Get Saved
Everybody wants to save us from something. Teachers want to save us from ignorance, doctors want to save us from disease and financial advisors want to save us from the mismanagement of whatever money we have. It’s all good and all praiseworthy. There’s no point in being stupid about it, all these things are important to us as we live out our lives. But sometimes we hunger for something deeper than that. Down inside us we know there's a need for a profounder salvation. That's the business Jesus Christ is in.
He opens up our eyes to a bigger life and a richer humanity. He talks to us of "destiny" and "mission" and "life" that is brimful of life. He comes telling us that all these needful things are not the same as life. He comes saying that the body’s more than something to put clothes on, that living is more than three meals a day and twelve hours at work. He says housekeeping is needful but it isn’t the sum total of what we were made for!
He comes saying that our families and friends and health and music and reputation are all God’s gifts to be enjoyed but he says that if we’re to make them substitutes for his Holy Father that we’ll remain forever hungry and dissatisfied. The hunger, the sense of "there’s more than this" that nibbles at the edges of our minds shouldn’t be dismissed as nothing. It’s God working with us. He says he made us for more than all these. Not for less! But for more than all these lovely gifts. How can you tell? Hmmm, I suppose there’s only one way to tell if Christ is all he claims to be. "Taste, and see that the Lord is good." Give it a shot, get saved!
Let him save you from your sins. Yes, sins! The host of things you’ve done wrong down the years. Things about which you feel ashamed even at this distance. Not just crass evils but "respectable" wrongs, common wrongs, the wrongs of which we’re all guilty. Wrongs that we’re used to calling "wrongs" and he calls "sins" because, whether we’ve known it nor not, they’ve dishonored him.
Let him save you from your lack of profound purpose and the emptiness that sometimes comes over you in a wave of near mental nausea.
Let him save you from your settling for less. He loves our pleasure. For pity’s sake he gives us the gifts of music, romantic love, health and the like for us to enjoy! He doesn’t begrudge us our pleasure—he provides it! But it’s himself he wants to give and that makes all the difference. Get saved!
Television watching, door knock, she goes, speaks to someone at the door for several minutes. She comes back, silent. Who? A Christian. What did he want? Wanted to know if I was saved. Did you tell him you went to church regularly? He didn’t ask me that. Asked me if I was saved. Yes, but did you tell him that you’re involved in community programs around here? He didn’t ask me that either. Just asked me if I was saved. I know, but did you not tell him you taught school, sang in the choir and visited nursing homes? Are you listening to me? He didn’t ask me anything like that. He just asked me if I was saved. And...I’m not.
Do it, please. Get saved.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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