So......I finally got all of my flowers planted...well almost. I still have one Hydrangea that needs a spot...but I have to decide where and also wait till I am sure all the weed killer Jon put on the yard has dissipated. I don't have a green thumb, I do not need any help in killing plants real or fake!! Anyway, I got the ones in the front planted Sunday evening and asked Jon to dig a hole for the Hydrangea that I wanted in front of the porch. I showed him where I wanted it and he asked why I couldn't just dig a hole with my little hand spade. I was quick to point out that the ground is rather hard and there are still plenty of roots running through it as well. So he got out the shovel and began to dig. It became obvious rather quickly that I was indeed right about the hardness of the ground when I looked over to see him chipping away at a root. He was chopping pretty hard and mumbling something about it being a rather stubborn root...and then he stopped....looked down and then said...."Oh, it wasn't a root!" He had just broken the pvc conduit that contained the wire from the yard light. He not only broke it...like chipped it....he BROKE it...as in pieces and no longer existing! The wire inside had slits in spots, but we decided to see if the light would still work. Unfortunately, he didn't tell me that until after I had already planted the Hydrangea.
Well...the light does work, at least for the moment. One can only hope it continues. I really do not want to dig a trench in the front yard to replace the pipe. Perhaps if we do end up having to replace it, I should just use my little hand spade. Who knows what he will demolish next!

Salvation Opinions or just plain ramblings

On several recent, but separate occasions I have found myself in conversation concerning salvation. During one such conversation it was determined by one person that the Missionary Church believes that one can lose his/her salvation. The Baptists of course, believe that once saved always saved, but the missionary church takes a different opinion on that, stating that you can’t just ask Jesus to save you and that be it. I know the Bible says “Faith without works is dead” and in another place it speaks of a church that was “spit out” because it was “luke warm.” Yet, it also says that Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me” as well as in John 3:16……”Whosoever believes in me shall have ever lasting life.” One particular faith believes you must work out your salvation, which clearly isn’t true, because there is nothing a person can do that can get him into heaven if he hasn’t first received the gift of eternal life through the One who died for him by believing that He, Jesus is truly the Son of God.

The subject of Salvation is one that has been debated or maybe just misunderstood for well, probably since Jesus died on the cross. The average American can probably tell you that Jesus died on the cross, but many; maybe most of them probably can’t tell you why. If you were to ask the person on the street if they were going to heaven when they died, their answer would most likely be “I hope so!” followed by, “I think I’m a good person.” Most feel like they have been ‘good enough’ to get into heaven, yet most don’t really understand that they could never be good enough on their own. They could spend their entire lives giving to the poor, working with unprivileged people, donating to charities that support research to cure some horrible disease or maybe even doing the research personally, foster parenting, even adopting children yet none of these ‘good deeds’ would get them into heaven if they don’t know Jesus as their personal savior. The bottom line is that no one can be good enough to get into heaven on their own because no one is perfect. There is only one perfect lamb and that was Jesus Christ. Hollywood would have you believe that Jesus stumbled and became a little too much a normal man, but the truth is Jesus is God’s Son. God sent Him to be the light of the world; to show the world the way to heaven by allowing that awful sinful world to put Him to death, a brutal death on a cross for having done nothing; absolutely nothing wrong. Well..nothing except make the authorities of the day nervous that they would not be in control if the opinions of Jesus were to be followed instead of their own. They acted out of their own fear and condemned an innocent man to death because of their own greed and their own opinions on how one should follow God. Jesus didn’t agree with them and in order to keep Him from gaining more support for His teachings, they crucified Him in public on a cross. They used fear to keep the crowd at bay, to keep them from even acknowledging that they even knew Jesus, let alone believe His teachings.

Having said all of that I would not want to give anyone the impression that I don’t think one should be involved in furthering the Kingdom of God. I don’t for one second believe that once a person accepts Jesus Christ as their personal Savior they can just sit around and be complacent till the day they die, however, I do not believe that God calls everyone into service immediately. In many cases there has to be healing in one’s life. If a person has been through something horrendous and finds Jesus though the process, he isn’t necessarily going to jump right in and start working in the church or volunteering in any given area if/when there is healing that needs to take place. We always speak of God’s timing, yet the first thing we do when someone gets saved is expect them to be a completely different person. Many people, yes Christians, think that if a person is saved then they ought to show it ‘immediately!’ Really? So if person is ill and they happen to find Jesus during an illness we should expect them get up, be healed and start working in some area of the church? And what if God hasn’t called that person to work in a certain area, do you really want them to be there? If a person is trying to work out their salvation by volunteering in the church, is that acceptable as long as the job gets done? I know there are many people who do work in the church who are not true Christians and they do a wonderful job, it is probably their calling so to speak, but shouldn’t our first priority here be to get this person saved and not be content with just having a good person to do a good job? Shouldn’t we be concerned more with “Where God wants them” instead of where we want them? Shouldn’t we be concerned more with their spiritual needs instead of our positional needs? We may not know there are people in those positions who aren’t saved because they are so good at what they do, many have grown up in the church and have simply taken on the positions that were expected of them as one who was raised in the church. You might not see a major life adjustment when those people get saved because they have always lived the life of the Christian without ever having officially been saved! All I am saying is give a person a chance when they get saved. Don’t expect this major life change depending on where they are or what they need to give up. God will use them as He sees fit and that will benefit them and those in their lives much more and in a much bigger way than we could ever expect. I once read a church sign that read something like; “Be fishers of men, you catch them, God will clean them!” Isn’t that the way it should be? Our job is to present the message of salvation to them, not to stand in judgment of them and certainly not to expect them to be everything we think they ought to be once they do get saved! That’s God’s job and personally I think he’s much better equipped for it than anyone else I know!