“On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” Matt. 7:22-23
Grab your coffee this morning. Relax, and let’s have some serious talk.
We have been remiss. Looking back on this year of Back to Basics articles, we seem to have skipped over the most basic of all basics: salvation. In a recent sermon Pastor Kevin brought up something about salvation that really got me to thinking. He wondered aloud what we in the congregation might say if we were asked to explain salvation. That got me to wondering too. Is there confusion over salvation? Could it be true? Could faithful church members who have lived upright lives be confused about salvation? I pondered my own story and the many conversations I’ve had with women over the years, and I realized that “Yes,” even dedicated church members can suffer from skewed teachings in their past and confusion over the Gospel. Pastor Kevin explained, “Many people in the church … not outside the church, but inside the church … many church folk think salvation is by God’s grace plus good works. Wrong!! If we could work our way to heaven then the cross at Calvary was a tragedy.” Woah! That is a stop-us-in-our-tracks comment.
So let us stop in our tracks and examine ourselves. Would you be able to tell another person how to be saved? Can you explain salvation for yourself: what it means in your life, how you know you’re a child of God, what steps a person takes to be saved? Can you say what salvation is and what it is not? It seems simple, yet so complex. If you were saved as a child, you may sometimes wonder, like I used to, if you did it the right way. Do you? Do you ever doubt your salvation because you prayed as a child, but don’t see much growth in your life right now, and so you wonder, “Am I really saved? What if I’m not?”
When we were younger, we may have gotten the message at church that we had to be perfect. We may have confused healthy admonitions to live a moral life with what it means to be saved. We have seen that people change after they encounter Almighty God, and the enemy or our souls may have twisted that to make us believe that a change in behavior or doing good works equals salvation. But it doesn’t.
What is salvation?
That is such a “churchy” word. But what does it mean? According to dictionary.com salvation is “deliverance from the power and penalty of sin; redemption.” And BillyGraham.org says that salvation is “an act of God. It is initiated by God, wrought by God and sustained by God.” And our own Pastor Kevin reminds us that, “There is only ONE way to the Father and that way is through His Son, Jesus Christ! There is no forgiveness of sins apart from the substitutionary, perfect, sinless, shed blood of Jesus Christ! It is God’s grace plus nothing, minus nothing!!”
Salvation. From the root word “save.” We are being saved from the penalty of our sin we said. But salvation is much more than avoiding punishment. Salvation is coming into relationship with our Creator, Father God. Yes, I will be saved from the penalty of my sin, but it is oh so much more than that. I will have a perfect father. A rescuer. A friend. A guide through life. A healer. A comforter. And I will become His bride, his friend, his daughter, his beloved, a new creation, a chosen one, a forgiven one, a work of art crafted by the Master Craftsman’s hands.
But how does that happen? How do we come into that relationship with God? He is drawing us. He loves us and wants us to come to Him while we are still wallowing in our sin, while we’re still in our selfishness, our addiction, our drunken reveling, whatever. He takes the initial action – He loves us. These verses say it all.
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins…. We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:10,19)
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Let’s take a look at the facts of salvation.
So the first step of salvation is realizing that God loves us, even with the mess that we are. In fact, He loved you so much that He was willing to give His only son as a sacrifice for your sin to take the punishment you deserved upon Himself.
The next step is to understand that we sin and to repent of that sin (turn away from it), and ask forgiveness from God. We are sinners. Sin is simply missing the mark. Jesus set a high standard; he lived a perfect life. That is the mark; anything short of that is sin. Murder? Yes, of course. Lying. Yes. Immorality, greed, hatred, jealousy, selfishness? Yes, yes, yes, it’s all sin. We are each and everyone guilty and in need of someone to rescue us from the punishment we deserve because of our sin. The book of Romans has lots to say about sin. Chapter 3 tells us “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Chapter 6 reminds us that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 3:23 and 6:23) Sin demands a penalty payment, death. But that penalty has already been paid!
Third, we must realize that Jesus’ death and resurrection is the only thing that makes it possible for us to be made right with God. Jesus Christ is that sacrificial lamb, that sacrifice that paid the penalty for our sin. Romans 10:9-10 tells us that, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”
And that’s it, we come to Jesus bringing nothing. We let go and give Jesus authority over our life to do with as He will for the rest of our days. We raise our white flag in surrender. He redeems our mess and makes us into His new creation. It’s all on Him. He does the saving and the changing, His precious work of grace.
When we realize our sin and brokenness and our need for a savior, we have a choice. We can choose to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, or we can choose to reject His gift of salvation and try to fill up our broken places by our own means. Jesus is tenderly waiting with open arms.
Have you done that? Have you accepted His love for you, realized and repented of your sin, believed that He is the only way to be made right with God, and given up the authority to rule your own life to Him? If not, now would be a good time. If you’re not sure what you did as a 6-year-old, now would be the time to make sure. All you have to do is pray.
We at Priceless would love to hear from you if you have given your life to Christ today. We encourage you to pray, begin to read God’s word each day, and find a local body of believers (church) near you to meet with. We’ve included a simple video below and The Bridge Illustration that express the truths of salvation in slightly different formats.
Bridge Illustration from The Navigators.
Kintsugi takes broken pieces of pottery and repairs them using a special silver- and gold-dusted lacquer. The practice creates unique pieces of pottery that use the fractures and fissures to tell a story. Instead of attempting to hide or cover the cracks and breaks, kintsugi seeks to focus on the brokenness of the pottery. Kintsugi allows the artist to create an original, useful, extraordinary piece from the shattered shards of what was once deemed unusable. What might’ve been swept out with the garbage is now sitting in a place of prominence, as a representation of the artist’s skill and the beauty of the creation, in museums around the world.
Recently, I asked the King for a little order, some straight horizontal and vertical lines in a world full of diagonal ones. I asked Him If He wouldn’t mind to do that for me. In my memory I was taken back to a time when He used His people and had done exactly that. It was one of many Martin moves when some Dear Ones organized my entire kitchen. I came home to cabinets lined and labeled, filled and readied. It still makes me smile when I think of it.
asked to help. They began telling me to get his medications and his wallet and send with him. The medics had decided to fly him to either Birmingham or Huntsville. They were taking him on a stretcher out the door, and said, “We’ll let you know which one.”
We followed up with his neurologist. At this visit, we walked in, sat down, and he pointed to some X-rays. He said, “This is your brain. You’ve had 2 small strokes in the area that controls speech. You should recover completely. But…” What he said next, I wasn’t ready for. “You could have another one any time. You might not survive it. I’ve had 3 patients this week, younger than you, who didn’t. There’s really nothing you can do, go home, reduce your stress, and enjoy your life.”
have deduced early on… weird was in my future. So as my tired old minivan wandered down the roads of Gardendale I shouldn’t have been surprised when the low flying bird collided with the front of my van, death instantaneous, the impact propelling the dead bird carcass onto my windshield wipers where it became lodged.
later we reached our destination, the local Chick-fil-A. Charlotte had been saving her gift card she earned early in the summer rocking babies and feeding toddlers during a babysitting gig. The time had come for her to relinquish it in exchange for a much desired spicy chicken sandwich.
I offered all I could to Mag’s, the only balm that can truly ease a broken heart, prayer. We prayed for the mama and we prayed for her kids. We prayed for the weary and the broken. We asked for forgiveness if we’d acted in such a way that doesn’t honor our King. After our prayer we carried on with our meal. The crying counterpart continued to mourn.
With my Bible open before me and a table full of commentaries and notebooks strewn all around, a strange thought came to my mind. Here you are sitting in a bread shop consuming the Bread of Life. This is your House of Bread, your Bethlehem.
“Jesus declared, ‘
For that reason, I am continually praying that your love for Him deepens and the roots of truth dig down deep in your heart. The branches may be shaken by experiences, but if the roots are solid, the tree will stand firm no matter the storms that blow. Know that you can take your cares to Christ—all of them, ALL OF THEM. Remember your life verse, “Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; 
LOVE BIG. When you get bogged down in your own little world, you’ll get depressed. Seek others out and love them big. Remember to consider others better than yourself. That’s one of the secrets to unlocking the true joy of Christ. 
Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” What do you put your confidence in? Some things I have chosen to put confidence in over the years are my husband, a job, finances, doctors, my “good”-ness, truth, family – and these are just a few. Have these ever rescued me? No. I guess they’ve made my anxious heart quit racing a little at times, but they have never had the answer or the final say. There is only One worth putting our confidence in. Only one that we can be assured has the power to rescue.
I see articles on faith issues being “proven” by science. I know these are meant to calm our curious mind and help as we struggle with unbelief. But in reality, faith and science are on opposite ends of a spectrum. Science is based on what can be observed by the senses. But faith… what does it say? It is the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
The story goes on… “And Jesus said to him, ‘ “If You can?” All things are possible to him who believes.'” (Mark 9:23 KJV) Jesus tells us flat-out, all things are possible! The condition on that possibility is belief, faith, trust in God that it WILL happen, not just that it CAN. In the next chapter of Mark, Jesus tells His disciples that “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” And Luke 1:37 says it the other way around, “For with God nothing shall be impossible,” (KJV) or as it says in the NIV, “For no word from God will ever fail.” Why are all things possible simply by our believing? Because we are a believing in a God who never fails.
And the second key to having faith? It is found in Romans 10:17, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (NKJV) Our faith comes by hearing His Word. When my faith is weak, I go to His word and read it. And just lately I’ve begun reading it out loud because of this verse. If the Bible says “faith comes by hearing” then I want to literally hear it with my ears as well as hearing it in my mind when I read silently. And at the same time our enemy is hearing the scripture I’m building my life on, and he’s getting the message to “back off” because this is where I stand!
Priceless 