He is Calling for You!
I love all the details God gives us in His Word. They are not there by chance, so I love to study all the particulars in Jesus’ stories that were recorded for us. Let’s look at Mark 10: 46-52 New American Standard Bible:
Then they came to Jericho. And later, as He was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a large crowd, a beggar who was blind named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road. And when he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many were sternly telling him to be quiet, but he kept crying out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and said, “Call him here.” So they called the man who was blind, saying to him, “Take courage, stand up! He is calling for you.” And throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and came to Jesus. And replying to him, Jesus said, “What do you want Me to do for you?” And the man who was blind said to Him, “Rabboni, I want to regain my sight!” And Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he regained his sight and began following Him on the road.
This man was described as a beggar. A beggar is a person reduced to poverty, and so are we without Christ. I’m going to say it again- we are reduced to poverty if we do not have Christ. We are so NEEDY; we need Jesus. Bartimaeus means “son of Timaeus” and Timaeus means “foul, unclean, polluted”- in other words destitute, which is also exactly what we are without Jesus, UNCLEAN, DESTITUTE! We were dead in our sin, when Jesus came to rescue us, ransom us, die for us. His blood, wipes away our sins and makes us clean!
When Bartimaeus heard that it was Jesus passing by, he cried out, “JESUS, SON OF DAVID, HAVE MERCY ON ME!” And we also cry out ‘Jesus, have mercy on us! We are desperate for Your presence, desperate to be near You!’ Bartimaeus seemed to embarrass the people near him with his shouting and crying out. And so those around him “were sternly telling him to be quiet.” “Sternly” G2008 means to “admonish sharply, to tax with fault, chide”, which feels like a sense of shaming, since chide means to scold. “To be quiet” G4623 means “to hush, muteness, involuntary stillness, inability to speak.”
This is just like the enemy. His desire is always to mute us through shame. If he makes us feel ashamed enough, then we won’t speak up about Christ. We won’t even cry out for His help. Shame also destroys our testimony, making us feel like we are not good enough, we don’t have our lives in order enough, our lives aren’t perfect enough to be a testimony for God. But it is precisely our own weakness, imperfectness, faultiness that makes our testimony so powerful. We are NEEDY! We NEED God so much and cannot live without Him. It is in our weakness and neediness that He is strong for us, and so we cry out to Him! We read in the beatitudes in Matthew 5:3 NASB, where Jesus teaches:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Why does the kingdom of God belong to the poor in spirit? This word for poor G4434 actually means “a beggar, pauper, poor”. Poor Bartimaeus, everyone knew he was a beggar, his heritage was “son of unclean”, and he was blind, but the glorious thing about Bartimaeus was that HE KNEW THAT HE WAS NEEDY. We should learn a lesson from Bartimeaus here. We must realize that we are NEEDY, that we really NEED JESUS, if the kingdom of heaven is to be ours.
Just as the many were trying to quiet Bartimaeus, the enemy tries to quiet us. But Bartimaeus gives us an example here to follow. We may get resistance to our fervent prayers, we may look ridiculous to others, and others may try to quiet us (or the enemy may try to quiet us), or try to mute us out of shame, but we are exhorted to cry out for Him ALL THE MORE! As we cry out for Jesus, we will hear (Mark 10:49 NASB):
Take courage, stand up! He is calling for you.
Jesus is telling us that no matter what those around us are shouting at us, we should TAKE COURAGE, because He is calling for us! Bartimaeus received his healing from blindness when he called out fervently to Jesus. And then what did Bartimaeus do? He followed Jesus.
So mom’s, no matter what those around us are saying and despite how we may feel, let’s
CRY OUT TO HIM ALL THE MORE AND WE WILL HEAR HIM CALLING FOR US.
In His Love,
Suzanne
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