Do you realize just how close the story of Blind Bartimaeus came to not appearing in the Bible? As the story goes, Jesus was passing through Bartimaeus’ hometown and a multitude of people gathered around Him. Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was passing by so he repeatedly hollered to get His attention, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Evidently, this got on people’s nerves and many in the crowd told him to “shut up”. But the scriptures tell us that this didn’t hinder him. He yelled even louder, until he finally got Jesus’ attention, and Jesus called for him to come and stand before Him. The rest of the story? Bartimaeus received his sight… Jesus healed him!
Now, there was a moment in time where this whole story could have totally changed. Had Bartimaeus listened to the crowd when he was told to “shut up”… if he had held his peace… if his concern for what others thought about him had been his motivation that day, his story would have never appeared in the Bible. He would have kept quiet. Jesus would have walked right on by him. The miracle would have never happened. He would have pleased the crowd by “shutting up” and would have gone to his grave as “BLIND Bartimaeus.”
Many times in life we come to a cross roads. We come to a place where we must choose to either please the crowd or pursue the Lord, no matter what the cost. Others may get annoyed with us. They won’t understand why we are pursuing Jesus with such fervency. They won’t understand how desperate we are to capture His attention to have an audience with Him. We will be asked to keep quiet and to calm down. A choice will be made to either keep our peace and please the multitude, or to throw all caution to the wind in full pursuit of the miracle we need from the Lord.
Do you need something that only the Lord can give? If you do, you will definitely need to overcome timidity, the fear of man, and the desire to be a people-pleaser. Just ask “SEEING Bartimaeus.”
Mark 10:48 (NET Bible)
Many scolded him to get him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more
