Flying Blind from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

I gave my testimony today.  It reminded me of my early years in Jesus.  I call them the lost or painful years.  These were years in the faith that I spent “on the fence”.  They are the “before” in a before and after photo.  As much as it hurts thinking about the time, they were some of the most instructive of my life with Jesus.  They are a big part of my walk as a believer in Christ.  Though I would do them differently now, they serve as motivation to be authentic in my walk with Christ.

I believe that I was saved by the blood of Jesus during this time, mainly because of His amazing mercy and grace.  I believe that if I died during those years I would have gone to heaven.  I just had a life that was much more painful than it could have been had I made different choices.   If I had just dealt with the sin that was in my life things would have been markedly better.  God was still good to me.  God was still faithful.  I just made things so much harder for myself.

During this time, put simply, I did not totally leave the old life behind.  I did not trust Jesus in my daily walk.  I refused to apply the Word to my life fully and seek to flee from my sins.  Instead, I ignored them, held onto my sins and suffered as a consequence.

Jesus intends us to have a life of abundance in Him.  That is very clear.

Our sin interferes with this abundance.  It stunts our growth in this life.  We place ourselves in a prison of our own making.

God offers us a choice in response.  Do we face the sins of life relying upon Jesus’ promises of forgiveness and power?  Do we choose to close our eyes and pretend that we are not sinning?

When we choose holiness, we are blessed in our relationship with God.  When we pretend all is well, the ugly consequences of our own sin are used to point us back to Jesus.  If we continue to ignore the warning signs God provides, disaster tends to follow.

Will we soar on wings like eagles or will we go on flying blind until the inevitable disaster?

Yes, I am addressing Christians and non-Christians.  Jesus loves all of us way too much to allow us to continue in unrepentant sin and not allow consequences.  Bad things happen when we sin.  The more we sin, the more bad things happen.  Even worse, the more we sin, the more we frustrate the happening of good things in our life.

The Billy Graham Association addresses this issue beautifully in this video.   I really enjoyed watching it, perhaps because I lived a good portion of it.  I was flying blind until the day that Jesus opened my eyes to the great danger I was toying with.  It did not matter how long it took, He got my attention and redeemed my failure.  He is the perfect Savior after all.  For more on His redemption, you may enjoy Am I Too Far Gone for Jesus?

A warning that there is some mature content in the video.  We watched with our young ones but screened it first.