This is a sermon I preached at Saint Andrew’s, Mount Pleasant, last Sunday. Hopefully it’ll encourage and challenge you. Below are some discussion questions if you wanted them:

Abraham Heschel wrote, “He who is satisfied has never truly craved.” I hope you haven’t given up on the potential of a life saturated with God’s presence. The cravings we feel, we were made to feel, and only God can satisfy. John Piper wrote in A Hunger for God, “If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”

Are you desperate for Jesus, or satisfied?

Helen Keller was both blind and deaf and yet incredibly overcame her disabilities. She was once asked in an interview if there could be anything worse than being blind. Her reply: “Oh, yes! There is something worse than being blind. It is being able to see and not having any vision.” How’s your (spiritual) eyesight? What might be diminishing your vision?

“Have mercy” = ‘to feel sympathy for someone to the point of doing something about it. Requests or entails action(s) and not merely words of sympathy.’ Simon’s example of being broken by his encounter with street children in Brazil, and then hearing: “Pity cries… and then goes away. But compassion stays.” How might God be calling you to ‘stay’ and engage in some issue that needs your concerted involvement?

v51 Jesus asks Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?”
Jesus is likewise asking you what you want today. Will you answer through physically functional but spiritually blind consumerist/materialist eyes?
Bartimaeus replied: “Rabbi, I want to see.” How many times have we had the attention of Jesus and asked Him for a secondary need?

v52 “‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘Your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”. When we first met Bartimaeus in verse 46 he was sitting on the side of the road like so many marginalised men and women, but what a difference now. He is on the road; he is following Jesus along the road. He is following him to the cross. How might Jesus be calling you to follow Him a little more closely and wholeheartedly this coming week?