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Part 4 of 12
Peer Pressure: The Call to Demand More
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When Jesus saw the paralyzed man lowered through the roof, He didn't see the man's faith first. He saw their faith—the faith of the friends who carried him. Be careful who you call friend, because your greatest joy and your greatest pain will often come from your closest relationships. The same people who make you laugh will make you cry. The same person you said "I do" to may sometimes divorce you.
Research from the American Psychological Association reports that peer pressure is more intense in digital spaces where likes, comments, and trends are shaping our values more than truth. This is dangerous because Jesus is not a trend—Jesus is the truth. Today, peer pressure doesn't just come from your friends; it comes from your feeds. Culture does not just want to influence you; culture wants to disciple you.
Studies show that 70% of teenagers say they have tried harmful substances or drugs because of peer pressure. But peer pressure doesn't just affect teenagers—it matures in disguise. What started as pressure to fit in at school becomes pressure to fake it as an adult.
Culturally speaking, peer pressure is when you trade your authenticity for acceptance. Sometimes being in the will of God will put you out of the grace of people. People shout over favor without embracing what favor costs. Sometimes you have favor with God because you've been rejected by people. If you've experienced rejection and jealousy in your life, that's an indication that God has favor on you. It's not the outfit; it's the favor.
Because culturally peer pressure carries negative connotations, but God is a redeemer. I want to redeem what peer pressure means because I'm making a clarion call for you to get some peer pressure in your life.
There are some people you have been calling friends who are really just familiar. Peer pressure is when the people God places around you begin to demand more for you than you're currently demanding of yourself.
Some of us have been settling for less than God's best. When you settle in relationships, settle in your career, settle in your faith—settling season is over. You are the head and not the tail. You are above and not beneath. You are the lender, not the borrower.
The problem is you are surrounded with peers who only speak to the level of your problems and not to the level of God's promises. I don't just need friends that I can party with. I need friends that I can get in purpose with. I need people in my life who will pull me out of my settling season and demand that I step into God's best.
In Luke 5:18, some men brought a paralyzed man on a stretcher, trying to take him to Jesus. But sometimes your greatest gift doesn't show up with four wheels—it may show up on two legs. Sometimes when God sends people, He's not just sending a person; He's sending a key. Some people are keys to unlocking the next level in your destiny.
The man is paralyzed and laying on a mat. This mat has become his everyday reality. He was used to being carried. Not only was he used to it, his friends became used to it too. They're used to seeing him stuck. They're used to making inconveniences to support his condition. They're used to managing what they did not know how to change.
Paralyzed literally means loss of muscle function to make unable to move. But I'm not just speaking to physical paralysis today. What if you're sitting here with spiritual paralysis? You're attending church every week, but paralyzed in your spirit. Or what if you're relationally paralyzed? You're a good person, but you keep having bad relationships, and now you don't know how to trust people the way God wants you to trust people—not because you don't know what to do, but because people didn't know how to handle you.
Spiritual paralysis is when you have potential but no progress. You have all of this greatness in you. But here's what I love about Jesus: He doesn't just speak to your condition; He also speaks to your capacity. He'll speak to you while you're in debt and say, "You are the lender and not the borrower." He spoke to Gideon while he was afraid and called him a "valiant warrior."
God doesn't wait until you become something to call you what you are. I dare somebody to praise God and speak over yourself even what you are not yet. Because your words are your weapons. Speak those things that are not as though they already are. Say it over your family. Say it over your whole row. "I am more than a conqueror. I am blessed coming in and blessed going out. I am debt-free. I am free in my mind. I am overflowing. No lack."
In verse 19, the text says they couldn't get in the house because of the crowd. Not because of the enemy, but because of the crowd. Someone in need was being blocked by people who are just being nosy. When we come to be nosy, we get in the way. But when we bring our need, God makes a way.
Do you have a need that you bring to Jesus today? If you need Him to make a way, take 30 seconds to praise God. When you're nosy, you just watch people praise. But when you need Him, you start praising Him yourself.
Are you a worshipper or a watcher? It doesn't matter about people watching you praise. You didn't come to see them anyway. You need Jesus to do something in your house, something in your family. You need Him because there are people who hurt you that you don't want to forgive. You can't have dignity and deliverance at the same time. You're too worried about your reputation to receive what you need from the Master.
There are two groups of people in this text: those in the crowd who are just spectating, and those in the core who are bringing people in need to Jesus. When was the last time you brought somebody to Jesus? Not to church—to Jesus. Because some people come to church but never came to Jesus. They say, "You have a need that we cannot fix. So we're taking you to the one who specializes in doing the impossible, moving the unmovable, and thinking the unthinkable."
When the crowd kept the paralyzed man out, his peers applied pressure and went up. They didn't just give up; they went up. They said, "Okay, y'all won't let us through the door. We're going to go through the roof." They didn't even pay the mortgage. They tore the roof off and lowered him.
Think about the friends carrying this heavy weight, only to not be able to get into the solution. Friend number one says, "We did our best. Let's wait for him to come out." Friend number two says, "Let's just come back next week. I'm tired." Friend number three says, "We wasted our time." But friend number four says, "We don't make excuses. We make adjustments." "If we can't get through the door, we're going to tear the roof off."
Do you have a whatever it takes mentality? Do you have a whatever it takes kind of praise? Where would you be right now in life if you were surrounded by people who had a whatever it takes mentality?
I remember a season of my life where I left Rock City Church out of offense. I was upset with Pastor Mike. We weren't talking. I was in my pride, in my ego, offended. And I left. There were hard seasons where every bill in my life was past due. I have a wife and kids. As the man, there's a different type of pressure and weight you feel when you feel like you can't provide for your family.
I came home one day with the water getting cut off, power getting cut off. Everything in my life was off. Sometimes you don't realize that God is all you need until God is all you have. I couldn't make excuses and pray God fix it without first confronting the issue. God, fix me. My offense, my ego, and my pride put me and my family in that situation.
Do you have people in the room who can be honest and say, "I can't blame nobody else. I was the problem." I may have had a bad partner, but I made a bad pick. I was the problem.
I remember falling on my knees, crying. My tears turned into prayer, and my prayer turned into praise. The Holy Spirit put a word in my belly: "I will never see the righteous forsaken, nor see begging bread." I didn't just say it; I began to speak it and affirm it over my life. My phone rang with a random call. Someone said, "I want to meet you at Panera Bread and share what God's been doing in my life." Everything in me didn't feel like talking to nobody. I was in a low place. But God stretched me to celebrate somebody else who was in a blessed place. He shared what God was doing, then put a box on the table and said, "You don't know what your words did for me every Sunday. God used you to speak me out of some stuff, to preach me and teach me out of some stuff that I never thought I would be able to get out of."
That box he left on the table contained enough for me to live off for two years. That's what I call peer pressure—the kind that comes from God putting the right people in your life. He didn't have to tell them what I was going through. God put a word in their heart.
While I was talking to God, God was talking to him. I didn't come to preach today; I came to testify. I wouldn't be standing on this stage if it wasn't for the right people being in my life. You wouldn't be where you are today if it hadn't been for somebody praying for you, having you on their mind, taking the time to pray.
This is how Jesus chose his disciples. He gave them the cost on the front end so that he was sure he wasn't wasting his time on the back end. He said, "No, you got to leave all that. Follow me." We trust in people who left nothing. They tore the roof off. When they couldn't get in the door, they tore the roof off and lowered him in front of Jesus.
Jesus looks at the paralyzed man and says something that messes me up: "Sir, your sins are forgiven." If my legs don't work, I ain't come here to deal with no sin. But Jesus is the king of hearts, not the king of habits. He says, "I have to first deal with your heart. So you don't walk right back into what I just put you up out of."
Let me deal with your heart before I deal with your legs. Let me deal with your heart before I deal with your relationship. Let me deal with your heart before I deal with your finances. Let me deal with your heart before I deal with your dream. He deals with the heart first because your heart will jack up the rest of your life if He gives it to you prematurely.
He looks at the man and says, "Get up." You think He's speaking to the man, but He's speaking to areas of your life that have been down long enough. And it's not a suggestion—it's a command.
This is the same thing He says to Lazarus when he was dead in the tomb: "Lazarus, get up." What area in your life has been down or dormant, dead for so long that you need to speak life to? I declare right now: get up. I come against your faith to be healed because of what the doctor said, because they say it's incurable. I speak life. Be healed. I speak to the area of your life that's been down, that you've been settling in.
He didn't just say get up. He also says, "Pick up your mat." In other words, what's been carrying you, you're now about to carry it. You're not going to have to depend on what you used to depend on. I'm giving you the ability to carry what other people used to carry you on.
What's that dream that God gave you years ago that you put down? What's that book He told you to write that you've been procrastinating with? What is it that you gave up on because of disappointment? Pick it up. Maybe it's not a thing. Maybe it's an emotion. Maybe it's a mindset—that your faith has been domesticated, that your hope has been deferred, that your peace has been disturbed. You need to pick it back up.
Then He says, "Go home. I want you to be proof to people who may never get directly to me like you, of who I am." When you go back home, they won't be able to give the credit to a doctor. They won't be able to give the credit to your connections. They're just going to have to give the glory to God.
But what do you do when you don't have people in your life like this paralyzed man? What do you do when you're struggling with spiritual paralysis and you have no one to carry you to Jesus? You may be stuck. Nobody probably had to carry you in here today, but you've been dragging life alone. You've been coming to church trying to fight through it, but you don't feel the nearness of God like you used to.
I spent one day just weeping this week because I realized I had pastored people through a pandemic. I was doing multiple funerals throughout the pandemic in a week. I had lost so many friends. My best friend died in the pandemic. I had been there for so many other people over the past five years that I didn't realize I was dealing with delayed grief—when you experience loss and traumatic experiences, but you have to be strong for everybody else, so you're not being present with God and yourself.
For some of us, if we're not careful, we allow grief to make our spirit slide into being paralyzed.
Some of us are on the mat and don't even know it. Here are five signs:
Number one: Stuck faith. You believe in God but have stopped believing for anything new. You say God can, but deep down you stopped expecting that He will. You don't pray bold prayers; you pray safe ones. You say the devil is a liar, but you treat God like He's one.
Number two: A numb prayer life. You pray out of routine, not relationship. Your words are mechanical—there's no weight, no wonder, no expectation. Heaven feels silent, so you're silent. You find yourself praying and drifting, and it's just a fight to be fully present with God.
Number three: Comfortable with dysfunction. You've learned how to manage what you should be delivered from. You don't get convicted as quick as you used to. You've made peace with what you were called to conquer. You've turned survival into a strategy: "We're just going to get through it. Everybody calm down. We're going to be all right." But God didn't call you to survive. He said, "I came that you may have life—life more abundantly."
Number four: Close to church but far from God. You're surrounded by spiritual activity but disconnected from spiritual intimacy. You show up, but you don't open up. You're in the building physically, but your heart is not. You're just going through the motions. Church has become your spiritual anesthesia. You come get high on Sunday spiritually, then go back to survive the rest of the week. But God is saying, "I don't want weekend visits. I want full-time custody." People can't tell the difference between you and people in the world.
Number five: Stagnant circles. You keep attracting or returning to people who don't challenge you to change. They keep you stuck and feed you excuses. They never carry you closer to Jesus.
For some of you right now, I declare you're walking out of here. God is giving you a revival. You're about to experience spiritual renewal. Your prayer life is coming alive. Your prayers won't be flat—they'll be on fire. He's about to give you spiritual eyes to see revelation in the Bible as you have your private time with Him. You're going to have a desire for more of Him, not for things of the flesh.
