What Do You Want? - Being Like Bartimaeus

Hi Friends,

This coming Sunday Bryan and I will be preaching on the story of blind Bartimaeus from Mark 4. Bartimaeus may just be my favorite character in the Bible. There’s something about his tenacity, his audacity, and his fierce vivacity that inspire me. He lived in darkness, and yet he saw more clearly than any of his seeing contemporaries. He saw more clearly than I. A blind beggar sitting in the dirt alongside the road to Jerusalem knew what he wanted, and he couldn’t be dissuaded from it. 

What if I had his vision? What if, in my own darkness, I had his tenacity, audacity, and vivacity? What if all I wanted was to see?

Here's a excerpt from Reaching for Wonder to encourage you ...

What Do You Want?

Bartimaeus leaves behind everything he had counted on when he comes to Jesus. He comes to Jesus with nothing but his need. Nothing. Not his good name, not his good deeds, not  his good thoughts. Nothing but his need, and his faith. His tenacious, audacious faith.

            And Jesus asks him one simple question: “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 51) A few verse prior, Jesus had just asked this question of James and John, two of his closest disciples. The answered by telling him they wanted to sit at his right and left hand in glory. They wanted position. They wanted prestige. 

            But what blind Bartimaeus wants is the very thing God longs to give. Bartimaeus wants mercy, and mercy is sight.

            In one of the most beautiful, simplistic answers in the Bible, Bartimaeus says, “Rabbi, I want to see.” (v. 51)

            I want to see.

            For every person sitting in their own personal darkness, or every one of us who feels blind and cut off, for all of us who are sitting in the dirt beside the road to Jerusalem, those four simple words should be our prayer.

            I want to see.

            I want to see Jesus.

            Nothing else we are asking for, hoping for, praying for, matters so much as seeing him. Seeing him on the road, seeing him on his way to the place where he will die and rise again, seeing him as he looks into our face and tells us “Go!” 

            And like Bartimaeus, once we see him, once we really see him, we will follow him anywhere, even to the cross.