To See and Follow Christ Fully

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Spiritual Blindness and the Need for Clear Sight of Christ

Well, I want to begin our time today with a bit of a story. Not very often do I use personal stories as an illustration or an introduction, but it seemed fitting today. It was almost three years ago, so in December of 2019, that I went for a visit to my family's optometrist.

I had been reading a lot over Christmas break, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot, a lot. And I just had this strange eye irritation that kept popping up. And so at the spurring of my wife, and husbands, we probably appreciate this, with my wife actually booking the appointment for me, I went to the optometrist so that I could see what was wrong with my eyes.

As you normally do when you go through the optometrist, you go through all of the gauntlet of stations as you make your way through. There's that hot air balloon that zooms into focus. When you look through the lens, there's that eye puff test that you can never get quite right.

At least I can't hold my eyes open long enough to get the puff. And eventually after I went through the gauntlet of tests, I was walked into the optometrist's office, and the optometrist sat down in front of me and looked through that, what looks to me like a 60s contraption, that steel shutter device, and shone this bright light so deep into my eyes, I thought she could look into my soul.

And as she looked, I got a sense just from some of her curious sighs that something was wrong. As she looked, there was a bit of a, hmm, hmm. And she started to ask me about my family history. I started to realize, ooh, there might be something really wrong.

Asking me about multiple sclerosis and other pretty serious health conditions. At the end of it all, she explained to me that there was something wrong with my optic nerves, and it was likely that it was affecting my vision.

And so they took me through another series of tests, and in the months and weeks that followed, they had me go through every test imaginable, ran me through MRIs and visits with specialists, and it really was a time that tested my faith in the sovereignty of God.

But as I went through the whole process, at the end of it all, I suppose I'm still in the midst of it all, but at the end of that series of appointments, what they said to me was this, that there were issues with my optic nerve that causes me to have blind spots in my vision that most people do not have.

And so when I look out at you today, there are parts of my vision that my eye does not see, but that my brain fills in the blanks. There's times when I read God's Word, and I'm mindful that my vision is, part of it is gone.

I hope that not all of it leaves, but there are parts that I cannot see. And my wife, probably that's her excuse for being a very helpful backseat driver, but I know Noah might remember this, there was a time when I was driving, and I almost drove our family SUV into an SUV-sized sinkhole on a residential street.

I'm going to blame that on my vision, but don't worry, I'll drive you to Red Deer if we have to go next week. But it came to my attention that there were parts of my vision, parts of what I was seeing in front of me where I was in fact blind, even though I didn't realize it.

Parts of my sight where I do not see things that are right in front of me, even though it ought to be very clear to me. And in all jokes aside, I found it fascinating and a little bit scary that a person can experience some degree of blindness and not even fully realize it.

And while this is certainly true of our physical vision, I want to suggest to you that it is even more true of our spiritual vision, or if I can call it our spiritual eyesight. In fact, if we were to sit down today, if I were to take each of you into one of those dark rooms like the optometrists have, and if we were to shine the pure light of God's Word into your soul, and if we were to look carefully at the condition of your heart, your spiritual eyesight, we would find that each of us, each of you in this room, have spiritual blind spots, areas in your life where you do not see clearly as you ought to see.

We would find a heart, in some of you, we would find a heart that has been enlightened by the gospel, certainly, that has been diligently trained with the Word, but still less pronounced blind spots, fuzzy spots, blurred vision in certain areas.

For some of you, we would find a great deal of light, but still dark spots that need to be illuminated by God's Word and God's Spirit. And then in others of you, I fear we would find complete and utter spiritual darkness.

And oh, how dark is that darkness, that the God of this world has blinded your mind to keep you from seeing the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. You may not even know it yet, but some of you in this room, even, may be wretched and miserable and poor and blind.

Now, if I can be so bold as to ask, if we were to put you somewhere on this spectrum today, how is your spiritual eyesight? Are you clear-sighted? Are you spiritually blurry? Or are you spiritually blind?

Do you have eyes that behold the glory of Christ with a rich understanding of him and his gospel? Or is your vision blurry and indistinct in areas? Today, we're going to find Christ ministering north of the Sea of Galilee.

And this is the subject matter that we find in our passage today, interestingly enough. We'll see that there's an important interpretive key, even in the narrative of the passage. And today, as we study this last few paragraphs of Mark 8, as we find Christ healing the blind and teaching his disciples, our text is going to show us just how blurry the disciples' vision of Christ was.

How much they didn't understand. And as our Lord teaches them, and as he corrects them on their vision, he's going to teach us, I hope, what it means to see and to follow Christ fully. That is my hope as we read this text, that each of us here would see Christ clearly.

And as we learn here, follow him fully. So, we'll get into the text. We should already be turned to Mark 8, verse 22. I'll read the first five verses together, and then we'll get right into it. So, Mark says, And they came to Bethsaida, and some people brought him a blind man and begged him to touch him.

And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything? And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees walking.

Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, Do not even enter the village. Today I want to show us these three categories of people, I think, that are in the world, or at least in this text.

The spiritually blind, the spiritually blurry, and what I would call the spiritually enlightened, or the spiritually mature. I want to draw our attention first to the spiritually blind. Here Mark recounts an event that only ever appears in his gospel.

It's one of two accounts that are only in Mark's gospel alone. We find this one and then the other in Mark 7 and verse 31. Both of them are very similar in that Christ does something unique. He uses his own saliva to accompany his healing.

So in Mark 7, verse 31, it was the deaf and mute man that Christ healed, applying his fingers into the man's ears and saliva to his tongue. Here we find Christ applying saliva to another man's eyes. So we'll look at it together and see what can we glean.

How does this inform our interpretation of this passage? So we first read in verse 32, that Jesus and his disciples landed their boat at Bethsaida. This was a small fishing community at the north end of Galilee, where the Jordan River met the Sea of Galilee.

And we know that Bethsaida was a fishing community because of its proximity to the Sea of Galilee. And children, maybe you'd appreciate this, but the word Bethsaida, literally translated, means the house of the fisher or the house of fish.

Doesn't that sound like an interesting place to see and to smell? Bethsaida, the house of fish. And so here Christ takes his disciples here. You'll remember that they had just been having a conversation in the boat about the nature of trusting in Christ.

The disciples were anxious. They only had one loaf of bread. Despite being with Christ all of this time, they still had not learned to trust in Christ for his provision. And during that time, he warned them.

He said, beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And as we remember, if you do remember from last week, what he was warning them about was this. A warning to steer away from, to flee what was so clearly demonstrated in the life of the Pharisees, namely self-righteousness and faithlessness and in Herod, wickedness and ruthlessness.

And in the midst of all of this, and in the midst of Jesus' rebuke in the form of questions to his disciples, if we look back to verse 18, Jesus asked his disciples this. He said, having eyes, do you not see?

And having ears, do you not hear? And in essence, what he's asking his disciples is this. Are you blind? Do you have ears and yet you are deaf? Do you not yet understand who I am, that I can provide everything and anything?

And it should come as no surprise that as Christ rebukes his disciples in the form of these questions about their own blindness and their own deafness, that he should land at Bethsaida. And who is the first person, at least in this account, that should approach him but a blind man seeking to be healed by Christ?

And this presented Christ at least two opportunities that I can see. First, it presented Christ the opportunity to show this man great love and to heal him. But I think secondly, it presented him with a great opportunity to teach his disciples not only about physical blindness, but about spiritual blindness.

And so in Mark's account, he leads, Jesus leads this blind man outside of Bethsaida, away from the crowds, away from the town. He applied this spit, this saliva to the man's eyes and laid his hands on the man to heal him.

And we've seen in other gospel accounts that Jesus doesn't need saliva to heal anyone, does he? He can say a word and it is done. But here he chooses to use saliva on this man's eyes. Now, it begs the question, why would he do that?

Now, if you lived in that time, there were Hellenistic healers. Those are Greek-speaking Jews that were almost like the itinerant preachers of today who would travel around and pray for the sick and the infirm.

That was a common practice amongst those healers. And so maybe for this man, it was important for him, Christ knew ahead of time that there be a physical accompaniment of the healing. We don't know because the text doesn't say.

It's also possible that Christ applies saliva to this man's eyes so that the disciples can see the nature of the healing that is about to take place. That it doesn't happen all at once, but that it happens in two stages.

It happens progressively. Now, what is especially unique about this is that this man isn't immediately healed. In verse 24, after Jesus asks the man, do you see anything? The man replies that he sees people.

Isn't this interesting? He sees people, but they look like trees walking. This man would have certainly felt a tree in his life. So a blind man might know to some extent what a tree might look like, a tall cylinder-shaped object.

But his vision was so blurry and so indistinct that he could not make sense of what it was that he was seeing. So we're told that Jesus again laid his hands on the man in verse 25 and the man, we're told, that his vision was, and note these words with me, was fully restored and that he saw everything clearly in a way that cannot even be matched by the most skilled surgeons and advanced technology in the manner that they cannot repair my eyes now.

Christ fully restored this man's vision. He went from being a blind beggar to a man with 20 -20 vision. Perfect eyesight. There's nothing that man has created that can even compare to what Christ has just done for this man.

And as Jesus has done many other times, he counseled the man not to tell anyone, not even to go into the village. The purpose of this miracle was not to attract attention to himself, but to seek the man's good and to teach his disciples an important lesson.

Now it begs the question, why was it that this man was not immediately healed? Do you know the answer to that question? Why did Christ not immediately heal him as he has with every single other person in the gospel accounts?

I would suggest to you that a great deal of it has to do with the context. Now some would suggest that it was the man who was deficient in his faith and because the man did not have enough faith, Christ was not able to immediately heal him.

Now the text says nothing about that. And we know certainly from what Christ has just explained to his disciples, whether they have one loaf or seven loaves or zero loaves, Christ is able to provide for his people.

And so I would suggest to you it is not because of a lack of faith on the man's part. Now some, I've also heard, suggest that here Christ is teaching that sometimes when we as modern Christians are trying to heal someone, that it is progressive.

I think in some ways this makes room for the faith healers who really are no healers at all in saying that, well, he's not fully restored but partially restored. It's progressive and haven't you ever read Mark chapter 8?

No, I don't believe, again, that that is the context. I think that if we look at the context of the passage, when Christ asks in Mark 8 .18, do you have eyes and yet do not see? And as he begins to unveil this, I think what he is doing is this, that he is showing here that this progressive healing is a visible illustration.

It is a parallel of the disciples' ability or inability, you could say the growing acknowledgement, the growing eyesight of the disciples to see Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. And so Christ heals this man in two stages progressively so that the disciples can see.

That even if some are blind, there are some who can see people as if they are trees walking and others who can see clearly as if their eyes have been fully restored. It almost paints three different pictures of a person's spiritual condition.

It's a dramatic picture of every person who lays their eyes on Christ. As each of us looks to Jesus, some are altogether blind to his glory. Others are able to make out his outline, but it's a fuzzy picture.

And others come to him, seeing him clearly. Now, I said at the onset of this point that we would look at spiritual blindness, the spiritually blind. I want to take a moment now to characterize those who are spiritually blind.

Now, some of you might contend that we don't really find a person in this passage who is spiritually blind. What I would say is this, that the whole book of the Gospel of Mark, the entire book of Mark, characterizes those who are spiritually blind.

As we've noted over and over again in our study, Jesus is always surrounded by crowds of people, crowds of onlookers, the rich and the poor, the elite and the despised, the Jews and the Gentiles, the religious leaders and the religious outcasts.

And one of the repeated features of the Gospel of Mark is that the vast majority of the people in these crowds can be described with Jesus' words in Mark 8 .18, they have eyes but do not see. Observe this with me.

The most common, the most prevalent people group in relation to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark are not the clear-sighted. They're not even the spiritually myopic. They are the spiritually blind. And haven't we seen this over and over again?

The crowds gather and they flock around Jesus, but it is the individuals. It is the individuals who approach Christ. It is the individuals who receive the attention of Christ. It is the individuals who come to Christ by faith.

These are the kind of people that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4 .4 when he says, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel and the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

We see it regularly used in the Gospel. For instance, in Mark 12 and verse 40, sorry, John 12 and verse 40, John quotes from Isaiah 6, that God has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and turn, and he says, and I would heal them.

And this is true of the vast majority of people today. And I would say with a great deal of concern, and I don't say this lightly, in fact, that this is true of many of those who call themselves even Christians today.

We see over and again in the Gospels that it is very possible to be devoutly religious and yet completely blind. In Matthew 23, just as one example, Jesus criticized the most outwardly religious people of the day for their spiritual blindness.

In that one chapter, he describes them in these ways. He says, they are blind men. They are blind guides. They are blind Pharisees. They are blind fools. And it's very possible that there are some in this room today who are spiritually blind to the glory of Christ.

You're able to live in this world. You can keep a job. You can make friends. You can come to church. Some of you can even parrot the language. But every experience that you have with Christ, hear this with me, every experience you have with Christ is third-person.

It's an experience you've heard of, but you've never actually known him and seen him for yourself. Like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and as Herod once did, you may see him, in this case, on the pages of Scripture, and hear about him when the Gospel is preached, even as I'm doing now, and yet in the same moment you are utterly aloof to him.

And this is what it looks like if you're wondering, what does it mean? How is it possible? What does it look like for one to be spiritually blind? I would say this is a good example, not exclusively, not only, but it's this.

You've never experienced the conviction of sin. You have never felt that your greatest need in all the world is the need of a Savior. You have no appetite for the Word of God or a prayer to God because you have no appetite for Christ.

He is neither your treasure nor your greatest hope. He is a story and a set of facts far removed from your deeply held affections and longings. Even now, you do not see him, and you do not care to see him.

You are utterly blind, and you are impervious to the beauty and the majesty and the glory of Jesus Christ. You've never seen him. You've never truly known him personally, and you do not now follow him.

If we were to ask those who are spiritually blind, as the Bible describes that individual, if we were to ask them in their own words to describe the splendor and the glory of Christ and his sweet and precious gospel, it would be like this.

Imagine us taking a blind man into one of the most beautiful valleys in the Rocky Mountains and setting a canvas before him and giving him the most expensive paints that money could buy and asking him to paint the majesty of the Rockies.

It would be like taking a blind man to the edge, I think, of this one place in Hawaii that has the most beautiful sunsets, to park him on the beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and with the widest array of colors of any possible palette to paint the hues of a sunset on the Pacific Ocean.

There might be a lot of colors, but there would be no coherent image, and such is the same for those who are spiritually blind. The best you can do is repeat what it is you've already heard. And what a sad state of affairs that is.

The words of J .C. Ryle well describe the spiritually blind.

He says,.

The saddest road to hell is the one that runs under the pulpit, past the Bible, through the middle of warnings and gospel invitations, such is the path of those who are blind to the beauty of Christ, who have eyes and yet cannot see, and ears but do not hear.

Is it possible that you are in this room, and that describes you? I don't want you to despair. We'll come to some exhortations for you at the end. The next category of people that I want us to look at is this, the spiritually blurry, those who have spiritually blurry vision.

In verses 27 through 30, it says this,. And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? And they told him, John the Baptist.

Others say Elijah. Others say one of the prophets. And he asked them, and what an important question this is, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, You are the Christ. And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

After leaving Bethsaida, the disciples continued their walk, this time 40 kilometers north to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. It would have been a full day's journey outside of Jewish territory and deep into the heart of a spiritually blind and pagan world.

Prior to the arrival of Christ and his disciples, Caesarea Philippi had been rehabilitated by Herod Philip, one of the sons of Herod the Great. And the name of the city acknowledges this. It's literally translated, Philip's Caesarea.

And this was to differentiate it from a different Caesarea. If you're looking on your map in the back of your Bible, there's another located on the west coast of Israel along the Mediterranean Sea. And Caesarea Philippi was an important and a dark place in Jewish history.

This was the location where Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus IV, defeated the nation of Egypt in 169 BC before he threw the whole region into 20 years of brutal war. This is the same Antiochus Epiphanes who, one year later in 168 BC, would enter Jerusalem, march into the temple, and sacrifice a pig on the altar of incense.

Caesarea Philippi was also home of worship for three false gods in that area. At the edge of the city, if you were to go to the base of Mount Hermon, there was a little grotto at the base, and one could go in there and worship the god Pan, who was, children, picture this in your minds, this grotesque false god who was half man and half goat.

If you wanted to worship Caesar, a temple had been constructed for Caesar worship, and so you could offer your praise and adoration to one of the emperors of Rome. Or, if you were wanting to worship one of the greatest and the oldest, or maybe you could say the worst and oldest of the false gods that tripped up the Israelites, you could find there the home of worship for the false god Baal.

So, worship of three false gods all in one city. And it was here in front of the darkened backdrop of this wicked city that Christ would illuminate the minds of his disciples concerning his identity and his mission.

So, during the journey, Christ turned to his disciples, and in verse 27, he asked this question, Who do people say that I am? Now, this was a great opportunity for the disciples to consider what the watching world thought of Jesus.

Some said that he is Elijah. We would certainly recognize this is what Herod Antipas thought after he had killed, sorry, some said John the Baptist, and Herod Antipas believed this in Mark chapter 6, and verse 14, after he had killed John the Baptist.

Others said Elijah. This would have been based on an interpretation of Malachi 4, verses 5 and 6. Others thought that Christ was the long expected prophet who would come to the nation, as promised in Deuteronomy chapter 18.

All of these, dear brother or sister, if you were put in that position, if we were to stand you in this room today, and then we were to do a survey of the room, who do you think this person is? I think all of us would be very flattered if someone said, Well, this is John the Baptist reincarnated.

This is the prophet that the nation has been waiting for for thousands of years. This would have been a very flattering estimation of Jesus if he was a mere man. But he isn't. He wasn't. So in verse 29, Christ drills down a bit deeper.

There is a better answer to this question. He asks his disciples very pointedly, and you might not realize it now or not, but there is going to be a time when each of us will have to answer that question.

It's one of the most important questions in all of the world. The answer to that question, depending on your answer, heaven and hell hang in the balance. Jesus asks his disciples, But who do you say that I am?

And this was the disciples' opportunity to make up their minds concerning Christ. They had been observing Christ's life and ministry for at least a year by this point. They had heard what others thought of him, and now it was time for them to form and to articulate their own judgments concerning Christ.

But who do you say that I am? And you have to love the apostle Peter, right? For good or for bad, at least he was moving. I once heard someone say that God steers a moving ship. Well, Peter was a moving ship.

And so Peter exclaims. He says this, and these words make the hair on my arm stand up. You are the Christ. In Matthew 16 .16, the evangelist there, he elaborates further. Peter said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And this is, and our brother Steve pointed this already, this is the hinge, this confession is the hinge upon which the gospel of Mark turns. Up until this point, only God and demons have correctly identified Jesus.

In fact, this is the first time that the word Christ is attributed to Jesus since Mark chapter 1 and verse 1 at the very introduction. Here, Peter gets the answer to the question right. Who is Jesus Christ?

He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And that one word, and we know it already, don't we? That one word, Christ, is just jam-packed with significance. It meant the Messiah, the long-awaited Messiah, since Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve fell in the garden and God promised that the woman would have an offspring and the serpent would bite that offspring's heel, but he would crush Satan's head.

It was the Messiah before them. Jesus Christ, the Anointed One, the Qumran community, this group of people, scribes that lived in and around caves and stored what we now know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had built up the tradition, partially accurately I would say, that there was one coming, a Messiah, who would usher in God's great eschatological kingdom.

He would come and he would be king of his people. And here, Peter confesses that Jesus Christ is that long-awaited, anointed one. So, Peter got the question, the answer, right. But in verse 36, Jesus charged them to remain silent.

Now, why would he do this? If this is the hinge upon which the gospel of Mark turns, why would Christ take such an important confession and say, you're right, I command you to be silent with that confession?

I think it's interesting. This is why sometimes as you do Bible studies, to study geography is just so important. Geography is an important part of a good Bible study. It would have been on their way from Bethsaida to Caesarea Philippi that Jesus and his disciples would have passed a place that was west of the pinnacle of Gamala.

Now, the pinnacle of Gamala has a really important historical significance in that it was in that region that Judas the Galilean in A .D. 6, so a few years before this had taken place, that he had led a revolt against the Romans, resulting in widespread unrest in the area.

After this account in A .D. 66, so some 60 years later, it would be Judas the Galilean's sons who would again attempt to fulfill Jewish prophecy by taking up arms and fighting against the Romans, resulting in, again, another humiliating defeat.

And this was indicative of the problem that Christ was trying to avoid when he commanded silence in his disciples. The Jewish expectation concerning the Messiah was that he would come as a military king and bring about political liberation for the Jews.

And as much as possible, it would appear that Jesus did not want this Jewish misconception of the Messiah to get in the way of the purpose for which he had come. And what was that purpose? He will tell his disciples in a moment, but I will let us in on it early.

It was namely to suffer many things and to die for his people. And so here we see that Peter saw Jesus for who he actually was, but as we will see in the coming paragraphs, Peter's spiritual eyesight was blurry.

When Christ would reveal his divine mission, we'll look at that in verse 31, Peter would issue a demonic rebuke. He could not compute that Jesus as a Messiah would be a suffering Messiah who would place considerable demands upon his followers.

Peter, I would suggest, had eyes to see Christ, but not the whole Christ. He had eyes to see Christ so far as his own presuppositions allowed, and then no further. And this was the problem. Peter had eyes to see a Christ of his own culture and of his own making, but not the Christ of the Bible.

He had not read Isaiah 53, for example, into his Messiah. He was ignorant concerning all that his Bible had to say about this Jesus, this Christ who was standing before him. And again, I would suggest when we're talking about those who have spiritually blurry vision, there are many such people in the world and in the church today.

They have heard the gospel. There are people in this room. They have heard the gospel. They have believed. But like Peter, their spiritual vision is blurry, and they can only see enough to make a positive confession concerning Christ.

And because of their own ignorance of the Scriptures, they're blind to many of the precious truths concerning Christ. And some of you in this room have not just small blind spots, but massive blind spots concerning Christ.

And the reason for that is this, because you do not know your Bibles. You have seen Christ, and you have believed. And by all accounts, you are a Christian. But because you do not know the Word of God, which reveals the Son of God, He is as indistinct to you as a walking tree.

You know that the way to see Christ most clearly is to see Him in His Word, but you rarely open the cover of your Bible long enough to catch a proper glimpse of Him. You have not taken the time to inform your own soul concerning all of the benefits of Christ.

Your view of Jesus and His gospel is one-dimensional. You understand the gospel, but barely enough even to explain to others. And sadly, the joy of your salvation has been tapped by your own spiritual lethargy.

You have been sipping on the Scriptures when you ought to be feasting on the Scriptures. And instead of having 20 -20 vision and being mature in your outlook and in your thinking, you are childish and spiritually stunted.

Now, some might ask, is there anywhere in Scripture that would actually describe a Christian in that way? I would say many. I'll take us to a couple of examples. But the author of the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 5, in verses 12 and 13, he says this to these immature believers.

He says,.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3, and we know how immature they were in that first letter especially.

He says this,.

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants of Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Even now you are not ready.

There are some Christians in this room who are not ready for solid food, because you have not even yet grasped a rudimentary understanding of Christ and his gospel. And because your understanding of Christ and the gospel is uninformed, you do not see Christ clearly.

And I would suggest this, you do not follow him fully. And therefore Christ is robbed of his glory in your life. I remember several years ago being in my very first Christian conference. I don't think it was a particularly good conference.

I didn't think the speaker was particularly helpful. That's just my observation of it. But he did ask one question that I think most of the people in the room felt very convicted by. It was a small enough room that there was interaction between the speaker and the audience, and he said this, Have you memorized one Bible verse for every year that you have been a Christian?