My name is Scott Duck. God lead my wife and I to start this Christian ministry in 2014 but God had begun to work in my life long before that. I would like to talk to you about what He has done in my life.
I am completely blind, in both eyes, as in can’t see a flashlight if you shine it in my eyes. I have gone through quite a bit of hardship because of this. Blindness is a pretty significant weakness. But God has taught me that His strength truly is made perfect in my weakness. I would like to talk to you about this because I think you will find that His strength is made perfect in your weakness too.
Before I get started telling you about that, let me say this. I am not only blind but I am also pretty dumb and so God has had opportunity to teach me a whole lot through all the blindness related hardship. Here, I am sharing some of my Christian testimony with you. I have prayerfully considered which elements of my testimony God would have me share here, as there is so much that I cannot share everything on a webpage. That’s why God also lead me to write “Blind Faith”,, which is autobiographical, basically my Christian testimony expanded into a book. You can check it out here:
http://www.scottduck.com/blind-faith-autobiographical/
Now, let’s get back to the subject of God’s strength being made perfect in our weakness, in our hardships. I would like to start by talking about how we pray about our hardships.
When talking to someone about something bad they are going through, we tend to only focus on the fact that God can take care of the problem, can end the suffering, can heal the illness. When we pray for that person, we tend to pray for their problem to be solved, for their suffering to end, for healing to occur. We should ask God to help people but we must remember to filter everything through His will. We often loose sight of the fact that, ultimately, what we should seek is God’s will and His glory. Gods will may not be for problem resolution, the abatement of suffering, or physical healing. God often uses the affliction of His children to reach people for Him and to bring Himself glory. We mean well but to only focus on the fact that God can take care of the problem suggests that, if He doesn’t, then He isn’t listening to prayer, He doesn’t care about the person or their problems, or He is just cruel. That just isn’t true. So, yes, He can take care of the problem and He often does but what if He doesn’t?
I would like to talk to you about this from my prospective, about what God has done in my own life. Let me tell you about me.
My journey in life started out rough. I was one of three identical triplets, born three months prematurely. All three of us were born in two minutes, which is a world record, and we were in pretty bad shape. At birth, I weighed two pounds and three ounces and I lost down to one pound and fifteen ounces. Medically, that kind of situation is a pretty big deal today and it was a much bigger deal back in 1977. The doctors initially thought that my brothers would survive but that I would not. As it turned out, it was the other way around. My brothers, Chris and Brad, lived 20 and 24 days, respectively. I did survive and the only lingering effect of my premature birth is my eye condition.
I have what is known as Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). In the eye, the retina is like the film or the image sensor in a camera. When a baby is born as prematurely as I was, sometimes, abnormal vasculature and scarring will develop in the retina. This did occur in my case and it left me severely visually impaired. Until I was 19, I did have a little vision in my right eye, but it was only about 20/500. Basically, this was just enough to allow me to get around in an area that I was accustomed to without bumping into too many things and I could read print at about 20 times magnification. Then, at the age of 19, I had to have cataract surgery (cataracts are a side effect of ROP) and, to make a long story short, the cataract surgery on the right eye caused complications which set off a chain reaction of 10 major eye surgeries which took what little vision that I had. There is no way to repair the damage to my eyes with current technology.
I eventually came to the point where I enjoyed school but it was a bit of a challenge. I was mainstreamed in the Jackson-Madison County school system. Some kids made fun of me because I was different. Being almost completely blind, it was a long and difficult process finding techniques and technology which would allow me to succeed academically. When I finally did begin to succeed academically, I became more academically successful than some of my classmates and some of them thought I couldn’t possibly legitimately get the grades that I got. Some of them said that I must be cheating and that was the nicest of the things they said. Needless to say, the first few years of school were not fun. I graduated from South Side high school in 1995 with high honors and went on to get a bachelor’s in business administration at Union University, in Jackson Tennessee.
In my sophomore year at Union, when I was 19, I had the surgery that, in the long run, took what little vision that I had. It was not immediately apparent, however, that I would be completely blind as a result of the surgery. At first, the doctors told me that my vision should return. I am a Christian, saved at age 11, and I leaned on God for strength. After all, He had brought me through all of the challenges that I had faced thus far. I prayed for my vision to return but I prayed, above all, for God’s will to be done in this situation. Christians often say this but it is one thing to say it and it is quite another to be truly sincere about it. I found that it can be very difficult to say it and really mean it once you figure out that God’s will and your own will do not coincide. After three or four months and about as many surgeries, with things getting steadily worse rather than better, it became apparent that my vision was not coming back.
My doctor was Steven Charles, who was renowned as the best retina specialist in the world. He said that the combination of complications that had occurred were, when taken together, almost statistically impossible. He said that he had been doing this for over 20 years, that he had done thousands of surgeries, and that he had never seen anything like this. He said “I just don’t understand it”.
Though I had struggled to do so, I had continually and sincerely prayed that God’s will would be done in this process. I had the best doctor in the world. Yet, still, despite all this, what should have been basically impossible happened. I had to accept the hard conclusion that it was supposed to be this way.
Right out of college, I started work as the chief financial officer of a local freight hauling and warehousing company. I really enjoyed my work.
Most people who I had to deal with professionally realized pretty quickly that, blind or not, I knew what I was doing. Occasionally, however, I had to struggle to be taken seriously. This point is well demonstrated by a particular incident that involved a technician who was working to repair some of the company’s computer equipment. He was sitting in the floor, beside someone’s desk, with their computer in pieces around him. I walked up and started talking to him. He noticed my white cane and, because of this, knew that I was blind. At one point in the conversation, he asked “so what do you do around here?” I said “I’m the CFO”. After giving a laugh that I’m sure could be heard at the other end of the 400 foot long building, he said “now seriously man, what do you really do here?” I don’t think that I ever convinced him that I really was the CFO. That kind of disbelief regarding my abilities is not something that I faced every day but I did face it often enough to sometimes make things difficult, especially in my later searches for employment.
After about five years, my CFO position was eliminated in late 2005, due to downsizing.
For about a year and a half, I tried to get another job doing management accounting work. I was looking for a CFO position or something similar dealing with business operational and financial analysis. Two companies, one in Memphis and the other in Nashville, were very interested in hiring me as their CFO, based on my resume’, talking to me on the phone, and checking references. In both cases, as soon as they found out that I was blind, they entirely lost interest and abruptly cut off all communication. All incidences were not quite so blatant but I ran into this type of thing a lot. Many potential employers doubted my abilities because of my blindness.
After a while, I stopped trying to get a job in my chosen field and started trying to find just anything that someone would hire me to do. Eventually, in 2007, I got a job doing medical transcription. I held that job for about five years, until my position, along with many others, was eliminated, due to organization wide budget cuts. That was mid-2012 and this began a two year period of unemployment.
I diligently tried to find another way to make a living. I tried to start a management accounting consulting business but I found such services too difficult to market in my area. I also looked for and applied for various other jobs. Being blind makes the search for employment much more difficult because I cannot do the majority of the jobs out there and, for the jobs that I can do, it is difficult to convince a potential employer that a blind person can do the job.
So, finally, I decided to try something different. I have always loved reading. In general, I like a good novel better than a movie. Probably at least in part because I can get more details from a book than from a movie which, of course, is very visual. Many people like to watch a lot of TV. I do watch (or listen to) some TV but I also read a lot of books. Between fiction and nonfiction, I read probably close to 100 books per year. When reading a novel, I have often wondered if I could do that, if I could write a novel that would be as good as those of my favorite authors (John Grisham and Jerry Jenkins). I decided to give it a try. I found that I really enjoyed writing and I thought that I did a pretty good job with my first book, which I released in January 2014. I knew that I was no John Grisham or Jerry Jenkins but you don’t have to sell millions of copies just to make a living. The book got really good reviews but I didn’t sell nearly enough to make a living from.
I was getting frustrated, with myself and with God. I felt like I must be missing what God wanted for my life. After all, nothing was going right. I had been unemployed for almost two years and nothing that I had tried was working. God couldn’t want that, right? So I thought I must have been missing something. I was really struggling with this.
Then, I was convicted that I had been approaching my walk with Christ in the wrong way. For a while, I had been too focused on what He could do for me, rather than what I could do for Him. What I wanted seemed natural and noble enough. I wanted to be able to make a living and provide for my family and I wanted a way out of the constant struggle I was in. I wasn’t really seeking God’s will. I just wanted Him to help me to do what I wanted to do. I was convicted that I needed to let Him decide what direction that my life needed to take and I needed to go in that direction, regardless of whether or not it fit my preconceived notions about where I thought I needed to go and regardless of whether or not I was comfortable with it. I began to ask God to give me the discernment to recognize what he wanted and to give me the strength to do what He wanted, even if I wasn’t comfortable with it. He did.
I now believe that it is my life’s purpose to reach others for Christ. I have surrendered to His call to use my life to further His Kingdom. This Christian ministry is what my wife and I do, full time. I have re-released my first novel as a Christian novel and it is the first book in a Christian series. I am writing this series in order to help to convey, in a fictional setting, the hope that can be found in Christ by accepting Him and then trusting him through what comes after the gift of salvation. I have also released “Blind Faith”. This book is autobiographical, basically my Christian testimony expanded into a book. I have more fiction and nonfiction planned for the future and I am seeking God’s direction concerning that. I speak, sharing various elements of my Christian testimony. I also preach in revivals and at other special events and fill in for pastors when they are away. I publish articles on this website and I have a YouTube channel. Basically, my wife and I and a dedicated team of 12 prayer partners pray that God would open the doors of opportunity that He would have us walk through and, when He opens them, we walk through them. Please pray for us and that God’s hand will be on this ministry.
I have learned a few things along my journey thus far about dealing with adversity and limitations. I would like to briefly share a few of those things with you.
First of all, adversity will come, period. When it does, we have some assumptions that we tend to make and they are often wrong.
When things happen that don’t fit our preconceived notions about how we think our life is supposed to go, it’s tempting to think “God can’t possibly want this for my life and so this must not be God’s plan for my life”. That isn’t always true though. Isaiah 55:8 tells us that God doesn’t think the same way we think and Romans 8:28 tells us that He always works all things for good in the lives of His children.
When bad things happen, it can be tempting to think that God doesn’t care about you or that He isn’t listening to your prayers. That is never true. God sometimes uses adversity to draw us to him or to help us to draw others to him.
Take my blindness for example. The last time that I saw anything was on the morning of January 2, 1997. That was 23 years ago and, in those intervening 23 years, I have faced many trials and tribulations as a result, much more even than I have spoken of here. And how about the almost 20 years of my life that came before that? As I have explained, having 20/500 vision is no picnic either and I endured no small amount of heartache in those years. Why did all of that happen to me? I have been a Christian since age 11 and, though I certainly am not perfect, I have, for the most part, done my best to do what I thought that God expected of me. So, why have those 43 years of adversity been necessary? Basically, there are two reasons.
First, the whole experience has brought me closer to Christ. In many of my trials, I have had to lean on God just to get through the situation. In times of tribulation, I pray more and I get into the Word more and that’s how you get close to Christ. Of course, I should do that all of the time but, let’s face it, most Christians do better about that in times of tribulation. The Bible says, in Psalm 119:67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word”. Ecclesiastes 7:3 says “Sorrow is better than laughter, For by a sad countenance the heart is made better”. It is most often in the hard times that I grow as a Christian but it’s hard to think about that in the middle of life’s storms. Think about something. When my kids are sick or hurt, how do they know that they can come to me and I will help them? I mean they know that I am supposed to because I am their dad but how do they know that I really will. They know from experience, because I have done it before. How do we know that our Heavenly Father will help us through our tribulation? It says so in His Word but, sometimes, that isn’t enough for us. How do we know that He really will? As we face storms and He helps us through them, He proves Himself to us. We know that He will help us through the storms because He has always been faithful before and He always will be but, if we didn’t have those storms of life, then we wouldn’t have that affirming experience. Romans 5:3-4 says that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. We can always have hope because He will never leave us alone in the middle of a storm.
Speaking of hope, here is the other reason for my tribulation. I am able to testify to Christ’s role in my life and how He has helped me to bear up against adversity. The Bible says, in 1 Peter 3:15, “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you”. We are to explain the reason for our hope to those who ask. But, why would they ask? What if I had always had normal vision. What if I had gotten a job as the CFO of some big company, making $500K per year, with two trophy houses and a bunch of shiny cars and maybe an airplane or two? Would many people have asked me the reason for the hope that was within me? Probably not. In that circumstance, most people would have assumed that any hope that I outwardly displayed was a result of all of my worldly success. What about the way that it did happen? Many of the hardships that I have gone through have led people to ask “man, how do you do it?”. Because they asked, I could tell them. Because they asked, they actually wanted to hear the answer. Many of these people, if they had not asked, if I had just started talking, they would not have listened. That, too, is why all the tribulation was necessary.
Now, I would like to talk a little about limitations. Obviously, I have limitations that most people don’t have. There are many things that you can do that I can’t. I can’t drive a car. Well, actually, I have driven a car but that’s another story. I have dumped coffee grounds in the floor because I didn’t know that someone just moved the garbage can. I sometimes shut a door and then run into it because I forgot that I shut it. Go ahead, laugh, it’s funny. You have limitations too. They are different from mine and they may not be quite as obvious as mine but everybody has limitations and sometimes those limitations cause you to doubt your abilities. You should doubt your own abilities but you should not doubt God’s ability to work through you.
The trick is not to let the things that you can’t do interfere with the things that God can do. If you feel that God is leading you to do something, don’t worry about it if you don’t think that you can do it. You probably can’t but God can do anything through you, if you will let him, and He will equip you to do whatever he has in store for you.
Let me tell you a little story about this. Not long after I surrendered to the call to ministry, I felt led of God to publicly give my testimony. I knew that speaking at such length would be very difficult without notes. I thought the best way for me to use notes when speaking would be for the notes to be in braille. The best way to accomplish this would be with a braille display, which is a device which translates the information from the screen of a computer or smart phone into braille. They are very expensive and I haven’t been able to afford one. I got the word that I was going to be allowed to speak at First Baptist Church in Huntingdon, Tennessee, the first church where I gave my testimony. I was very thankful but also very nervous. I began to pray and this is basically what I said.
“God, I am thankful for this opportunity. I am also very scared. You know that speaking is not my strength. I know that I don’t deserve it but, if you could somehow arrange for me to get a braille display before this speaking engagement, I would really appreciate it. If that doesn’t happen, I will still do it, because I believe that this is of you and that I am doing what you want.”
Less than an hour after I said that prayer, I got an E-mail, from a man who lived in Ohio who I have still never met in person. He and I met through a business transaction a couple years previously. His E-mail basically said “hey, I just bought this braille display at a charity auction and I don’t really want it, could you use it for anything?”. He didn’t give it to me but he sold it to me at about one-third what it was worth and he let me pay for it over several months, which is the only way that I could have gotten it.
To me, this demonstrates that God always provides. He provides in his own time but He will always provide. I had long wanted a braille display. I didn’t really need one until then but I had wanted one for about 25 years, which is about how long they had been making them. God didn’t provide one just because I wanted it. He didn’t provide one when I started thinking about trying to set up speaking engagements, to give me an extra sense of security that I could do it. He waited until I had made a request to speak and the request had been granted. He waited until I had already committed to do what He had asked me to do. Then, He practically dropped one out of the sky into my lap.
If you’re going through some hard times, certainly, pray about it and ask others to pray about it. God can do anything and, no matter what problem you may be facing, He can solve it, if He chooses to. Sometimes He does. He is still in the business of doing miracles, as I have just described. If He chooses not to, there is a reason. He is always there. He didn’t willingly go through what He went through for you on Calvary just to then abandon you. If He chooses not to solve your problem, there is a purpose in that. Look for that purpose. He very well may want to use you and your problems to be a light in this dark world for Him. He has taught me that 2 Corinthians 12:9 really is true. His strength truly is made perfect in weakness.
A while ago, someone asked me, if God would restore my vision right now if I were to just ask Him, would I do it. I can honestly say that I would not. My blindness is temporary. One day, I will see and the first thing I will see will be the face of Jesus. Though my blindness is temporary, it is partially responsible for this platform God has given me to minister for Him. The results of that are eternal. Whatever hardship you may be facing is also temporary. Look for ways to let God use it to make an eternal difference.
I have told you of my challenges. In life, we all face challenges. Everyone has something that makes their life harder than the next person’s. For me that something is being blind. For you, I don’t know what it is but there is something. Sometimes, as we struggle to face life’s challenges, we also struggle to hold on to hope or we lose hope all together. For many people, what hope they do have is tied to the things of this world, things that will not last. But, you know what? You can obtain a hope that is eternal. Not just a hope but an assurance. I have that assurance, in Jesus Christ, who is my Lord and Savior.
Let me ask you the most important question that anyone can ask you. Do you have the eternal assurance that I have in Jesus Christ? I’m not talking about being a good person or going to church. Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior? If He is not or if you really don’t know, please don’t leave without addressing this. This is the most important decision that you will ever make. If you want to learn more about this, go to the “The Most Important Thing” page on this website.
Now, let me ask another question. If you know Him, what are you currently doing to serve Him? If the honest answer to that question is “nothing” then you need to get in His Word and on your knees before Him and ask Him to show you what He would have you do in His service. And make no mistake, He would have you serve.
Look at me. He has accomplished a lot, in His power, working through me. I’m certainly nothing special. I’m a blind guy who nobody wanted to give a job. What could He do through you? Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus turned the world upside-down, starting with twelve ordinary men. Christianity spread around the then known world within 65 years of Jesus resurrection and ascension. Keep in mind, that was without all the travel and information technology we have now. That is truly amazing and it all started with twelve ordinary men on fire for Christ. Twelve men. What could He do with us, if we were to get on fire for Him like that? Think about that.
Thank you for taking the time to read my personal testimony of what God has done in my life. I invite you to think about what He might do in your life as well. Please explore the rest of this website. You will find articles I have written, links to our YouTube videos, information about our books, and the most important thing, the plan of salvation. You will also find information on how you can partner with us by financially contributing to our work. May the peace that only He can give be with you.
