Eyes Closed Eyes Opened

Are your eyes fully open to all the truths of God’s word and His plans and purposes for your life and that of His Church? When we give our hearts to Jesus and decide to follow Him, our spiritual eyes are opened and almost always, we notice we still have sinful issues that harass us after salvation. So our salvation is not the end of our healing, but only the beginning. Why is that? When we surrender our lives to Jesus, we find we earnestly need His help to deal with the consequences of our past ungodly decisions or experiences. Because of the ungodly things we opened ourselves up to, we may also need to exercise our free will to deal with any foothold we gave the enemy in our lives. God gave us a free will to choose between good and bad. He is there to gently and graciously set us free from condemnation and shame. That’s just one of our benefits of being a Christian – that through Jesus, freedom from all bondages is available to us. Drawing on over thirty years of full time Christian ministry, Derek looks afresh at the Great Commission and the instruction given by Jesus to the apostle Paul to ‘open eyes so that people may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God’ (Acts 26:18). This is also the role of the Church. When someone becomes a believer their spiritual eyes are opened. Addressing Church Leaders, Derek’s challenging conclusion is that, if we fail to teach and apply the whole gospel of Jesus’ ministry in our churches or ministries, we effectively close the eyes of believers God put in our care. We become a barrier to them receiving the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual healing Jesus has made available. Before salvation our eyes are closed to biblical truths. Our eyes are then opened at salvation, and then, if the whole gospel of God’s truth is not taught, our eyes are slowly closed, or partially closed. If our denominational understanding of truth does not line up with biblical truth, people in our congregations will find it difficult to discern biblical truth or even reject it altogether. ‘Eyes Closed Eyes Opened’ is the story...