At the moment, I am weary of all things Christian, the jargon, the songs, the Bible…
I am literally going through the motions hoping that if I stay inside the 'loop', maybe something will come along and ignite my enthusiasm. As they say of the Lottery, 'You've got to be in it to win it'
One of my closest friends Sheila is reading a book called ‘Heaven Is So Real’, by Choo Thomas. She is on a real spiritual high! My curiosity took me to the author’s website. There was the usual jargon, and then I got to one line that started a chain of thought...
‘Remember, none of our salvations are secure until the end. We must do our best while we have a chance.’
Coming from a deeply religious background, I’d lived many years in permanent guilt. No matter how hard I tried, I could never sustain a good genuine Christian life. Even when my behaviour was all correct, there were still all those sinful inner thoughts. To me God was ‘Big Brother’ who logged everything I did wrong and getting into heaven relied heavily on the status of my Sin’s Balance sheet.
The way things were looking; there was no chance (excuse the pun) in Hell that I’d get to heaven!
Then I heard the good news! Jesus paid the price by dying on the cross to save me. All I had to do was accept that this was true for me and I was sorted! There was no catch, just believe
“What about this good deeds stuff?”
“The Holy Spirit will come to live in you, and will change you from the inside. You’ll find that your desire to do wrong things will start to fade away”
No other religion offered such guarantees and so I threw in my lot with the Christians!
I can’t tell you how relieved I was. It felt like a burden had been lifted and I was now free to live secure in the knowledge I am loved of God and that He would take me to heaven when I died!
It WAS a good deal!
You see security is very important to me! I’ve had so little of it in my life! I don’t trust people or things easily. To trust someone I’ve never seen or heard… TO TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD… is a big step for me.
I don’t like signing up to things only to discover that the rules have been changed, or that there was some small print that I wasn’t told about!
Of course there is the ‘you reap what you sow’ principle in Christianity whereby all behaviour, good or bad, has consequences. I understand that this applied to my time while on earth as a part of every day living
But not on the SALVATION thing! I believed that to be a DEFINITE, a NON NEGOTIABLE that could not be affected by anything I said or did!
What’s the point then in being a Christian if my salvation, according to Choo Thomas, is down to my behaviour? That means I’ll never make it! No one can make it! Why would God raise my expectations only to dash them to the ground! It just goes so totally against the grain of His character to break His word. (At least from what I’ve read about Him in the Bible)
If I can’t trust God, then what’s the point of life?
