Do You Know What to Ask For?

"And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight." (Mark 10:51)

All of us know what it's like to go round in circles. To pray our way through one financial disaster only to be met by another. To receive healing for one illness just in time to be knocked off our feet by the next.

Oh, we try. We pray. We exercise our faith. But we keep getting caught in the same old problems over and over again. Why? Because all too often, we don't actually know what it is we need to be praying for.

I can almost hear your reaction. "Believe me, Brother Copeland, that's not my problem. I know what I need. It's getting that need met that's got me running in circles."

That's what most other folks think too. So they spend all their time working on getting. They waste their energy praying for things they don't really need and asking for things they don't really want. Then they wind up going nowhere fast.

Look with me at Mark 10, and I think you'll see what I mean. Blind Bartimaeus sat by the roadside begging when Jesus passed by.

"And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.... And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way" (verses 47,50-52).

Now I want you to think about something for a moment. In the light of what the Scriptures tell us, how many needs did Bartimaeus have? Did he have just one? No! He wasn't simply a blind man, he was a beggar. He probably had more problems than you could shake a stick at, and all those problems would have seemed like legitimate needs to Bartimaeus. But it was sight he needed. If he could obtain his sight, all the rest would fall into line.

He knew that. So, when Jesus said, "Bartimaeus, what do you want Me to do for you?" he knew exactly what to ask for and he got it.

Jesus is just as available to you today as He was to Bartimaeus. He's just as willing to meet your need. The question is, do you really know what to ask for?

Scripture Study: Mark 10:46-52

Seeing Through God's Eyes

2 Samuel 1:12 - They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son Jonathan, and for the army of the Lord and the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.

How would you respond if you heard something bad happened to someone who had been trying to cut off your head for several years? King Saul had been seeking to kill David for many years before Saul was thrust into battle against the Amalekites. In this final battle, a sword killed Saul. When the news reached David, instead of rejoicing that his enemy was no longer a problem for him, he responded in a totally different manner. He mourned. Imagine that; he mourned for the one who sought to kill him.

This is a sign of one who can look past an individual who is the source of pain and consider how God views him. God looks on that individual and sees his needs and knows why he responds the way he does. When we begin to see people as God does, we'll no longer look at them as enemies, but as souls in need of grace. This is how Jesus could give of His life for us. He saw our great need, not what we did to Him. When someone wrongs you, do you seek to retaliate, or do you pray to understand the need behind the offender's actions? For several years a person was a source of constant pain and retaliation toward me. There was nothing I could do to change it. God allowed me to go beyond the person's actions to understand what was the source of his need. When I gained that understanding, God gave me a picture of this person inside a prison cell and in bondage. This bondage made him respond to life in this way. I was able to pray for him and genuinely love him in spite of the fact that he persecuted me. This is the kind of love Jesus wants us to have when He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who spitefully use us.

I believe God does a special work of grace in those who go beyond the realm of normal response to persecution. He brings us to a level of grace we never thought possible. Describing how God worked in Joseph's life, Francis Frangipane reveals what happens when we tap into this grace:

God made him fruitful in the very things that afflicted him. In the land of your affliction, in your battle, is the place where God will make you fruitful. Consider, even now, the area of greatest affliction in your life. In that area, God will make you fruitful in such a way that your heart will be fully satisfied, and God's heart fully glorified. God has not promised to keep us from valleys and sufferings, but to make us fruitful in them. [Francis Frangipane, Place of Immunity (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Arrow Publications, 1996), 93]