The first person standing in my way of being saved and becoming the person God has planned is me. I don’t know about you, but I am often my own worst enemy. The bad decisions I make harm my life and tend to keep me from living God’s plan.
God offers salvation to each one of us as a free gift, but if we choose to not receive or walk in it, then we cannot receive and keep the gift. If we are living in rebellion against God, we cannot be in fellowship with God, and salvation is far from us.
When I was a freshman in high school, a close friend of mine attended our church and our dynamic Christian youth group. My friend was very interested in salvation, but he finally made up his mind to turn his back on Christ. He told me that he was absolutely convinced about Jesus, salvation, and miracles.
However, he said that there were some things he wanted to do as a young man that he could not do as a Christian without being a hypocrite. So, he rebelled against Christ and lived his own way, which I presume included promiscuity, drinking, drugs, and the like. He married the beautiful younger sister of a mutual friend of ours, and before long she was forced to divorce him.
I’m not sure how many times he was married and divorced, but I know he left broken families, hurt children, and bruised former spouses in his wake. A number of years ago I visited him in a nursing home where he was recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle accident, and he told me at that time he was a Christian.
I pray that he has continued as a man of faith, but how much heartache he could have avoided for himself and many others had he chosen to follow Jesus early in his life? Instead of being a negative influence wreaking havoc during his early adulthood, he could have made a positive difference in many lives and been a vessel of God’s salvation for others.
Now is the day of salvation, not tomorrow or down the road somewhere. If we fail to make a choice for Jesus, we have made a choice to not know God and enjoy the saving grace and abundant life he offers us.
Other people may also be obstacles to our living in God’s salvation. We live in a hostile world, filled with negative people. Unsaved friends and family members will not want us to follow Jesus. They are not on the path to salvation, and they don’t want us walking in Jesus, either. They may mock us, ridicule us, and try to tear us down.
When we stumble on our Christian journeys, as we all do, they may call us hypocrites and attempt to pull us away from the faith. The devil will do everything he can to attack us. He uses the people of the world to pull us off the pathway of salvation and back into the devil’s ditch.
Jesus wants to heal our souls, but broken, ungodly people want company on their way to the Pit, and they will hinder us on our way to a life that is abundant and eternal. We are called to love everyone and to testify to them of Christ’s love for them, but we cannot allow them to be stumbling blocks for us.
Have we made the choice to receive His love and be children of God? Being a Christian is not easy, and choosing to not follow Jesus may seem like the easy way out, but keep in mind that Jesus made the choice to suffer and die for us that we might be saved. For our sakes, He did not take the easy way out.
Now is the day of salvation. Make the choice to receive the gift and follow Jesus.
Dr. Dan Darby is a retired United Methodist pastor.
