Settling for Good

Settling for Good

By Grant Gaines

You’ve likely heard the saying, “Second place is the first loser.” Well no team in the history of organized sports has experienced the painful truth of that quote quiet as often as the 1990’s Buffalo Bills. The Buffalo Bills were one of the best football teams in the NFL for four straight years. The Bills were so good in fact that they made the Super Bowl four consecutive years from 1990-1993. Pretty good right? Well…not so much. You see, while the Bills made the Super Bowl four straight years, they failed to be crowned world champions not once, twice, or three times in a row, but a painful four straight years. The 1990’s Buffalo Bills – the greatest dynasty there never was.

Do you ever feel like the Buffalo Bills? Your life is good, but you’re still missing something. You feel like you may be settling for less than God has in store for you. If so, take heart, the God from whom all blessings flow (James 1:17) wants you to not only live life, but to live life to the fullest (John 10:10). So how do we do that? We stop settling for good and instead strive for the greatness the Lord desires us to live in.

This week’s lesson takes us to Luke 18 starting in verse 35 where we find Jesus walking into Jericho, once again surrounded by a large crowd. As Jesus was approaching the city, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46) called out, “…Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38, NIV).

At first blush, this request may seem surface level and selfish at best, but if we look deeper at the true meaning of what the beggar asked we begin to see a faith-filled request. The term “Son of David” was not just some nickname that would have been used liberally back in Jesus’s days because the term carried a significance more weighty than we could ever know. In verbally crowning Jesus the “Son of David”, Bartimaeus was admitting that he believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah who was to come through the line of David (2 Samuel 7:14-16, Matthew 1:1-16).

As you could imagine, Bartimaeus’s cries for help echoed throughout the streets which apparently became an annoyance to some because we read that, “Those who led the way rebuked [Bartimaeus] and told him to be quiet…” (Luke 18:39, NIV). But as is the case with any faith-saturated prayer, a little “turbulence” did not slow down the blind beggar. Instead, “…he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” (Luke 18:39, NIV).

While the bystanders may have been disturbed by this man’s persistence and boldness, how do you think Jesus responded? Fortunately, God doesn’t keep us in the dark as to how Christ responded for too long because we read in the very next verse that, “Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to Him…” (Luke 18:40, NIV).

There it is again, just like last week when Jesus healed the lady because she deliberately reached out to Him in faith, Jesus’s attention is captivated by this man’s faith. And so, “Bartimaeus threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus” (Mark 10:50, NLT).

And just as we saw last week when Jesus curiously asked, “Who touched Me?…” (Luke 8:45, NIV) even though we knew that, “…the crowds almost crushed Him” (Luke 8:42, NIV), Jesus once again asks a question that makes us scratch our head.

“What do you want Me to do for you?…” (Luke 18:41, NIV).

Now I’m by no means the “sharpest tool in the shed” but I do believe that I would have somewhat of an idea of what this blind man would want me to do for him if I had the same healing power as that of Christ. And I also believe that because Jesus is God (John 10:30), and God, “…knows everything” (1 John 3:20, NIV), that Jesus also had an idea of what this man truly wanted.

And so Bartimaeus responded to Jesus’s straightforward question with a blunt answer, “…Lord, I want to see…” (Luke 18:41, NIV) to which Jesus responded, “…Receive your sight; your faith has healed you” (Luke 18:42, NIV). Yet another prayer answered because, according to Jesus, the requestor asked in faith.

And while praying in faith and expectation is certainly an important lesson(if you would like to read more on this topic, check out last week’s blog  Good Intentions), I want to focus on Jesus’s question to Bartimaeus right before He healed the beggar.

Why did Jesus ask a blind man what he wanted Jesus to do for him? Certainly Christ knew that Bartimaeus’s desire was to see again, so what’s with the question?

Well, I can’t answer with 100% certainty, but there are several other occasions throughout the Gospels where Jesus asks a person with an obvious disability what that person wanted Jesus to do for them. It reminds us a lot of the question God posed to Solomon in 1 Kings 3:5 (NLT), “…’What do you want? Ask, and I will give it to you!’”

It’s just like the game we all used to play as children: if you had one wish, what would you wish for? But this was no game and this was no wish, this was real life with a real God. So, as you remember, Solomon passes up on the possessions and foregoes the fame and instead opted to ask God for wisdom (1 Kings 3:9).

And because of Solomon’s selfless request, “The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, ‘Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for–both wealth and honor–so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings’” (1 Kings 3:10-13, NIV).

God granted Solomon’s selfless and noble desire for wisdom but also gave him all the earthly things he could have settled for as well.

With Solomon’s story in mind, let’s revisit Bartimaeus’s response to the same question Jesus presented to him when He said, “What do you want Me to do for you?…” (Luke 18:41, NIV). “…Lord, I want to see…” (Luke 18:41, NIV) Bartimaeus replied.

Did the Lord answer Bartimaeus’s request? Yes. But did Bartimaeus receive the same amount of blessings that Solomon did after his request? No. And why not? Maybe it was because God thought giving a blind man his sight was enough of a blessing as it is (which Bartimaeus apparently agreed with as we later read him following Jesus and praising God after he was healed (Luke 18:43)) or maybe it was because Bartimaeus settled for something less than the fullness of what God desired to give him.

I wonder what would have happened if Bartimaeus would have asked for wisdom, or humility, or eternal life. I wonder if God, just as He did with Solomon, would have granted Bartimaeus’s request and then put the cherry on top by giving him all the things he did not ask for. Maybe God would have, maybe God wouldn’t have.

Here’s the point, how often do we settle in prayer for something small rather than boldly asking for something grander, something greater? How often do we, like Bartimaeus, forfeit blessings because we never ask for them (James 4:2)? And how often are we satisfied just making it through life when God wants us to be satisfied with “abundant life” (John 10:10)?

Psalms 37:4 (ESV) promises us that if we, “Delight [ourselves] in the LORD [that] He will give [us] the desires of [our] heart.” No, that is not a guarantee that a brand new Porsche will be waiting in your driveway tomorrow morning. Instead, it’s a promise that if we truly desire God’s will for our lives, such as wisdom (Ephesians 5:15-16), God will take care of everything else. Or it’s just like Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 (NIV), “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well.”

Don’t settle for small requests in prayer. Certainly God wants you to, “…pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests…” (Ephesians 6:18, NIV), but don’t let your life be robbed of the blessings God longs for you to have because you don’t ask for it. The Almighty Lord is honored when we pray “God-sized” prayers because it means that we believe that He is capable to answer those huge requests. It means we believe that, “…with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27, KJV). Nothing is too difficult for the Lord to answer or bring about!

Never forget that we serve a God who is, “…able to do exceedingly more than we can ask or imagine…” (Ephesians 3:20, NIV). So pray the biggest prayer you can think of, and then have confidence that the Lord can do even greater things still!

“…No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined

 what God has prepared for those who love him.”

– 1 Corinthians 2:9 (NLT)

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©Grant Gaines 2013