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- What Do You Really Want?
This morning, I’d love to invite you to take a few deep breaths.
And then, because we all need it, take a few more deep breaths 😀
And read:
46 They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
I’d love to invite us to take a moment to reflect on the four main quotations in this story.
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
This exclamation of Bartimaeus has historically been called the “Jesus prayer,” and is an expression of our need for and dependency on God. When was the last time you took a deep breath and let go of the need to have it all together? Maybe this morning can be a fresh invitation to surrender, to acknowledge your need for and dependency on Jesus.
Maybe take a deep breath, and as you breathe in, pray: “Jesus, Son of David.” And as you breathe out, pray: “Have mercy on me!”
What is your need in this season? Where do you need His supernatural intervention?
“Call him here.” and “Take heart; get up; he is calling you.”
After acknowledging your need for Jesus and letting go of the need to have it all together, I’d love to invite you to hear Jesus’s words to you afresh.
“Call him here” or “Call her here.”
And maybe I can be a voice to you, like the others are to Bartimaeus, saying “Take heart! He is calling you to Himself!”
Friends, be encouraged: He is calling you to Himself.
Before He calls us to solutions to our problems, He calls us into his presence. He is far more concerned about our relationship with us than he is about resolving our tensions. What a delight — before He is our problem-solver, He is our friend!
I’d love to invite us to take a moment, take some deep breaths, and pray: “Jesus, thank you for the gift of your presence. I joyfully come into your presence today!”
“What do you want me to do for you?”
Jesus’s question to Bartimaeus is all at once dignifying and frustrating.
It is dignifying because He sees the person behind the problem, and He is empowering Bartimaeus (and us) to not be a victim of his problem but to powerfully participate in a relationship with God. To name what we need in a relationship with him, rather than passively receive His gifts devoid of relationship. This is the beauty of intercession!
When I come to God with my needs, wants, and desires and am seeking wisdom about how to act, I find that I’m often far more in touch with the voice of shame, which says that my desires are too broken or unworthy for God to meet them, and the voice of fear, which says God can’t or won’t meet my desires and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up.
This question that Jesus asks is also frustrating because we so often want God to simplify things — to tell us what to pray for, to tell us what to do, and where to go. I think this desire for simplicity is often just our shame and fear telling us to tone down our requests, to innoculate ourselves against potential disappointment, and, ultimately, to take us out of the place of prayer and intercession.
Instead, God invites us to a much deeper process of discernment to peel back the layers of fear and shame to discover the desires that God planted within us. Why? He wants us to become something in the asking. Intercession is one of the primary vehicles that God uses to shape and form us (see Galatians 4:19). By pressing through to name what we most deeply want, we are coming into agreement with what God says is true — that we are deeply loved and that the Father will take care of us.
Many of us grew up in faith traditions that were skeptical of desire. I’m not advocating for a blind acceptance of desire (I think of Paul’s warnings against the desires of the flesh in Galatians), what I am advocating for is the much harder work of peeling back the fears, questions, shame, and insecurities to find what we are most deeply longing for — and more often than not what I think is the voice of God within us, the imprint left from His hand when He fashioned us in the dirt, a piece of the imago dei expressed in our longing, the piece of God’s heart hidden as a puzzle piece within ours. If we can listen to this desire, it is probably what is drawing us forward toward the restoration of all things and toward our role in God’s great storyline of bringing heaven to earth.
Father James Martin says it like this:
“God calls each of us to different vocations. Or, rather, God plants within us these vocations, which are revealed in our desires and longings. In this way God’s desires for the world are fulfilled, as we live out our own deepest desires. Vocation is less about finding one and more about having it revealed to you, as you pray to understand ‘what I want and desire.’”
So, I would love to invite you to name before the Lord: what do you really want?
“Go, your faith has made you well.”
We’ve got to move from asking to action. The Ignatian tradition highlights the importance of seeking confirmation through action. So what I’m not saying is to blindly go forward and do whatever you want to do — but I am advocating an active intercession — a posture of surrender mixed with risk-taking. To embrace that the answer to your prayers might actually be who you’ve become in the process of asking. What could you do today to try out something in faith with a posture that says “God, I want what you want. Would you confirm if this is your desire moving through me?”