Spiritual Blindness

Before I was a Christian, I had heard the gospel and even had a respect for it. But I didn’t understand it. Christians would come up to me and give me tracts to read—even little red Bibles. They would thrust these things in my direction, say, “Read this,” and then back off. I would take whatever they handed me and stuff it into my pocket. Meanwhile I was thinking, I wish one of these people would just talk to me about God. But no one did.

At home, I kept a drawer filled with all the materials people gave me. I had everything you could think of in that drawer. I wanted to know God, but I couldn’t figure it out. Every once in awhile, I would take the drawer, empty it on my bed, read all that stuff, and try to make rhyme or reason of it.

The problem was that I was spiritually blind. I didn’t get it yet. But then one day, it just clicked for me. God opened my eyes, which has to take place before a person can be converted. The Bible teaches that before we are Christians, we are blind to spiritual truth: “But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them” (2 Corinthians 4:3–4).

If you have unbelieving friends and loved ones, then you need to ask God to open their eyes and help them to see for themselves their own need for Him.