Tag Archives: salvation

Jul 01 2023
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Just One Minute

Unexpected Jesus Follower

The miraculous conversion of Saul of Tarsus gives us hope for our own day.

Saul of Tarsus was the last person anyone expected to follow Jesus Christ. That he would later become the missionary to the Gentiles, willing to face beatings, stonings, prisons, shipwreck, and to lose his life for the sake of Christ was beyond unthinkable to anyone who knew his murderous reputation.

Already, he was implicated in the death of Jesus’ first martyr, Stephen. He possessed a fanatical hatred and fury against Jesus’ followers that rivaled or surpassed that of today’s radical terrorists. When Jesus’ followers fled Jerusalem to escape him, he chased after them, determined to destroy this affront to his beloved traditions. Who knows how many more believers died at his hands or at the hands of those who followed his orders?

In Galatians 1, we read his own description of his total devotion to the faith of his forefathers. The more people who followed Jesus Christ, the more infuriated he became. Nothing, he resolved, would or could stop him from achieving his goal of 100% eradication of Jesus’ followers and Jesus’ memory from the earth. And then…

On the road to Damascus, he met Jesus Christ face-to-face. In a split second, Saul’s life—and our own lives and destinies—were forever reversed.

In that split second, Saul of Tarsus became the man later known as Paul the Apostle, the greatest Jesus-believer the world has ever known. Everyone who reads this piece owes an unpayable debt to him and to Jesus Christ, our risen Lord, who made it all possible.

In those dark days before the light from heaven blinded Saul of Tarsus, most Jesus followers wondered how long it would take before that determined killer caught up to them. They did not count on what God was about to do to change the course of history.

In our own dark days, with so much demonic activity in India and our own nation arrayed against the advance of the gospel, is it not also hard for us to believe that anything will soon change? By the day, everything seems to get worse and worse and worse.

Many prominent Christians even say we live in a post-Christian age. Many of our children and grandchildren, raised in the church, are deserting the faith in droves for New Age, witchcraft, drugs, transgenderism and the like. We are told we will live as powerless exiles on the outskirts of Babylon until Jesus raptures us out of the mess.

But God never adopts a losing scenario. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the same God who reversed the life of Saul of Tarsus in a split second. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit—and Saul of Tarsus’ conversion—remind us that God’s work on earth never retreats but advances.

What God has shown us in the past is a foretaste of what He plans for the future. The greatest works of Christ have yet to take place in India and the world, in this country, in your lives and in the lives of those we love.

Surely, that day will come in a moment, like the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on that Damascus road. Pray and praise God for that day!

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May 07 2021
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Just One Minute

What does a good God do with evil?

John 9 is a passage that probably applies to most if not all of us. The story really begins at the end of the 8th chapter when Jesus leaves the temple in Jerusalem. On His way out, He and His disciples meet a blind beggar who sits at the temple gate.

The man has suffered blindness since birth. The context suggests he was a fixture at the gate for years, seen by everyone as they entered and left the temple. He was a familiar sight to the disciples who asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”

It was the wrong question, and Jesus corrected them. His response is usually mis-translated in our English versions. Without going into all the technicalities of Greek grammar, His response should be translated something like this: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but let the works of God be made manifest in him.”

Jesus’ response should become a comfort to all of us. Not all of life’s misfortunes result from personal or family sin. This includes events such as the loss of friends or loved ones, congenital illness, accidents, death of a child, or a host of events that prevent us from developing gifts or fulfilling good and reasonable dreams.

The disciples reacted to the blind man like Job’s “friends” reacted to his calamities. Jesus reminds His disciples (and us) that God does not cause evil. He does not bring sorrows, calamities and limitations in our lives, even for His glory. These misfortunes come from the devil, whose work He has come to destroy. In other words, the only one at fault is Satan.

This should be good news to all of us who suffer for seemingly irrational purposes. We may even wonder what sin we have committed for God to punish us like this.

Jesus demonstrates to the disciples (and to all of us) that God desires to bring good out of the evil in our lives. Having secured the blind man’s permission, He heals the blind man, enabling him to see for the first time in his life. No longer does he have to sit and beg at the temple gate. Now, he has the opportunity to live a fulfilling life rather than live on the edge of life.

What a lesson to us! Jesus wants to make the works of God manifest in us. He especially wants to heal those areas of misfortune in our lives that come to us through no fault of our own. When we give Him permission to heal, no longer are we bound to our past or to family or environmental circumstances we cannot control.

God does not cause evil, but He can use evil to humble and prepare us for His greater works in us. When we give Him permission, He will change our circumstances in ways possible only with Him. He will make a way where there is no way.

Someone has said, “The Crucified God is not in control of evil, sickness and suffering because He is too busy destroying them and bringing good out of them.”

All of this is part of the Good News that we should make part of our own lives and share with those who have yet to hear of Him.

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Jun 29 2017
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Just One Minute

God’s Sovereignty, Human Responsibility

creation-of-adamHolistic healing—the harmonious relationship of body, soul and spirit— comes when we learn to live our lives governed by the grace of God. How do we know we are governed by the grace of God? I submit to you a simple test. Ask yourself this question: When were you saved?

Now—what is the very first thing that comes into your mind when you read this question? The answer to this question—the only biblical answer—is, “At the cross, by the eternal plan of God the Father before He created the world.” (Read the details in Romans and Ephesians.)

There is a delicate balance between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. To the degree we tip that balance to the human side, we err. God takes the initiative. We love Him because He first loved us. Even the process of conviction comes from the Holy Spirit. If we associate the moment of our salvation mainly with the day we knelt at our bedside, walked down an aisle, prayed the sinner’s prayer or any other thing, to that degree we make our salvation a thing of our own doing more than God’s grace.

To the extent we tip that balance, we become less able to hear the Holy Spirit, and we become more vulnerable to the lies of the world, the flesh and the devil. We become more prone to the stress of believing lies rather than truth, of living at a lower level than God intended for us.

If we are honest with ourselves, none of us fully accepts the grace of God in our hearts, even if we believe it in our minds. Our habits of thinking and doing are still deeply rooted in fallen natures which want to do everything in our own strength. We are more ungodly in our thinking than we imagine.

Instead of kicking ourselves for our failures, we must daily remind ourselves that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” Learning to live by God’s grace is a lifelong process. Knowing God saved us at the cross through His Son should better help us to accept ourselves because HE accepts us and aids us in transforming our awed lives and characters. This is a difficult, but necessary step toward holistic healing.

Psychology tells us that to accept ourselves, we must look into our past to heal ourselves. But God, the Great Physician, accepts us at a deeper level, and He did it before we were born. To experience full healing, we come to know ourselves best when we first learn to know God’s grace. This is when true healing takes place.

Our failure to live by God’s grace explains the poor health of so many churches and our culture. When the church does not live out the full healing power of grace, we cannot live as salt and light, and we cannot change the culture around us. All of this makes the church appear powerless, unable to bring the Great Physician to a hurting world.

Paul preached the finished work of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9). His emphasis upon God’s grace in Jesus Christ helped to spread the gospel across the Roman Empire. Let us pray for an unprecedented Great Awakening to the truth of God’s holiness and God’s grace and see the gospel once again spread like wild fire throughout the unreached world!

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