Saturday, September 01, 2012

SHALL WE SAVE OURSELVES OR SHALL WE PERMIT GOD?

I don't know how to write this post well and I don't think we will know how to read it once written.  That's how illusive I believe the gift of salvation is to us.

Most of we readers are from America.  We have honed skills and ambitious drive about us.  Our parents picked themselves up by their bootstraps and urged us to be of like nature.  We can handle things and if we find we can't, we will buy a Help for Dummies to figure a way. 

Baling wire, chewing gum and duct tape are miracle workers during the broken and difficult days.

Because of our hard work, gut it out nature, I believe we are naive when it comes to the work Christ has and is doing for us.  We carry our burdens upon our shoulders when he pleaded we turn them over to him.  To the responsible citizen this can seem like charity or entitlement.

It isn't.

It is Jesus doing a work that we could never do.  If we could have, he would not have encountered the excruciating pain upon the cross for our sakes.  He would have sent us to a spiritual gym and told us not to come out until we could flex our newly formed muscles.

Our sins validate God's knowledge.  We don't have it in us to save ourselves.  How we try.  How we vow.  How we promise.  How we consistently and repeatedly fail.  None get a passing grade. 

Jesus took on our uglies, our deceits, our hopeless and vain efforts to self-improve.  He took them on and gave us a new kind of life.  It isn't an improved life; but a new one. 

We cannot save ourselves.  Surely our efforts convince us.  God is the One--THE ONLY ONE--who can rescue and He did it through Jesus the sacrificial lamb.

Our work?  To believe Him.  John 6:29.

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