Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, November 3rd.
Are you sensitive to what God is doing in and around you? Stay with us to begin a series that brings encouragement to take advantage of your passing opportunity. Have you ever walked away from a situation and thought all of a sudden, I missed it. I just missed it.
You say missed what? Missed a wonderful opportunity to give my testimony. A wonderful opportunity to give a word of encouragement to somebody that you knew were going through a very difficult time.
A wonderful opportunity to reassure someone who is in great doubt. An opportunity to be of specific help to someone who needed you at that moment. Oftentimes we let opportunities just go by, not recognizing that an opportunity is a gift from God. That it's a privilege we have.
That it's a moment in time in our circumstances in which we're able to make a decision that impacts our life, or maybe impacts someone else's life. And oftentimes we just ignore wonderful, godly opportunities. Because you see, the truth is, an opportunity is a gift from God. That doesn't mean that every opportunity is always a joy. Some opportunities are real challenges. Some of them test us and try us.
And some of them bring great advantage to us. But some of them are sacrificial. That is, you give yourself to the Lord in response to an opportunity He gives you. You pour out your life into somebody else or other people's lives.
And God blesses and encourages them and strengthens them. And in the process, you get blessed. When I think about opportunities, you say, well, how would you define that? It is a favorable time or occasion.
Those special moments when we are in a position to make a decision that will impact our lives in a positive way. And God is giving us opportunities every single day. Well, some opportunities come and some go. Some don't stay very long. Remember this, opportunities don't last forever.
Some opportunities are very short-lived. That's why you and I need to be very, very sensitive to what God is doing in our life. And sometimes God may challenge you to do something and you say, oh, I don't want to do that.
Forget that. That may be a very specific challenge from God that is an opportunity for you to serve Him in a way that'll bring blessing to others as well as yourself. So, we have to be sensitive to that. Everything that comes our way is not an opportunity. For example, when I think of opportunities, as we said here, that have a positive impact on our life, you say, well, what about those bad opportunities? Well, I don't think in terms of a bad opportunity, but a bad opportunity is more clearly described as a temptation, as an enticement into evil. That is, God's opportunities are for good, positive impact. The devil, he'll give you an opportunity, all right, to rebel against God, sin against God, and wreck your life. That's a temptation.
It's a snare. And Satan is always active to do so. But what I want us to think about in this message is this. What about the opportunities that God gives you? The truth is that you are where you are right now today in your life as a result of what?
As a result of responding to opportunities that God has given you. Which means that many of you are walking in the Lord, trusting Him, obeying Him. Many of you have refused to trust Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. You've heard the gospel. You've had many opportunities to be saved. And yet, you've said no time after time. I want to remind you and warn you there'll come a day when you will hear it for the last time.
Just because you've heard it over and over again, you say, well, that's old stuff, old hat, I've heard that. Well, surely you have, but every time you've heard it was a divine, specific, deliberate opportunity God has given you that your whole eternal destiny might be changed. Don't forsake, don't overlook the opportunities of God.
And to be able to spot them and to recognize them, the best thing you can do is get in the Word of God and start reading God's Word. And as you begin to read the Word of God and you begin to listen to God speak to your heart, here's what happens. He uses His Word to show us what opportunities are there. He uses His Word to open our heart to what He wants us to do. So, I want us to look at a passage of Scripture.
It's a brief passage. And you wouldn't think about this in term of opportunity, but when you realize what really happens in this particular passage, then you realize the same thing could happen to you and me. As we said, opportunities do not come and stay.
They come and they go for a very short time. There are times in your life and mine when opportunities will pass us by. That's why we need to be sensitive as children of God. So turn, if you will, to Mark chapter ten. And I want us to look at these verses about this particular person because it's a simple but a wonderful example of what we're talking about when it comes to opportunities.
So, let's talk about the setting for a moment. It's Jericho, in and out of Jericho, the gates there and so forth. And so, here's this man who's sitting there, beginning in verse forty-six of this tenth chapter. Then they came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road. When he heard that it was Jesus and Azarene, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.
Many were sternly telling him to be quiet, but he kept crying out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, Call him here. So they called the blind man, saying to him, Take courage, stand up, he's calling for you. Throwing aside his cloak, he jumped up and came to Jesus. And answering him, Jesus said, What do you want me to do for you? And the blind man said to him, Rabboni, I want to regain my sight. And Jesus said to him, Go, your faith has made you well.
Immediately he regained his sight and began following him on the road. Now, here is a blind beggar, one among many blind beggars. So, when you think about the fact that he was blind, that was very prevalent. In fact, I think thirty-one times, for example, in the Scripture, you'll find Jesus dealing with blind people.
And of all the things he had to deal with, blindness seemed to be one of the most prevalent. And on one occasion in the ninth chapter, for example, of John, the disciples were sort of having a difficult time figuring all this out. And so, they said to him in this ninth chapter and second verse, said they saw a man blind from birth and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?
So, that was their attitude. If a person was blind or had some disease, that person needed to sin or their parents would sin and this was their judgment. And so, Jesus simply answered and said to them, It was neither that this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. And what happens here?
He heals the man of his blindness. And so, what happens is there were many, many, many blind people. And the way they made their living is sitting along the roadside and around the gates begging.
That's the way they made their living. Every day, they'd have to drag theirself to some place to sit and ask for alms and hope that someone help them. Not only was he blind, but he was a beggar because that's all they could do.
And of course, in those days, they didn't have what we have. When you were blind, you were helpless and desolate. And you lived in despair and hopelessness because what hope is there for someone who is blind? There may be some family that could help you to some degree, but the truth is your days were all nights and your future was all centered in one thing.
How do I get enough today begging, sitting by the roadside, hoping to get just enough to eke out an existence? No wonder they'd want to be healed. But what hope was there being healed? There was nothing that they could put on their eyes, for example. They couldn't go to a pharmacy or they couldn't go to a doctor who could say to them, why sure, I can take care of that for you.
What do you want me to do? And so, it was a lifeless kind of life. Well, there are many people today who are blind.
I'll tell you something worse than that. There are many people today who see with their eyes, but they're spiritually blind. And when you think about what Paul warns us about in Second Corinthians, he simply says this, In whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And he says the devil blinds people, and therefore they think they're seeing. They can physically see, but spiritually they cannot see.
And the truth is they're like Bartimaeus to some degree. And that is they wake up every day in their spiritual blindness. They go about their work in their spiritual blindness, in rebellion toward God, in disobedience to God, and wondering why life doesn't work out any better. Because they're blind. If you tell them they're blind, they want to fight you about it and say, well, I'm not blind, I can see as good as you can. Because you are blind and you can see. You are blind, you are blind, you're blind, you're blind. If you aren't blind, you're blind, you're blind. But with your eye you may, but with your heart, with your spirit, you cannot without Christ. And so here is blind Bartimaeus, a beggar, no hope and no assurance of anything. And so here is a needed opportunity.
He needs help. And they listened much better than you and I would because that's the only thing they could do. And they had to remember what they heard. And one of the things, of course, that Bartimaeus had heard about, he'd heard about Jesus. And they didn't know who He was, but he did know that He was an Azarene, according to this passage of Scripture. And he also heard about Him, the fact that He healed blind people, that He raised the dead, that He healed the lepers.
He was performing miracles. And more than likely, Bartimaeus was thinking, you know, I wonder if I could ever be an opportunity for me to meet this person. Probably not, because he'd only heard about Him. He couldn't tell you where He was.
He'd heard about Him being over here and over yonder and back there. And so, who was He? Did He care?
He must have cared for some. And so, here He was with no hope of anything. And yet, a day of opportunity came.
It was an unexpected opportunity because how long He'd been there, I don't know. The truth is, He wasn't blind from His birth because when He spoke to Jesus, He said that I may regain my sight, not just have it. And so, somewhere along the way, by disease, He had become a blind person. And what was His hope?
He had no real, genuine, true, literal hope, no basis for hope. He heard about. And of course, naturally, on this particular occasion, what was happening was the Feast of the Passover was taking place in Jerusalem. It was about fifteen miles from Jericho to Jerusalem, pretty good-sized walk. And on this particular day, there were crowds walking by and Jesus was part of the crowd and His disciples and all those other folks who were on their way, by the throngs, on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover. And so, Bartimaeus, sitting by the wayside there, was listening as these people were walking by and knowing that it was a Passover, but having no real assurance that Jesus was anywhere close by. The truth is, it was a wonderful time of opportunity for Him, but He didn't know it. Watch this. There are opportunities that God sends into your life and mine.
We're not aware of it at the time. This is why we must learn to live the sensitivity to the work of the Spirit of God in our life. Because there are lots of times and lots of ways God would give you an opportunity for something with this person or that situation, that circumstance, finance, whatever it might be. But if you're not listening, you'll miss it. On this occasion, Bartimaeus was listening to all the things that were going on, all the sounds, all the talking of people. And in the process of doing so, he must have heard the name of Jesus. And when he did, it became a life-changing opportunity for him.
Now, there are many times you and I face opportunities that we don't realize what they are. And I want to go back to say, how do you sharpen your spiritual skills to be able to identify it? You get in the Word of God. You begin to watch how God worked in people's lives in the New Testament, the Old Testament. You begin to watch how He desires to work in your life and what God does through the Holy Spirit.
He makes you sensitive. That is, you become sensitive to the voice of God if you spend time with Him, listening to Him, reading His Word, watching how He worked in everybody else's life. And I say that again and again because that's the way you learn how God operates.
On this particular occasion, here's Bartimaeus, blind, begging, no hope. But now, there may be a possibility because he's heard them talking about Jesus of Nazareth. Well, he'd heard about this Nazarene. And so, he'd heard enough to believe that this man possibly could be the Messiah. He possibly could be the Son of God. And so, in the process of thinking through all that, looking at himself, he could have made a decision. He could have made a decision, well, you know, that's probably just totally impossible. Why am I sitting here as a poor beggar with no reputation, no influence, no anything, and I'm thinking that somehow I'm going to be able to meet this person who's the Son of God and that He's going to do something to me?
Well, that's totally pathetic to think it. But that's not the way he thought. He thought, suppose that there's some possibility.
Suppose there's some opportunity that I might have to meet this man. So, what did he do? He decided, he'd find out. So, he began to cry out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me. Well, he knew enough and had heard enough to know that he could cry out and cry out those words.
And what happened was, what happened sometime to you. And that is, the Scripture says that the people around him who were walking by sternly, sternly rejected him. And that simply means they said, shut up, be quiet. And their thinking was simply this, this is the Son of God. This is Jesus walking along here, talking and sharing with us and helping us to understand.
And this poor, blind beggar who is absolutely worthless and has no value whatsoever, and you're interfering with Jesus besides that, you may slow up the crowd. So, he began to holler out again and to call out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me. They tried to make him be quiet, and the more they worked on him, the louder he got. He was blind and he wanted to see. And here was an opportunity. He didn't know how much of an opportunity it was, but the fact that Jesus must be close by was something that had not happened before, and he wasn't about to let it get by. So, he began to call out and to cry out, and they began to try to shut him up and quieten him down, and he just kept on calling out. And when I come to this next verse, I love it in the King James Version because it says, And Jesus stood still.
I love that. And I'll tell you why. Because it says to me, if Jesus would stop dead in His tracks on His way to one of the most important journeys of His entire life, ultimately the most important, and He'd stop for the cry of a poor, blind beggar, I don't ever have to worry about whether He's willing to listen to me or not. He's willing to listen to you.
He's willing to listen to anyone who will cry out to Him. So, He cries out to Jesus and cries out and cries out with a lot of uncertainty and maybe a little bit of a fear. But all of a sudden, the Bible says that Jesus stopped. And can't you imagine when He stopped, everything got quiet. What would stop Jesus on His way to the Passover? What would stop Him? Well, was it some Roman general or was it some Roman emperor? Poor, blind beggar.
There were lots of them. Why would a man who is the Messiah stop for somebody like this? You see, they didn't understand who He was. And so, what happens is now all those people who were saying, shut up, be quiet, don't you know who this is?
Oh, take courage dear brother, stand up, He's calling you. Come on. And you know, just a bunch of hypocrites, excuse me. Because they changed their attitude all of a sudden. Watch this, Bartimaeus had quiet, don't you know who this is?
Oh, take courage dear brother, stand up, He's calling you. Come on. And you know, just a bunch of hypocrites, excuse me. Because they changed their attitude all of a sudden. Watch this, Bartimaeus hadn't changed. He was still a poor, blind, worthless beggar.
But here's what happened. Jesus, I love it, Jesus gave him idente. And that idente was what?
He was a human being in need and Jesus loved him no matter what. Thank you for listening to A Passing Opportunity. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-07-28 15:07:45 / 2023-07-28 15:16:27 / 9