My life was covered up in one big band-aid. And my life was anything but a boo-boo. I was lost and broken and hopeless and purposeless – for decades. The band-aid was anything and everything I could grab hold of in this world in my almost constant desperation to be saved from the hell in which I was living. Little, and tragically, did I know that what I needed more than anything else was true salvation and the way to escape the literal hell where I was undoubtedly headed to spend eternity. I looked to counselors and programs and groups and medicines and doctors to deliver me from a life of brokenness, and I had no idea the genuine deliverance I needed from a heart and life filled with sin and darkness would not be found in anything of this world. My band-aid of psychology and 12 steps and hospitals and disability and welfare and a zillion other temporary fixes did nothing more ultimately than help me get by for just a little while longer while I sank ever deeper in the quicksand of the wickedness of the life I was living.
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| photo courtesy of creative commons via wikimedia |
I was too wrapped up in myself, too wrapped up in my own story, too wrapped up in the self pity I held onto over childhood sexual abuse, over abandonment by my family, over abandonment by two husbands, over this and that and the other thing, anything at all, to understand that the crux of my troubles were not my life circumstances. The root of my problems was this. I was a sinner headed for eternity in hell who was living according to the ways of this world who desperately needed to repent from my sins and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ that He had died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins.
My way was the world’s way. My truth was whatever I thought and felt and believed. My life was in dire need of the Savior Jesus Christ who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I needed to turn away from the ways of this world to the living God my Creator, and I did not know that I could not be in His presence on this earth or for eternity in heaven because I could not as a sinner be in the presence of His perfect holiness and righteousness. Nor did I know that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins so I could be forgiven for my sins and be given a relationship with God and the promise of eternity in heaven. Oh, what I did not know!
Today, my band-aid is gone. Jesus Christ is my Lord. Jesus Christ is my Savior. I believe He is the only begotten Son of God, that He came to this earth in the flesh, that He died on the cross where He bore God’s wrath for my sins, that God raised Him from the dead, and that He sits on the right hand of God in heaven until He comes again. I have been forgiven by God because of the blood He shed on the cross for me, and have been promised everlasting life with God instead of eternity in hell. I am reborn. My slate is wiped clean. I am blameless before God because of Christ. Nothing I did or could ever do could possibly earn this grace of salvation I have been given; no amount of works could ever pay this price. Jesus Christ paid the price for me. And as I learn to abide in Him, as I renew my mind by studying the Bible and do what it says, my life is transformed, I grow in the image of God, and I begin to bear fruits that show I have truly repented. My life is not the same as it was. How could it be? It’s not just that the band-aid is gone. It is that my life is no longer my own as I once thought it was.
My life is His. My life belongs to my Lord. My King. My Savior. My redeemer. My peace. My hope. The Way. The Truth. The Life. Yes, I am His! I no longer live for myself, nor do I live for the world. I live for Him with my highest desire to love Him with all my heart and my neighbor as myself. And besides loving and serving Him with all my heart, I love nothing more than to tell the world about Him.
Goodbye band-aid. Hello salvation.
Is it time to take your band-aid off? Let this be the day of salvation!
2Co 6:1 We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.
2Co 6:2 (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)
Mar 1:15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
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