Mark Carey writes

Last Sunday evening I was speaking about ‘Obstacles and Movement’.

There is an amazing encounter that a blind man called Bartimaeus has with Jesus. A lot of things appear to be obstacles to him receiving attention from Jesus – blindness, he’s sitting down in a large crowd and the hostile attitude of people around him. Yet he catches Jesus’ attention and two things follow:

1) his sight is restored

2) he is able to follow Jesus “along the road”.

Jesus removes the obstacles and enables Bartimaeus to follow Him freely.

This tells us something about what Jesus is all about – He wants people to see and He wants them to be able to follow. He wants to remove obstacles out of our way and to enable us to keep moving along His road.

Our verse of the year speaks of obstacles and movement:

And it will be said:

“Build up, build up, prepare the road!

Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.”

Isaiah 57:14

Obstacles are opportunities to enable us to see what God is showing us that He wants to work on so we can keep moving.

God doesn’t want obstacles in the way of people – He doesn’t want anyone to be stuck, to be held back by sin, circumstances, or Satan’s power – “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free”.