Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Blind Hope
A blind beggar. A noisy crowd. One clear cry for mercy that refuses to be silenced. We walk through the story of Bartimaeus in Mark 10 and explore how a focused plea, grounded in who Jesus is, can cut through doubt, pressure, and the familiar pull to stay small. What begins as a story of daily despair outside the gate of Jericho becomes a portrait of stubborn hope that leads to immediate healing and a new direction.
We unpack why Bartimaeus matters for anyone feeling stuck or unheard. He didn’t have influence or proof of a guaranteed outcome—he had a conviction about the Healer and the courage to ask specifically, “I want to see.” That clarity matters. It transforms prayer from vague wishes into faith-filled petitions.
From Psalm 71:5 to the moment Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” we draw out practical applications for modern life: how to anchor confidence in Christ, how to resist internal and external noise, and how to turn answered prayer into daily discipleship. Bartimaeus didn’t just receive sight; he followed Jesus down the road. That shift—from relief to relationship—frames hope not as a one-time event but as a way of walking through uncertainty with strength and purpose.
If this story rekindles your hope, share it with a friend who needs courage today. Subscribe for weekday reflections that help you start strong, and leave a review to tell us how these short episodes are shaping your mornings.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mack, and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. There are a lot of people in the Bible that, well, we would probably call them the minor players, if you will. They're not the big names that we all know. They're men and women who appear just once or twice, and then they sort of disappear off into history. But many of these minor players are ones that have tremendous impact if you look at their stories and learn the lessons that they learned. Well, this morning I want to talk about one of those guys, a guy that I really like. This fellow's name was Bartimaeus. We read about his story in Mark chapter ten, beginning at verse forty six, and I just want to sort of tell it this morning a little bit, as opposed to reading it. Bartimaeus was blind and he was a beggar. So every day Bartimaeus would get up, he would go outside the gate of Jericho, he would sit down, and he would call on the people going past to give him whatever he could get from them. There was not a lot of hope in Bartimaeus' life. There was nothing for him to look forward to. He was struggling to be able to just keep himself together. One day Bartimaeus went out to his regular spot outside the gate of Jericho, and the crowd was a little bit noisier that day. There was an excitement in the air that he could sense in the action around him and the conversations of the people. And finally someone told him that Jesus was coming. Now Bartamaus knew about Jesus. He had heard that Jesus was a healer. He heard that Jesus could raise people from the dead. He heard that Jesus could do miracles. And all of a sudden there was something that clicked inside of him. Jesus is my hope. As Jesus was walking by, Bartimaeus decided to call out to him. And he said, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And the crowd that was around him sort of pushed him aside and said, Don't bother Jesus. Jesus is busy. He's doing important things. He can't spend time wasting it on you. Don't bother the master. Don't bother Jesus. But because Bartimaeus knew who Jesus was, he was not going to give up. So we continued to call out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus heard him. Jesus stopped, turned around, and called Bartimaeus to him, and then asked Bartimaeus, What do you want me to do for you? Bartimaeus said, I want to see. Jesus looked at him and said, Go, your faith has healed you. The scripture says immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. Here was Bartimaeus. He'd been blind for all of his life, and now he could see. He went from that place of despair and no hope to a place of incredible joy and full of hope. Hope for his future, hope to see his family, hope for life. He thought his life was going to be limited to begging along the side of the road, and that was his destiny, but then Jesus came along, and all of a sudden he saw things differently. And he realized maybe it doesn't have to be the way I feared. Maybe, just maybe something great can happen for me today. When he had the opportunity to call on Jesus, he didn't quit. He didn't give up. He kept shouting to Jesus even when everyone else was telling him to stop, that there was no point. Psalm 71 in verse 5 says, For you have been my hope, sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. Bartimaeus had confidence in who Jesus was. He knew who had the answer for him, and he wasn't going to let go of the opportunity to have an encounter with Jesus. And then you know what he did? He didn't let the people around him distract him from what he knew was important. You know, we all have people around us who want to distract us from our faith. If you have people who are not Christians and they don't understand faith at all, they may just say, you know, why are you even believing God and all this stuff? There's just there's just no sense to it. I mean, there's no science in it. You can't prove God exists. What are you what are you doing? What's wrong with you? But Bartimaeus knew who could heal him and where his hope was going to come from, and he wasn't going to let anybody distract him from that. Many of us can learn lessons from Bartamaeus. He knew where his hope would come from. He knew it would come from Jesus. Our hope is in Jesus Christ alone, and he is the one who gives us the strength and the hope that we need every day of our lives. We need to make sure that we don't let anyone distract us from reaching out and calling on Jesus and trusting him. Bartamaeus found his life changed because he knew who Jesus was. He called on Jesus in his time of trouble, and then he wouldn't let anybody else distract him along the way. He wound up being healed, and the last thing we hear about him, he's following Jesus down the road. As followers of Jesus, we already have Christ with us. We have his hope, we have his strength. That is our only hope for us even today in the world around us with so many questions and uncertainties. Our hope is in Jesus Christ alone. Have a great day, my friends. We'll talk tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
