Blindness – Walking In Power with Nate Ortiz

Hey everyone, this is Walking in Power and I just want to talk to you today about being

blind.

No, I have a great fear sometimes when I go to look for something and my house, my wife will

tell me, hey, look for this, it's over here and you look for it, you don't see it or maybe

I have the grocery store or something like that and you look for something, you can't find

it.

And then you ask someone and they literally point to it and it is a plain sight.

It's one of the things I just like, oh my gosh, how can I miss it?

I can't believe it.

It was right in front of me and I missed it.

I think there's so many times like that in our own lives spiritually.

And we'll walk with God that there are things right in front of us that we don't see

or we don't recognize it for what it is.

But it's really God speaking to us, it's God reaching out to us and the things that we

are searching for throughout this world, throughout this life are really the things that made

we're spoken to us.

It's just right in front of us in the scriptures or it's right in front of us through listening

to this wherever you are.

And I want to encourage you that when God came into this world, it was God sent His

Son to this world, He said that He was the light of the world and that darkness cannot

comprehend it.

And when you have Jesus in your life, there can be things.

I tell people that there's going to shine light in places that you haven't shown light

in a long time.

And sometimes that can be disarming to you.

That could feel very vulnerable when Jesus comes to your life.

There's things that you shift and you change because you want to really be, I think God's

called you to be.

So when I think about being blind, I always say, Lord, I don't want to have blind spots in

my life.

I don't want to live my life thinking, I have it all together.

Even when you walk the Lord for a long time, you want to have the ability to say, Lord,

let me have pure motives and all that I do.

Let me be able to speak your truth.

Let me be able to live in the fullness of who you are.

And so I want to read a verse to you today.

And it's out of 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 4.

It says, in their case, the God of this age has blended the minds of unbelievers so they

cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

In this world, there are going to be so many things that we'll try to distract you, pull

you away from God's purpose in your life.

And I think one of the major ways that this happens is that doubt.

I think doubt and fear are one of the biggest things that can really paralyze people not

being effective in their faith.

There's people I've seen that start off strong and they're pursuing a relationship with Jesus

and they want to grow in all the right ways.

But then they may be go through difficult moment and they begin to doubt.

It's one of the things that Satan himself even used to attack with Jesus himself or

doubt.

And I think it's going to get you to doubt who God really is.

It's going to put you in shaky ground in lots of different areas.

So put you in doubt about the way you view things, things you experience.

But when you have this true faith and trust in God, even though you don't have all the

answers right away, you may not understand it all but just saying, trust in God to get

me through this situation.

You might be heading the right direction.

Doubt against a creep and say, is this really what I should be doing with my life or should

I be doing this?

You only get that assurance from God.

And that peace is when you constantly return to Him and ask for that reassurance.

Even if you have kids, kids will often, though sometimes you'll tell them something's okay,

but maybe they'll look back and still have this look to you.

Is it really okay?

Can I do this?

Yeah, yeah, you totally can.

Now, obviously some of you might have kids.

They just go for it all the way and hit the column back.

I know.

I was like that when I was a kid.

And God does that with us where we might fall in that.

Sometimes He has to affirm us and other times we're just running us to call us back.

But you don't want the doubt to either cause you just to not believe God is who He says

He is or you just run so far away from God that when He's trying to protect you, you doubt

that He's really trying to do that in your life because you want what you want.

And the other part is fear.

Fear has a great way of blinding us to solutions to ways that God is speaking to us or ways

that He wants to really give hope and life to us.

Fear can grip us in many ways.

Everyone responds to fear differently.

Fear doesn't often, doesn't always speak to people the same way.

Some people, when they're fearful, they get angry or they get aggressive or something

when they're fearful, they shrink back and they minimize who God is in their life.

And I don't want to see any person live this life just shrinking back.

I don't want to see people living angry.

But when fear really creeps into your life, maybe it's the fear of the unknown, maybe it's

the fear of death, maybe it's the fear of these things.

We often want to clamp down on what we do know.

And we say, well, this is what I want to do.

This is all I've known.

And that's why you see people who can be stuck in cycles because sometimes it's just out

of fear.

They said, I'm just going to stay in the cycle because I know what to expect even if it's

unhealthy.

God did not cause the unhealthy lives that are bound up in fear.

But God has called us to the lives that are fully alive in Him.

The scripture tells us, says, right, there's death in life before you are afraid to choose

the life.

You make choices every day that either feed the doubt in your life, feed the fear, but

you want to be in a person that says, I truly believe in what God has for me.

So don't let doubt, or fear really blind you to the solutions that are in front of you,

or have you to doubt the way forward or the path forward in a difficult situation.

I pray that if you do have fear in your life, that you really ask God to really help

you in that.

And obviously there's other aspects of seeing counselor or psychiatrists or meeting with someone

on a mentor to really help you with fear that grips you.

Don't just try to mask it and override it, but deal with those issues in your life.

And if it's doubt, I think a great way to do that when doubt is talking to someone who's

been further along down the road for you, that they've gone through some life experiences.

They can help encourage you and bring a life to you that says, listen, at this person

that can make it, I can make it.

And that's what God means when we have community that you are around people who can help diminish

the doubt or help us be.

Speak over that your fear doesn't have to grip you the way that it does.

And so I pray today that you aren't blinded to the things that you need to change, you need

to shift, but you can really know who you are in Christ and you can go forward in that

boldness even when you're on a shore.

Even when you feel like, oh my gosh, everything is shaky.

I don't know how it's going to turn out.

Keep moving forward with God and hope you're sure to guide you on the path to life.

Keep moving forward with God and hope you're sure to guide you on the path to life.