Don’t take it for granted — be sure!

April 17, 2006

By Fred Smolchuck

During my morning devotional period I was impressed with Jesus’ words as I read them in E.H. Peterson’s contemporary Bible translation, The Message. Here’s what it says:

[Jesus] went on teaching from town to village. …

A bystander said, “Master will only a few be saved?”

He said, “Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way of life — to God! — is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s salvation banquet just because you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood all your lives. Well, one day you’re going to be banging on the door, wanting to get in, but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying, ‘Sorry, you’re not on my guest list.’

“You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known you all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with his abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about me.’

“That’s when you’ll find yourselves out in the cold, strangers to grace. You’ll watch Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets march into God’s kingdom. … And all the time you’ll be outside looking in — and wondering what happened.” (Luke 13:22-28)

Wow! That’s powerful; it should scare a lot of people. It means a person can go to church all his life, hear the preaching, sing the hymns, give offerings, be involved in the church’s programs — and not personally know Jesus. All the while thinking all is well, simply because he has friends in the church, or he may be a member of a family whose parents or siblings have a real relationship with Christ.

What your relatives have is theirs — not yours. Each of us must make our personal peace with God. When we pass from this life to the next, what a shock awaits those who have never invited Jesus into their hearts.

Fred Smolchuck writes “Life’s Bits and Pieces” and lives in Springfield, Mo.