Blind Faith

Blind faith. Most of you have heard the term at some time or other.

What does it mean?

It means you are venturing into some action of life in which you can’t see where you’re going. Your going out on a limb, so to speak, or you’re jumping off a cliff hoping God will catch you.

Does God require us to move ahead sometimes in blind faith?

Oh yes, definitely!

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going (Hebrews 11:8 NIV).

Blind faith usually doesn’t make any sense to our practical, sensible minds. That’s why it is so hard to move in blind faith. It often goes against everything we have learned in life. Common sense keeps whispering in our ear, “You’re a fool!”

I spent most of the first half of my adult life as a freelancer in the field of advertising and multimedia. As a fellow colleague once said, “I wake up every morning unemployed.” It’s true. I was always unemployed until I found the next job.

After I had been in this field for about 20 years, God began speaking to me about a change in direction. He was calling me out of business and into ministry. There was no mistaking the call. I knew that if I was going into the ministry I had to keep the money coming in while I was making the transition.

I wrote my very first newsletter, which went out to about 60 people that I knew, explaining what was happening, how God was calling me into ministry. To my great surprise, some checks came in as a result of that letter. Well, that was a start.

Then, one day as I was sitting in a restaurant with a friend who headed a youth ministry, something quite profound happened. He was telling me that they needed five-minute video discussion starters for their campus club ministry. A campus club was basically a group of students who met in a middle or high school to study the Bible and pray. At the time, this was a nationwide movement.

All of a sudden God was calling me to attention. “I want you to produce these videos,” He said. Okay. Now I had my first real, defined project in ministry.

I continued to look for freelance projects to pay the bills and I thought about the discussion starter project. That’s all I did. I thought about it.

Two or three months went by and I was still thinking about it. I knew it would take a solid month to produce the first one. How was I going to pay the bills during that month because there would be no revenue from the project until it was ready to sell. On top of that, I would either have to raise a boatload of money to pay for the project, or I would have to call in favors and enlist production people to work on the project for free.

One day I was sitting in my office thinking about where my next project would come from, and God spoke to me loud and clear, “George, are you going to do what I asked you to do or not?”

Ouch! I Knew exactly what He was talking about. The hold-up was that I didn’t know how I would pay the bills. The other side of my mind was in great alarm. I envisioned myself before the judgment seat of Christ and He was asking me, “George, why didn’t you do what I asked you to do?” The thought sent cold fear through my being.

“Okay Lord, I don’t know how I am going to pay the bills this next month, but I will do this first video.”

So, I began planning and strategizing how I could produce the first discussion starter. A couple days later I got a call from Joel, the president of one of the companies I freelanced for.

“We have a little project. I want you to put together an estimate on it.” He described the project, a video for a fire hydrant company in Alabama, and I started to put a proposal together. It was a small project.

A few days later, Joel called me with more information. The project was growing. In a few days he called again. The project had grown some more. The company in Alabama now wanted five instructional videos that would play in a computer. These were the very beginning days of interactive video that played in a computer. It was cutting edge technology.

On the next call Joel said, “I don’t want this to be a ‘plane Jane’ project. Figure out something that will make it really cool.”

Another company I freelanced for had a “Jimmy Jib.” This was a long arm that produced long, sweeping camera motions. You fastened the camera to the top end of the arm and controlled the motion from the ground. Joel thought this was a great idea.

Well, let me tell you, this small job was turning into a monstrosity. Joel wanted me to write the script for the five segments, most of which were a half hour long. While I was working on the scripts, Joel called again. Most of a fire hydrant is underground, so he wanted to build a raised stage that would show the hydrant both above ground and also the part that was underground. I found a subcontractor to build the stage, complete with artificial grass to simulate the outdoors.

The Alabama company arrived with several hydrants. We set them up in our fancy stage and started shooting. There was a problem, however. The underground part of the hydrants was black and the cameras just would not pick up the detail because of the glare. So that night, several hydrants were spread out across the floor and members of the crew painted the inside of the cylinders light blue. Then the next day I was directing the shoot in the studio that had become quite cramped. Three members of the Alabama company were present and our production crew was four, for a total of seven in the studio. The jib arm was 12 feet long. It was bobbing and weaving in graceful movements to create unusual and unique shots of the hydrants.

On top of everything else, I had come down with the flu and was sick as a dog. There was no one else who could direct the shoot and a lot of money was at stake, so I had no choice but to push myself through it.

After three days we had all the footage shot. The clients were as pleased as punch and they headed back to Alabama. I was now to edit five half-hour videos. In order to do that I had to have an intimate knowledge of five different models of fire hydrants. We edited the first one and sent it down to Alabama. Bruce who was in charge of the project, was amazed. “Boy, you guys sure know your hydrants,” he said. “I can only find three small mistakes in the whole video.”

Well, Bruce’s remark put me in a very good position with Joel. “A happy client,” he beamed. “Way to go, George.”

So that was how I proceeded in “blind faith.” I told God I would produce the first discussion starter video even though I had no way to pay my bills that month. He provided a little video project that turned into the largest project I had done to date and paid me enough to get me through, not just one month, but six!

Hebrews 11: 6,8 NIV

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

In His Service

George and Lorraine Halama

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine

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