Fellowship – goodchristianfiction

Watching a video on early church history with my life group, I was struck by one of the biographies of early church leaders. I believe it was John Wesley who was so zealous for God that he had even been to America to mission there. On the return trip home, Wesley was caught in a great storm at sea and found himself falling way short in the faith department as he faced possible death.

I wondered why someone who had enough belief to go out and share God’s word would be so quick to fall from faith (or at least blame himself for falling). Then, the documentary continued to explain the most important next step of Wesley’s faith story. The man who would go on to lay the foundations for the Methodist movement learned the difference between a salvation that is earned and one that is freely given. Wesley learned to embrace grace.

As Paul teaches in many of his letters, our salvation is not earned. We are saved from the damnation we deserve only because Jesus chose to die on the cross for our sins, make us right with God once and for all, and send the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and pull us toward the kind of living that reflects the kind of loving life Jesus lived.

When we have asked Jesus to be our Saviour and admitted our need for His offer of salvation, we are saved. Even in the face of our most immediate, physical dangers, we can take comfort in knowing that our souls are safe. We will join Jesus in heaven. We will see God. We will know that eternal place where there is no fear, no pain, no doubt.

When you release the need to earn salvation, you are free to embrace the humanness we all share. You are free to love the way that God intended us to love. You know that you cannot be proud since none of us are good enough because of anything we’ve done. We are only good enough because God made us all equally “good enough” by dying on the cross for us.

What a different experience John Wesley would have had on that scary boat ride if he already understood that his faith was enough to ensure his salvation through grace! He would not have feared his future thinking he had not yet sown enough fruit for God to be saved. Instead, he might have felt that “peace which surpasses understanding,” knowing that whatever happened, it would be God’s will.

None of us know for sure how we will react to life-and-death moments until we have actually experienced them. But all of us can practice living out our faith by doing what Jesus commanded: “‘AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ “The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”… (Mark 12:30-31).

When we truly have faith, we act out our faith through our deeds. We actively seek to shine the Light of God. We study His word. We seek relationship with Him in prayer. We seek fellowship with other believers. We do things for even strangers that we would appreciate being done to us.

I’m gonna walk by faith, an’ not by sight
‘Cause I can’t see straight in the broad daylight
I’m gonna walk by faith, an’ not by fear
‘Cause I believe in the one who brought me here

“Walk by Faith,” by Out of the Grey–Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/out-of-the-grey/walk-by-faith-lyrics/#kPBrrx4vIIO2CioE.99

It’s one of those rainy days in Houston. As I pulled out of the parking lot at the gym this morning, the automatic lights on my car decided there was quite enough light to keep my headlights turned off. But, what the optics on my little Ford Focus determined didn’t seem particularly intelligent in the semi-light of a rain-spattered world. So, I flipped on my headlights and drove safely home.

By the time I pulled into my garage and switched off the car, my mind had already wandered to a thousand different things, like what I need to do today and the groceries I need to buy for rest of the week. So, when I popped open the car door, I was startled by the warning ding that greeted me. I had my keys in my hand, so it wasn’t a keys in the ignition ding. It only took a half second to remember that I had turned my lights on, overriding the automatic setting. So, I switched the knob back to its correct position and went on with the business of getting into my house.

As I was thinking what a small but important thing that little dinging alarm is, I was wondering how long it took the car manufacturers to add it to our vehicles. Maybe those dings annoy some people, but for many of us they are important reminders to keep us from a much bigger problem, like accidentally leaving your headlights on and draining your battery.

How do we apply the lesson of the simple headlight warning ding to our spiritual life? After all, if we can be distracted enough by the small things in life to forget we turned our headlights on when we started our car ride fifteen minutes ago, how much more can we be distracted by the challenges of day-to-day living that keep us too much in the world and not enough in God’s world?

The only way to be open to the Spirit, who can be our warning system, is to spend time with God. We do this through prayer, reading and studying His Word, and by having fellowship with people who also want to worship and know God.

My warning system this morning included reading about the first Passover in the book of Exodus. It reminded me that Christ as the lamb offered His blood on the Cross so that the wrath of God will pass over those who believe in Him just as it passed over the Israelites who followed God’s instructions when the Egyptians’ first born were taken during the final plague that convinced Pharaoh to release the Israelites from Egypt.

The Passover reading also reminded me that God keeps His promises. He had told Joseph He would return the people to the land of Abraham. 430 years later to the day, God followed through on that promise.

God never changes. The more you read the Bible, the more you will see that the patterns of His relationships with humans are consistent and all lead up to the ultimate fulfillment of His promise in the sacrifice of Christ.

In a world where I can forget I flipped on headlights in the time it takes to drive from point A to point B, it’s a wonderful feeling to know that God is always there and always the same.