He told me of a vision he had had while his heart was stopped. He had seen Hell. There was the smell of burning flesh, there were demons carrying around saws, and people were screaming in pain. My friend was terrified, and told me that I needed to let people know.
My friend was able to get out of the hospital and made it to church a few more times. He even had two more episodes of heart stoppage and being brought back. Eventually, though, his heart stopped for good, and he transferred to the church of Heaven. His funeral was a real treat to do, for everyone knew of his multiple brushes with death, and his faith in Christ. There were tears, but also tremendous joy, especially among the people who had known him in his early days. For everyone knew that he was saved for eternity by Christ.
Acts 8:4-8, 14-17; 2 Timothy 3:10-17; Luke 13:22-30
And that is a question that is important for all of us. Are we saved for eternity by Christ?
It is a difficult question, for when we look at the culture around us, we find all sorts of answers to this issue.
There is one part of the culture that says everyone lives forever, especially if they believe in the existence of God. And that part of our culture says the only requirement to make Heaven is to be good. “Good people go to Heaven, bad people go to Hell” That’s what our American culture tells us. We even have angels on television working extra hard to be good enough to stay in Heaven.
But what is "good enough"?
Many people say “God loves everyone. That’s what we learned in Vacation Bible School. He wants everyone in Heaven, so He’ll take me. After all, I didn’t kill anyone, I’ve only stolen a few pencils and paperclips in my day, the only criminal record I have is a couple of speeding tickets, so I must be good.”
Or they point to someone on the nightly news and say, “At least I haven’t killed someone like they did.” Or “At least I didn’t set off a bomb like that terrorist.” Or, “At least I don’t beat my girlfriend like he does.” Or…you can fill in the blank. They judge themselves versus the worst people they know of and judge themselves to be "good enough".
“After all, nobody’s perfect, yet the culture tells me almost everybody goes to Heaven, so since I’m not a serial murderer, I’ll end up in Heaven.” By this standard, Hell is a very empty place, with only a handful of the terribly evil being tormented: Hitler, perhaps Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, serial killers, the 9/11 pilots, Osama bin Laden.
In our Gospel of Luke reading, though, Jesus speaks of a narrow door to salvation:
“Lord,” someone asked Him, “are there few being saved?”
He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because I tell you, many will try to enter and won’t be able once the homeowner gets up and shuts the door. Then you will stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up for us!’ He will answer you, ‘I don’t know you or where you’re from.’ Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets!’ But He will say, ‘I tell you, I don’t know you or where you’re from. Get away from Me, all you workers of unrighteousness!’ There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place, when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrown out.
Other people say, “I’m not good enough. I drink almost every day. I smoke. I use foul language, I have an addiction.” They also judge themselves by the very best people they know of and condemn themselves to Hell. By their standard, Hell is very crowded, but these folk also believe that Heaven would be dull and boring, while all the party people would be in Hell.
And Jesus had comments for these people also, people who figured only a handful will be in Heaven:
He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because I tell you, many will try to enter and won’t be able once the homeowner gets up and shuts the door. Then you will stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up for us!’ He will answer you, ‘I don’t know you or where you’re from.’ Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets!’ But He will say, ‘I tell you, I don’t know you or where you’re from. Get away from Me, all you workers of unrighteousness!’ There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place, when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrown out.
Other people say, “I’m not good enough. I drink almost every day. I smoke. I use foul language, I have an addiction.” They also judge themselves by the very best people they know of and condemn themselves to Hell. By their standard, Hell is very crowded, but these folk also believe that Heaven would be dull and boring, while all the party people would be in Hell.
And Jesus had comments for these people also, people who figured only a handful will be in Heaven:
They will come from east and west, from north and south, and recline at the table in the kingdom of God. Note this: Some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
Jesus points out that the people we think are most likely to gain Heaven might be the last people to reach Heaven - and vice versa. Some of the "worst" people will be the most likely to reach Heaven.
Jesus points out that the people we think are most likely to gain Heaven might be the last people to reach Heaven - and vice versa. Some of the "worst" people will be the most likely to reach Heaven.
If I were to ask you, from 1 to 10, how good are you, what would you say? Are you a 7, an 8, a 9 even? Or are you a 3, a 4, a 5? Is there anyone who says they are a ten? No, of course not, for we are all aware of the times we’ve said something terrible to another, the actions we’ve done which were wrong, the lies and thoughts and deeds which, if revealed, would cause all sorts of problems in our lives.
How high a score do we need to get into Heaven? Do we need a five, a six, a seven, a 9.5? The answer, my friends, is not what the culture teaches. For the answer is a thousand points. Perfection. Something not achievable by us mortals.
So how are we saved?
Jesus died on the cross to show us that a man who was fathered by God can indeed be perfect, sinless, a man who will sacrifice for others he has not even met yet. That is the level of goodness we all need.
Yet we cannot be that good, even if we begin now, for we know we cannot even live up to our own standards of perfect behavior, let alone God’s standard. For Jesus raised the bar, telling us that our thoughts count. We found out that to hate our worst enemy is the same as murdering a friend, to lust after an online exercise diva is the same as adultery with our friend’s wife, to covet a pencil is the same as stealing a Cadillac. Our mind is just as important as our hands and feet in committing sin, and the small sin is the same as the great sin, there is no difference.
And so, we are hopeless, we are lost, we are damaged souls that cannot be perfect, and we are doomed to Hell, without God for eternity, burning, weeping, screaming in pain.
And so, we have to beg for mercy. We have to ask God to have mercy on us.
Which, thankfully, is exactly what God wants to hear.
For to God, the real crime, the great sin, is our refusal to acknowledge our weakness. Our great sin is pride, the inability to recognize that God is God and we are not. For we all want to control the world around us like little gods, not needing anyone, especially a God who is much more powerful and wise and good compared to us. We don’t want to admit our weakness and our need, for that means we become humble, losing our proud independence that we’ve had since we were teenagers and "we did it ourselves". God told us that God is a jealous God and the god that He most hates is the god of independence, the little god that is our ego trying to tell the Universe that "we don’t need anyone else, we’ll make it just fine by ourselves, and we certainly don’t want to bow down to a God that will accept just anyone!"
This goes back to the Garden, when a snake told us that if we would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we would become like God, becoming, in essence, little gods ourselves. Little snake gods, hating god like the original snake in the garden. And that is what we humans became. And like that original snake, we grew a snakeskin of terrible behaviors that infected all the people around us with a black rot that turns them into snakes, also.
And God, who is so polite, will let us go into the great darkness of our soul, pretending to be so powerful, so independent, so completely without need…until the day we die, when we admit that we don’t know how to survive on our own.
But if we will admit we are lost without God, then we admit that we are not little gods and we bow our neck to the great living God, on God’s terms, God saves us. By choosing to kill our ego, admitting that we can’t survive on our own, admitting we aren’t self-sufficient little gods…we gain eternal life.
God’s terms of rescue are simple. Admit that Jesus is God’s Son and worthy to be followed…and then follow Him and His example.
This is our first step to being saved.
"What do you mean, is there another step? I thought that I just needed to believe in God and I’d be saved?"
That’s the first step. It’s not all. You will notice that accepting the special position of Jesus is critical, for when we accept that, we accept that either Jesus is special, divine and holy…or we accept that Jesus just showed us what is possible, while we were too weak to do what needed done. Either way, Jesus is worthy of being worshiped and followed. God wants us to accept the special place of Jesus in the Universe. As Jesus said, Jesus "is THE way, the truth, and the life. "
Is there another step? Yes. Although we have been saved from God’s wrath, we now need to be saved from our own foolishness…We need to be saved from our self-destructive behavior, some of which our culture recognizes – the chemicals we drink, smoke, inject, or snort…the food we eat too much of…the violence we do to others…But we also need to be saved from behavior that kills our souls quietly, behaviors that the culture encourages…like sarcasm, gossip, anger, revenge, sex without responsibility, impatience, put down humor, one-up-manship, self-pity, hoarding, nest-feathering, object worship, comfort-seeking, lust, greed, hatred…and the list goes on. We need to be changed from the inside out. We need to become more like Christ. We need to wash away our bad behavior.
Baptism is necessary. Baptism is needed, for it is easy enough to say, “I believe”, but now God asks us to do something mildly uncomfortable to prove we are actually ready to follow Christ. Jesus was baptized…we must be baptized to follow Him. We must publicly step forward, tell people of our belief, and then get wet to show we are serious about this following of Christ.
And when we do this, God changes something in our heart as hands are laid on us and the Holy Spirit enters us. As our Acts reading tells us:
When the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had welcomed God’s message, they sent Peter and John to them. After they went down there, they prayed for them, so the Samaritans might receive the Holy Spirit. For He had not yet come down on any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
When we receive the Holy Spirit, a setting is changed in our hearts, a switch is flipped in our souls, a piece of black rot is surgically removed by God, a rot that we received from other people who had the rot who got their rot from other people clear back to Adam when Adam chose to disobey God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have that rot removed.
Before, we might do good deeds, but we did them for selfish reasons. We might give a thousand dollars to the mission, but we did it so other people would look at us with respect. We did it so we could influence others. We did it so we would respect ourselves. But after our baptism, with the Holy Spirit guiding us, we do good deeds because they are the right things to do.
After baptism, we can walk the path of holiness. This path of holiness is like a path through the foggy woods that is our life. It is a misty path that separates us from the world and leads us toward God. Sometimes it is easy to see. Sometimes, it almost fades away as the fog grows heavier and the path becomes less well-worn. Some days we will walk down the middle of the path, for many people have walked this portion of the path and it is easy to see, the sky is clear, the sun is shining. Some days, we miss the path in the fog and walk off in the weeds, straying far from the path, hearing the call of the world and the culture and mistaking them for the good, joyful calls of God’s bluebirds…but in reality they are the calls of the ravens of death. Yet with careful attention, we can come back to the path. A good church will help you stay on that path, but it is also important to look at the path as described in scripture every day, to speak to God and listen for the Spirit’s still, small voice leading us to the joyful woods. Yes, it is critical to listen when walking the path and become attuned to the Spirit’s voice calling us up the path.
This understanding of salvation is a key difference between Methodists and Baptists and Catholics.
Catholics believe that salvation comes only to those in the Catholic church, who receive the seven sacraments at the appropriate times. There is no path, only the need to stay connected every week in the church.
Baptists fall into two basic categories.
Southern Baptists believe “Once saved, always saved.” They believe that your belief is all that is necessary, that going to church is a duty, that you made the choice once and for all, and that God will not let you leave. Their path is an eight-lane highway with walls on either side and barbed wire to keep you on the path. They say of the person who turns back to evil, “They were never saved to begin with.” So how do you know if you are saved?
The Free Will Baptists believe that you are not walking a path, but a tightrope over the fires of Hell, that one slip can deliver you to a fiery end. Every week, they are back at the altar, being saved again and again. The Free Will believe that if you walk under the proverbial falling piano, you look up, and you use the Lord’s name in vain, you are doomed because of that one, final action as the wrath of God comes crushing down on your soul as that piano crushes your flesh. It is a tightrope to walk, staying sinless at all times.
How high a score do we need to get into Heaven? Do we need a five, a six, a seven, a 9.5? The answer, my friends, is not what the culture teaches. For the answer is a thousand points. Perfection. Something not achievable by us mortals.
So how are we saved?
Jesus died on the cross to show us that a man who was fathered by God can indeed be perfect, sinless, a man who will sacrifice for others he has not even met yet. That is the level of goodness we all need.
Yet we cannot be that good, even if we begin now, for we know we cannot even live up to our own standards of perfect behavior, let alone God’s standard. For Jesus raised the bar, telling us that our thoughts count. We found out that to hate our worst enemy is the same as murdering a friend, to lust after an online exercise diva is the same as adultery with our friend’s wife, to covet a pencil is the same as stealing a Cadillac. Our mind is just as important as our hands and feet in committing sin, and the small sin is the same as the great sin, there is no difference.
And so, we are hopeless, we are lost, we are damaged souls that cannot be perfect, and we are doomed to Hell, without God for eternity, burning, weeping, screaming in pain.
And so, we have to beg for mercy. We have to ask God to have mercy on us.
Which, thankfully, is exactly what God wants to hear.
For to God, the real crime, the great sin, is our refusal to acknowledge our weakness. Our great sin is pride, the inability to recognize that God is God and we are not. For we all want to control the world around us like little gods, not needing anyone, especially a God who is much more powerful and wise and good compared to us. We don’t want to admit our weakness and our need, for that means we become humble, losing our proud independence that we’ve had since we were teenagers and "we did it ourselves". God told us that God is a jealous God and the god that He most hates is the god of independence, the little god that is our ego trying to tell the Universe that "we don’t need anyone else, we’ll make it just fine by ourselves, and we certainly don’t want to bow down to a God that will accept just anyone!"
This goes back to the Garden, when a snake told us that if we would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we would become like God, becoming, in essence, little gods ourselves. Little snake gods, hating god like the original snake in the garden. And that is what we humans became. And like that original snake, we grew a snakeskin of terrible behaviors that infected all the people around us with a black rot that turns them into snakes, also.
And God, who is so polite, will let us go into the great darkness of our soul, pretending to be so powerful, so independent, so completely without need…until the day we die, when we admit that we don’t know how to survive on our own.
But if we will admit we are lost without God, then we admit that we are not little gods and we bow our neck to the great living God, on God’s terms, God saves us. By choosing to kill our ego, admitting that we can’t survive on our own, admitting we aren’t self-sufficient little gods…we gain eternal life.
God’s terms of rescue are simple. Admit that Jesus is God’s Son and worthy to be followed…and then follow Him and His example.
This is our first step to being saved.
"What do you mean, is there another step? I thought that I just needed to believe in God and I’d be saved?"
That’s the first step. It’s not all. You will notice that accepting the special position of Jesus is critical, for when we accept that, we accept that either Jesus is special, divine and holy…or we accept that Jesus just showed us what is possible, while we were too weak to do what needed done. Either way, Jesus is worthy of being worshiped and followed. God wants us to accept the special place of Jesus in the Universe. As Jesus said, Jesus "is THE way, the truth, and the life. "
Is there another step? Yes. Although we have been saved from God’s wrath, we now need to be saved from our own foolishness…We need to be saved from our self-destructive behavior, some of which our culture recognizes – the chemicals we drink, smoke, inject, or snort…the food we eat too much of…the violence we do to others…But we also need to be saved from behavior that kills our souls quietly, behaviors that the culture encourages…like sarcasm, gossip, anger, revenge, sex without responsibility, impatience, put down humor, one-up-manship, self-pity, hoarding, nest-feathering, object worship, comfort-seeking, lust, greed, hatred…and the list goes on. We need to be changed from the inside out. We need to become more like Christ. We need to wash away our bad behavior.
Baptism is necessary. Baptism is needed, for it is easy enough to say, “I believe”, but now God asks us to do something mildly uncomfortable to prove we are actually ready to follow Christ. Jesus was baptized…we must be baptized to follow Him. We must publicly step forward, tell people of our belief, and then get wet to show we are serious about this following of Christ.
And when we do this, God changes something in our heart as hands are laid on us and the Holy Spirit enters us. As our Acts reading tells us:
When the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had welcomed God’s message, they sent Peter and John to them. After they went down there, they prayed for them, so the Samaritans might receive the Holy Spirit. For He had not yet come down on any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
When we receive the Holy Spirit, a setting is changed in our hearts, a switch is flipped in our souls, a piece of black rot is surgically removed by God, a rot that we received from other people who had the rot who got their rot from other people clear back to Adam when Adam chose to disobey God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have that rot removed.
Before, we might do good deeds, but we did them for selfish reasons. We might give a thousand dollars to the mission, but we did it so other people would look at us with respect. We did it so we could influence others. We did it so we would respect ourselves. But after our baptism, with the Holy Spirit guiding us, we do good deeds because they are the right things to do.
After baptism, we can walk the path of holiness. This path of holiness is like a path through the foggy woods that is our life. It is a misty path that separates us from the world and leads us toward God. Sometimes it is easy to see. Sometimes, it almost fades away as the fog grows heavier and the path becomes less well-worn. Some days we will walk down the middle of the path, for many people have walked this portion of the path and it is easy to see, the sky is clear, the sun is shining. Some days, we miss the path in the fog and walk off in the weeds, straying far from the path, hearing the call of the world and the culture and mistaking them for the good, joyful calls of God’s bluebirds…but in reality they are the calls of the ravens of death. Yet with careful attention, we can come back to the path. A good church will help you stay on that path, but it is also important to look at the path as described in scripture every day, to speak to God and listen for the Spirit’s still, small voice leading us to the joyful woods. Yes, it is critical to listen when walking the path and become attuned to the Spirit’s voice calling us up the path.
This understanding of salvation is a key difference between Methodists and Baptists and Catholics.
Catholics believe that salvation comes only to those in the Catholic church, who receive the seven sacraments at the appropriate times. There is no path, only the need to stay connected every week in the church.
Baptists fall into two basic categories.
Southern Baptists believe “Once saved, always saved.” They believe that your belief is all that is necessary, that going to church is a duty, that you made the choice once and for all, and that God will not let you leave. Their path is an eight-lane highway with walls on either side and barbed wire to keep you on the path. They say of the person who turns back to evil, “They were never saved to begin with.” So how do you know if you are saved?
The Free Will Baptists believe that you are not walking a path, but a tightrope over the fires of Hell, that one slip can deliver you to a fiery end. Every week, they are back at the altar, being saved again and again. The Free Will believe that if you walk under the proverbial falling piano, you look up, and you use the Lord’s name in vain, you are doomed because of that one, final action as the wrath of God comes crushing down on your soul as that piano crushes your flesh. It is a tightrope to walk, staying sinless at all times.
Strict Calvinists believe that God decided before the beginning of time who would be saved - and who would not be saved. We have no choice, only the ability to discern which group we are in.
But Methodists, beginning with John and Charles Wesley, believe that the path is sometimes narrow, and that all will leave the path from time to time, if only to decide that we don’t like the taste of the paw-paw fruit we saw growing beside the path, or we don’t like the taste of mulberries or summer persimmons. And then we step back onto the path. But we allow for those rare individuals who stray so far from the path that they never want to return, those who walk away from Christ, never to return again, because we believe that our Heavenly Father gave us a choice in the garden, and we still have that choice even today. Yet, we need not be worried about ourselves, for if we want to regain the path, the path is there for us to find again. If you are worried about whether or not you are still saved, you are okay. It’s only those who are no longer concerned, who don’t care if they are saved or not that are lost again.
You will remember that it is through our initial declaration of belief that God declares us not guilty of the crime of disobedience. The technical term for being declared "not guilty" is that we are justified when we turn to Christ for salvation, choosing to follow Christ rather than be in rebellion to God. And so we are justified solely by God’s mercy, God’s grace, not our action, for God acted first, setting the present of salvation on the table in front of us 2000 years ago. Our only choice, our only action is whether or not to pick up the present and walk with it. At that point, we are saved from God’s wrath.
But you will recall that we needed to be baptized to begin the process of being saved from our own foolishness. For the Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary as a guide to change us from who we have been to who God wants us to be, allowing us to shed our self-destructive behaviors like a snake-skin and exchange them for new life-giving behaviors.
And so we come along the path to the Bridge of Assurance. For all people walking the path gained the path in the first place because they recognized that they needed the path to walk upon, that Christ and baptism and God’s grace were what was needed to get them upon the path, and that they were not good enough by themselves to find the entrance to the path, but needed Christ’s help, baptism, and God’s grace.
But after some time on the path, we tend to forget how we got there, and so we begin to leave the path to make our own way through the forest of life, relying once again on being good enough for Heaven, and we remember that we haven’t been particularly good and so we despair. We worry. We wonder if we are truly saved. Our snakeskin begins to grow again. We need assurance of our salvation.
John Wesley was raised in a pastor’s home with a godly mother. He learned to read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew by the time he was seven. He went to Oxford and became a priest in the Church of England. He brought food and the Bible to prisoners and the poor while he was in college. He became a missionary to Georgia in the new American colonies and then went home. On the ocean, there was a storm, and John was terrified of dying. But there on the ship were some Moravian missionaries who were simply calmly singing hymns while the ship heaved and the waves ran down the deck. He knew they had something he did not have. For John was terrified that he had not been good enough for God.
A few months later, back in London, a Moravian friend invited John to a bible study on Aldersgate Street. He reluctantly went. Listening to the "Preamble to Martin Luther’s Commentary on Romans", he felt his heart "strangely warmed" as he realized that God had already saved him, that he was on the path, and that, rather than waiting to condemn John, God loved John and wanted to save him, indeed had already saved him.
That night at Aldersgate, John Wesley had his assurance and his ministry took off from that night. Soon, he was preaching to thousands and tens of thousands of people joined the Methodist Movement because John no longer had a terrible fear of God, only the fear of respect for the Creator of the Universe that loved him so much He had sent His own Son to die for John.
So we come back to the question: Are you saved? You ask God, “Am I saved?”
Here is how we know.
First, have you told God that you are weak, that you have done evil, and asked for God’s forgiveness?
Next, have you made a commitment to follow Jesus and told others about that commitment?
Third, have you been baptized and received the Holy Spirit?
Fourth, are you beginning to walk down that path of holiness, reading scripture, joining with others in a group discussion of scripture and the difficulties of walking the path, listening to the Holy Spirit, changing from the person you were into the person God wants you to become?
If so, you are saved. Relax. If not, talk to God, make the commitment, get baptized, and find a regular Christian group to join with.
But Methodists, beginning with John and Charles Wesley, believe that the path is sometimes narrow, and that all will leave the path from time to time, if only to decide that we don’t like the taste of the paw-paw fruit we saw growing beside the path, or we don’t like the taste of mulberries or summer persimmons. And then we step back onto the path. But we allow for those rare individuals who stray so far from the path that they never want to return, those who walk away from Christ, never to return again, because we believe that our Heavenly Father gave us a choice in the garden, and we still have that choice even today. Yet, we need not be worried about ourselves, for if we want to regain the path, the path is there for us to find again. If you are worried about whether or not you are still saved, you are okay. It’s only those who are no longer concerned, who don’t care if they are saved or not that are lost again.
You will remember that it is through our initial declaration of belief that God declares us not guilty of the crime of disobedience. The technical term for being declared "not guilty" is that we are justified when we turn to Christ for salvation, choosing to follow Christ rather than be in rebellion to God. And so we are justified solely by God’s mercy, God’s grace, not our action, for God acted first, setting the present of salvation on the table in front of us 2000 years ago. Our only choice, our only action is whether or not to pick up the present and walk with it. At that point, we are saved from God’s wrath.
But you will recall that we needed to be baptized to begin the process of being saved from our own foolishness. For the Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary as a guide to change us from who we have been to who God wants us to be, allowing us to shed our self-destructive behaviors like a snake-skin and exchange them for new life-giving behaviors.
And so we come along the path to the Bridge of Assurance. For all people walking the path gained the path in the first place because they recognized that they needed the path to walk upon, that Christ and baptism and God’s grace were what was needed to get them upon the path, and that they were not good enough by themselves to find the entrance to the path, but needed Christ’s help, baptism, and God’s grace.
But after some time on the path, we tend to forget how we got there, and so we begin to leave the path to make our own way through the forest of life, relying once again on being good enough for Heaven, and we remember that we haven’t been particularly good and so we despair. We worry. We wonder if we are truly saved. Our snakeskin begins to grow again. We need assurance of our salvation.
John Wesley was raised in a pastor’s home with a godly mother. He learned to read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew by the time he was seven. He went to Oxford and became a priest in the Church of England. He brought food and the Bible to prisoners and the poor while he was in college. He became a missionary to Georgia in the new American colonies and then went home. On the ocean, there was a storm, and John was terrified of dying. But there on the ship were some Moravian missionaries who were simply calmly singing hymns while the ship heaved and the waves ran down the deck. He knew they had something he did not have. For John was terrified that he had not been good enough for God.
A few months later, back in London, a Moravian friend invited John to a bible study on Aldersgate Street. He reluctantly went. Listening to the "Preamble to Martin Luther’s Commentary on Romans", he felt his heart "strangely warmed" as he realized that God had already saved him, that he was on the path, and that, rather than waiting to condemn John, God loved John and wanted to save him, indeed had already saved him.
That night at Aldersgate, John Wesley had his assurance and his ministry took off from that night. Soon, he was preaching to thousands and tens of thousands of people joined the Methodist Movement because John no longer had a terrible fear of God, only the fear of respect for the Creator of the Universe that loved him so much He had sent His own Son to die for John.
So we come back to the question: Are you saved? You ask God, “Am I saved?”
Here is how we know.
First, have you told God that you are weak, that you have done evil, and asked for God’s forgiveness?
Next, have you made a commitment to follow Jesus and told others about that commitment?
Third, have you been baptized and received the Holy Spirit?
Fourth, are you beginning to walk down that path of holiness, reading scripture, joining with others in a group discussion of scripture and the difficulties of walking the path, listening to the Holy Spirit, changing from the person you were into the person God wants you to become?
If so, you are saved. Relax. If not, talk to God, make the commitment, get baptized, and find a regular Christian group to join with.
But how do we walk down that path?
Here's one idea:
We all have heard about the tithe, the tenth of our income that is our goal for supporting the church. But have you ever considered what a tenth of your time for the things of God is?
Seven days, 24 hours, is 168 hours a week. 16 or 17 is a tenth. Do you spend sixteen or seventeen hours a week on the things of God? Reading scripture, teaching young people, speaking of God to family, friends, and neighbors, working in church ministries? Do you praise God in song, praise God at the grocery store, praise God in conversation? Do you pray? Do you read Bible commentaries, watch educational movies about Bible themes, do you write godly postings for Facebook or do godly crafts that will make people think about God?
There are many things we can do. I know a man that makes wooden crosses for Easter services, another who joins in flood relief teams. I know a woman who crochets Christian wall hangings and then sells them at Christmas time for others to decorate their homes. I know of a man who makes wooden furniture, sells it, and gives the profit to the Salvation Army.
Could you spend your time supervising a basketball league at the church, could you lead a Christian fabric arts group? A prayer, a scripture reading and three-minute devotional every meeting, then the rest of the time in crafting and prayer. Would you like to lead a weekly Christian aerobics group, with Christian songs to dance to? How would you tithe your time to God?
All of these help us walk down the path of holiness, for the person on the path gradually changes from a student of Christ…to a follower of Christ, imitating Him, …to an apostle of Christ, telling others about Him and His love.
If you have not declared yourself to be a follower of Christ, come to the altar and attract my attention – we’ll do that today. If you have not been baptized, come to the altar and we’ll plan that baptism. If you are on the path of holiness and stumped as to what to do next, get in touch with me and we’ll talk. If you need assurance of your salvation, or received that assurance today, come to the altar and we’ll talk.
For God wants to save all people through God’s grace, not our goodness…will you look back at today as the day you were saved – and were assured of it?
Amen.
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