I WAS BLIND, BUT NOW I SEE

I WAS BLIND, BUT NOW I SEE . . .

Our Pastor’s heart is for the lost. We hear his heart in his sermons as he pleads for us to turn to Jesus. I take a look at myself each week and reassess myself. I know the seriousness of it.

Do you ever think back to the time in your life when you were lost? I know these memories vary in each of our lives because some were saved at a very early age. I was saved at 40 years old.

When you are saved later in life, you have many years of relationships, friendships, work families and not to mention the family you’ve been raised with and around. I was raised in a “church-going family” with a mother who made sure we went to church, hung with the church friends, dressed modestly, etc. I knew all of the Bible stories and I believed in God. At 16 years of age I was dunked under the water by our well-meaning preacher. And I even taught those Bible stories in Sunday school.

But, I walked around through life in a “bubble.” The trouble with the “bubble” life is at some point, it will burst. At 23 years of age I got to the point where I wanted to go out and live life . The way I was raised I believed every single thing I would do out “in the world” was going to be a sin. There was no in between in the life I was raised to live and the life in the real world. I went out into the world blind.

Now this blindness didn’t mean that I didn’t know right from wrong. When you’ve spent your entire life to this point being taught the Bible stories, the rules and regulations and that we were to keep those rules, you learn the right from wrong. I could tell you everything I was not suppose to do.

My image of God was this very strict man in heaven who was waiting for me to mess up. I believed that when I died, there would be scales to weigh the good and bad deeds and if my good deeds outweighed my bad, I would go to heaven. Every now and then in my years “out in the world” I would get very afraid of what would happen if I died at that point. I knew what hell was.

So, as I’m writing this I ask, if I knew all the rules, the right from the wrong, what was I blinded from? It certainly wasn’t all the stories about God and Jesus, and certainly not all the rules and regulations. There was a piece missing from the puzzle.

Grace; how in the world did I miss the grace of God part of the Bible? That is what I was blinded from.

Once I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, my heart accepted what my head already knew. There were no scales waiting for me and there would never be enough good deeds to weigh that would earn my way in. I couldn’t keep enough rules to earn my way in. I felt a freedom and I felt like I could breath. There was peace. No more bubble.

Thanks for allowing me to relive my testimony. I know God has done many great and wonderful things in my life simce then. But there is something very special and refreshing about remembering.

Psalm 51:12 “Restore the joy of your salvation to me, prayed David.” That should be our prayer too. One more thing. He’s coming back and it could be very soon.! Are you ready?

For His Glory,
Debbie