We talk about the gritty side of belief: carrying real weight together, each person holding a corner, finding a way when the door is closed, and being willing to break what no longer serves our healing. From the homeowner’s falling ceiling to the man on the mat being lowered, perspective shifts everything. What looks like destruction from one angle is deliverance from another. Jesus sees their faith in motion, speaks forgiveness before mobility, and reminds us that identity and mercy come before outcomes.

We also press into why we resist change, from rotary phones to blue-bubble group chats, and how faith helps us choose what is necessary over what is comfortable. If you’re navigating blocked paths, stale routines, or a soul that feels stuck, this conversation offers practical clarity and a call to resilient, Scripture-fed trust. Bring your questions about breakthrough, your need for community, and your desire for a deeper word that anchors the week. If the door won’t open, ask where to climb—and if the ceiling needs to come apart, ask what God is ready to rebuild.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review telling us where you’re asking God for a breakthrough.

Chapters

• 0:01 Noisy Start, Setting The Room
• 2:06 Reading Mark 2 And The Setup
• 5:43 Why The House Was Truly Full
• 12:20 Word Over Music And Buzz
• 16:40 Hunger For Scripture That Sustains
• 22:30 Four Friends And Real Support
• 26:35 When Faith Looks Like Madness
• 31:45 From Door To Roof: Finding A Way
• 36:20 Break Up To Break Through
• 40:45 Jesus Sees Faith In Action

Transcript

Anderson George: 0:01

Mark chapter number two. Mark. Chapter Number Two. We'll commence at this number one. We'll culminate at this number five. Mark two. Beginning at this. Number one. Ending at this number five. Scripture says When he had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that he was at home. And many would gather together so that there was no longer room. Not even near the door. And he was speaking the word to them when they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. Being unable to get to him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was believing. And Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic son, your sins are forgiven. If you read that with me, say amen. For the next couple of weeks, I really want you to be here. I want you to be here every week, but for the next couple of weeks, we want to embark on a series entitled Crazy Enough to Believe It. Crazy Enough to Believe It. It's a fifth series, and essentially what I want to tell you is you could only make it with faith. And you need to have a particular quality of faith in order to make it. And so the next few weeks are crazy enough to believe it. But before I get there, before we reach to where we are, I want you to understand what's happening in this text. Mark 2 opens up saying that Jesus is in a house, and everyone hears he's in the house and they fill it. And I want to stop here because the house was filled, not because there was food. The house was filled, not because of any particular occasion. The house was filled because Jesus was there. Thank you, Annette. Let me say that again on on this side. See, the house was filled. Not because there was money, not because there was food, the house was filled because Jesus was there. For those of you who missed it, what I'm trying to tell you is the way that the house was filled then is the same way we fill the house now. The house, this house of God could be filled. I'm looking for it to be filled more as the weeks and the days unfold. And I believe it can be, but I also believe what fills it is Christ. I believe what makes it full, what brings people, what keeps people is Christ. And not just Christ, an authentic, practical Christ that persons could see, persons could hear, and persons could follow. This Jesus that was in this house was a Jesus they could see, a Jesus they could relate to and talk to and hear, converse with. It was a Jesus that they could follow. And if that same Jesus shows up in this house, we could pack this house too. It also means that we need to understand that what makes the house special is not the extracurricular things that we do, but the central thing we focus on. I don't want you to misunderstand me. We do some great awesome things at Mineral Springs, and I don't want you to hear me saying that these great awesome things that we do aren't important. What keeps someone, what brings someone, should be Jesus. But also in our context, it should be the word. You should come here because you have a hunger inside of you. You have something you can't explain necessarily, but you do know that you're aching, you're desiring to hear a word. Not just any word, a good word of good news about a good Messiah named Jesus. The reason why you should show up is not necessarily because you have a good preacher. No, no, you should come because you have a good preacher. You should come, not somebody told me they like to hear me sing bass. You should come and hear me sing bass, but I don't sing bass every Sunday. My bass is not going to keep you when life hits you hard. So I don't mind that you come and you hope he sings a song and you get to hear that low rumbling bass. I'm fine with it, but I really hope that beyond the bass, beyond the animated preaching, beyond Anderson, that you come because you believe what Anderson is giving is a word, and this word is what I need to live. This word is what I need to survive. This word is what I need to make it from here to there to heaven. You should be coming because there's a word. If I have time, I'll take you to the Old Testament and show you that Israel fell because they forgot the will. And every time they rose up, it's because they got a word. So much so that when Nehemiah and Ezra rolled around and the people were gathered together, they had one question. Bring us the book. When Jeremiah was around, there was one question: Is their word from the Lord? We should be asking the same thing today. As I deal with my marriage and my health and my children and my finances, is their word from God for me. As I navigate from earth to heaven, is their word from God. You should be here because you want a word. Nothing else should satisfy as good as getting a word. I wish I had a chitch right there. Alright. Now, let me tell you something about me before I I get this text to make sure you understand this. I love good singing. I love good singing. I I love good singing. And as much as I love good singing, and I wish we sing more than three songs on a Sunday morning, and that you guys got more excited when you sing. We could sing from now until Jesus come. If that singing isn't connected to a word, you would not be sustained. You need something deeply rooted. You you need something that could carry you through. And while a song could carry you, it can't carry you as well, as deeply, and as sufficiently as a word from God. One of the reasons why we struggle with our spiritual lives is because we don't have a good diet of the word. And that's why we struggle, not enough W-O-R-D. Now, with that said, Jesus emphasized the primacy of the word. If you go back to Mark chapter number one, verse number 38, Jesus tells his disciples, let us go to the other tongue so that I could preach. For that is why I was sent here. Jesus himself emphasized that the reason why he came, the reason why he was sent was to preach. And not just to preach, to preach good news. Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse number 21, would say, even though the world did not know God, God in his wisdom chose preaching to save us. And this is where Paul wants you to understand that God could have chosen to save you any way he wanted to, but for some reason, he placed preaching at the center of it. You heard, you believed, you repented, you confessed, you repented, and you were baptized. Preaching was at the center of that. Preaching is also at the center of your growth. So scripture then tells you to feed on the word. Desire the sincere milk of the word, Peter says, so you may grow thereby. Desire it, crave it. You should want a word for your day, a word for your week, a word for your life. It's because these people were hungry for a word that they filled the house. You should be eager for a word. That's not discernment, but it's important. You should. So now the house is filled because Jesus is there and he has a word. What happens inevitably is the text then tells us there is this guy who's a paralytic. He's unable to walk, he is bed-gridden. It doesn't tell us how long he's been on this bed, it just says that he's been a paralytic. And he has four friends that were willing to bring him to Jesus. I already took enough time telling you you need a word, so I'm not going to take enough time here except to say sometimes when you're not strong enough, you need to ensure you have somebody in your corner that could carry you. Amen, Anderson. Yeah, that was good. That was good. You want to be sure because the truth is you're not always strong enough by yourself. Sometimes you feel tired, sometimes you feel wary, sometimes you don't feel like you have it in you for today. So when you don't have it in you, make sure that you have someone who is able to say, even if I can't do it, I could help you through it. So these four friends, I know they're good friends. I know they were invested in him because when they arrived at the house, scripture tells us the house was packed so that there was no room for them through the door. What this means is that not only was the house packed, they didn't just walk up to the house, saw it was filled, and said, All right, that's it. They inevitably would have tried to get in. But no one was giving them room or space. And this is where they decided not to turn back. This is where faith gets crazy, but it's not faith unless it's crazy. Let me explain. Faith is not just trusting God, it is trusting God, but it is trusting God to the degree that I don't need to know where I'm heading or what my next step is. I just need to trust that it's God leading me there. I don't need to see it, I need to see God in the middle of it. What that means then is it may look crazy until it makes sense. If you know building a big boat that no one has ever seen before you built it, and you start talking funny for a hundred years about water coming from the clouds, which no one has seen before, you're going to sound crazy. They've never seen rain, heard rain, and you're building a boat because it's going to rain, you're going to sound crazy. But when the rain came, what was crazy a hundred years ago is now faith. If you are the children of Israel standing in front of the Red Sea, and God says go forward, your first thought is I could swim. You're not thinking, you're walking on dry land, it hasn't patheted yet. You only heard go forward. That sounds crazy. But then when you're doing it, what was crazy a moment ago is now faith. You're not with me yet. Let me try this side. If you're the widow of Xeraphat, you have no oil, you have no flour, and the prophet of God comes to you and he says, get all the empty vases you can find and take this little bit of oil and pour it into all the vases until you have no more vases or vase. I don't know which you say vase or vase. You're going to think he's crazy. How could this little fill a lot? It's crazy until it works. And when it works, then it's proven not to be crazy, it's proven to be faith. I said all of that to say sometimes having faith makes you look crazy. Because you believe who your God is, because you know what He could do, and because you're walking in that belief and confidence, there may be others around you who don't see it like you do, and because they don't see it and they don't have your type of faith, they may think you're crazy. So here is crazy in this text. See, sometimes you need to sit down with scripture to understand what it's doing. It simply says there was no room at the house, and the next thing you hear is they're on the roof. You have to ask, how do you move from the door to the roof? Not just that, their houses were much like ours. We did not have easy outside access to the roof. And don't forget that these are four men carrying an infirmed person. I need you to picture with me this conversation. They arrived at the door. Could we pass? I'm sorry, there's no room. We really want to get our friend to Jesus. I can't, I can't move. It's packed. And one of the guys says, Well, what are we going to do now? And all four of them, they're scratching their heads. And one guy says, If we get on the roof, we could make this. At least one out of the other three. First thought would have been, you're crazy. You want us to take a whole bed with a whole dude on top of the bed up on a roof that has no elevator, no escalator, and no ladder. How are you have to be crazy? But it was only crazy to them, it was faith to him. It's like if we could only get him to Jesus, he will be healed. I believe that. So I need to get him to Jesus. And there's no way down, so there must be a way up. And these four men now take a bed up a wall to get onto our house. I already took too much time in the introduction. But sometimes faith is difficult, and it requires you to persist and endure through difficult times. It would not have been easy. You could even think about trying now to take anyone you know. If you're seated next to your wife, think about your wife on a bed, and you get four guys inside here to carry her up on the roof. If you're seated next to your husband, think about your husband on the bed, and you get four ladies to carry it up on the roof. The last time I checked, someone on a bed doesn't go up nicely. Right? We need to strap them down, and then we have to think about their weight. I need to make sure I need to vet the four of you carrying me up on a roof. Yes, okay, you all could laugh at that one. But I'm serious. If four of you would have carried me on a roof, I am vetting you. I want to see you bench press some weight before I say you could hold a corner. And I wish I could demonstrate this, but I don't want to put the guys here the shape. Because what I would do is sit on a chair now and ask some of these guys to come and lift me, but I don't want to shame them. Right? And here's what happens: everyone who's holding a corner must bear their weight. Because the moment one corner drops, you add pressure on everybody else. So you needed four able-bodied men who were equally carrying weight to do something that seemed impossible and crazy. You that's faith you need to have a faith that's resilient enough that even when it does not make sense and you don't always know how it's going to turn out or what the outcome is, I'm still pushing through until the end. Then they make it to the roof. Now, let's just remember this is not their house. Before I say anything else, this is not their house. They came to the house that Jesus was in. They were not in it. Now they're on the roof. The question is, we finally made it up. How do we get him down to Jesus? And they're scratching the heads, and again, it had to be the crazy faith guy. He said, let's dig a hole. Now let me help you. The roofs were made out of clay and dirt, so it was just heated and compacted. It was easy to dig as opposed to our roofs. Let's dig, but it's still a roof. Let's dig through the roof so we have a wide enough hole to let him down in. Could we pause for Bible commercial? And as we pause, I want you to pretend you are the owner of the house. And you are in the house, seated in and around the vicinity of Jesus, and clay pieces from your roof just start falling. One piece of clay you're not going to be worried about. But all of a sudden you see a hole. And then you see a face, and then you hear voices. But if you are the guy on the bed, you're pretty hopeful right now. And I mention that because perspective matters. If you were down looking up, you're worried. But if you were the one up looking down, you're hopeful and happy. What would have seen to be destruction to the owner in the house was a solution to the people up on the roof. What looked like destruction from one end was an answer on the other end. And sometimes what you may think is actually a negative outcome or destructive could very well be what God is using to bring your answer. I'll say something after the cameras come off. Sometimes you need to change your perspective because there may be some things that you have cemented in your life and in your behaviorisms that you need to break up so that you could have a breakthrough. There are some things that you have made walls around and against, thinking they're for your security, but they're actually preventing you from breaking through, from reaching beyond, from getting to where God would have you to be. So sometimes you need to break up to break through. So they've now broken up some stuff, and they let the guy down. It's interesting because scripture says Jesus seeing their faith. And normally we would attribute this to everybody else except the guy who's on the bed. But I want to give you a shift of understanding. The guy has to be included because he went along with the plan. If he at any point had said, guys, don't worry about it. They could have turned back, he could have stopped it, but he went along with it. So he had faith too. Jesus seeing their faith. It's important here to understand that they did not utter a word except to each other in how to get up on the roof and how to get through the roof to Jesus. They said nothing to Jesus. All Jesus saw was their actions. And he counted their actions as faith. Upon seeing their faith, he looks to the paralytic and then says, Son, your sins are forgiven. What healed him was crazy faith. Crazy faith that was able to push past through a season of difficulty. Crazy faith that was able to find a way where there was not previously a way. Crazy faith to break up what was necessary so that he could have actually met Jesus. You look at the story, you look at this narrative, and it prompts the question: do I, do you have faith necessary to endure what you're currently going through? Do you have the faith necessary right now for what's coming? You may not have met your full house yet. Or you probably have. She resisted a telephone for a while, and I said a telephone and not a cell phone. For those of us who are ancient enough, we know the rotary dial telephones. She had one since Moses was a boy. When we ushered in the 21st century, her grandchildren, me and my cousins, my sisters, we disliked going to her house and needing to use the telephone because we spent minutes ringing. I know I just lost everyone in the young generation. It wasn't I had an uncle who had one, seven, and three eights in his number. And only if you're above a particular age, you want to see what I just said. If you were ringing, you would wish that the numbers were close. 0, 1, 2, 3. 7, 7, 8, and you have to wait for it to come back. So we complain, Branny, it's time that you come into the 21st century. You need to get a touch type telephone. And she resisted it. No, this phone was good enough for Jesus. It was good enough for Paul. It's good enough for me. And then one day, my uncle, one night, unbeknownst to any of us, just switches the phone. He just switches it. And she got up in the morning, she was furious when she saw her phone was switched. She went to the phone company. She told them she wants a rotary dial phone back. And the person she was speaking to told them, We don't have anymore, we we don't issue them anymore. We only have these touch types. A few months later, her art writer scut worse. And I remember she calls mom. She calls my mom. And the first thing she said, my mom's name is Yvonne. She says, Yvonne, you know this touch type phone, not too bad. See, it irritated her fingers to ring. It was less difficult to press. But the thing was, she resisted that change for years, not knowing that that change was actually beneficial. And I understand the reason why I took so long with this analogy because many of us is like my grandmother, we're like my grandmother. We like what we like, we've gotten accustomed to what we've gotten accustomed to. And it's hard for us to change even when it's necessary. But if faith calls for it, you should be ready. I'll tell you one more. I am a tech enthusiast. I love tech. I am one of the truest, nerdiest tech guys you will ever meet. Being a true tech head, I tried every phone. Blackberry, Android, Google Pixel, Apple. It says Apple and it still makes me upset. Um and I realized that the best phone, technologically speaking, is an Android phone. And then I moved to the US. I moved to the US and my preacher friends were not happy with me because I was in group chats and the text messages never came across properly. Pictures went wonky. And it was because they were all Apple users. And then I said, Well, that's easy. Let's just get WhatsApp. Some of you asked, What's WhatsApp? That's what they said too. And basically, we don't need to get WhatsApp. We just text. It's like, well, text isn't working, so let's get. They were not willing to switch. And so I fought it for a couple months. And then I finally joined the iClub. I think that's the loudest aiming I've ever gotten. So I'm in the i family. Just like my grandmother, I resisted the change. It's still not good, still not better. But it was beneficial. And at some point, you two may have to make a difficult decision between what you're comfortable with and what's necessary for you to do. And when that decision comes, I'm hoping you have enough faith to say, even though this isn't my favorite type of fruit, even though this isn't my cup of tea, even though this is not something I'm comfortable with, I'm willing to push through and break through if it means I'm going to get through. It's crazy enough for you to believe it. Us to be people that have this crazy type of faith. Because even though I'm calling it crazy, the Bible just calls it faith. And then it says, without faith, it is impossible to please God. Let's all have crazy faith. Let's stand. Don't sing it. Let's just stand. Faith is something you're always working on. You have it, but you still need more of it. The faith you have for today may not be enough for tomorrow. The faith you had for last week's trial won't be enough for next week's. So you should always be in the process of maturing your faith. And so today is a poll. If you just want to pray that Lord increases your faith for what you are going through, what you are about to go through. The invitation song is going to be sung. You meet me in the front row, and we'll pray that God increases your faith. If you want to pray that you have faith, as was demonstrated in these guys, to persevere and to break up so they can have a breakthrough. Meet me in the front row. And after we sing, we'll pray together that God increases our faith so that just like this guy, he could tell us our sins are forgiven, we are healed, we are his. Let's sing.