During the past few days everything I knew about God and salvation was challenged, but in a good way.
Over the years I have learned that Christ is and will be Everything to me, and that He has died for me and that everything what I have done in the past is forgiven. So now I am as clean as white as snow, and I am good and ready to serve him.
Right?
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See the lesson I have learned is that deep in my heart I still wanted to save myself. I did not want to let go of the things in my heart, which I hold onto dearly and hide for nobody to discover. I want to solve my problems on my own...and according to John Eldredge, I am also a self-made-man...I can figure life out on my own! So do I really need a Savior?!
Well, life is like swimming in the ocean, and sometimes you are near the coast in shallow water, but most of the times you are in deep waters and almost drowning. In life we treat Jesus as our swim-coach and He is only directing and shouting from the side: "Use your arms...that's it! Keep your head up! Oke fingers together, and forward stroke...!" and He is doing to this to keep me alive.
In life Jesus is actually jumping into the water and He saves us
physically! Sometimes we dont even realise it, because we do not allow Him to save us. See, I have learned in Life-Saving-skills that you are actually allowed to knock the person out, which you are trying to save in the water. The fact of the matter is, is that when people are in survival mode (like when you are drowning) you will actually climb on the life-saver's back and drown him to save yourself. So you have to knock him out to save him...and that is what Jesus has to do with us. When we are in equation of our salvation, we will not only drown ourselves, but drown Jesus as well.
As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. (As for you,
you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.) After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.” After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River— the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.” (Genesis 15:12-21 NLT)
The Lord made Abraham asleep, as He only can make a covenant with God. Jesus is the only Lamb that can save us!
What was supernatural about this revelation, was that I got myself in a
situation 3 days ago where I swam through the Hole in the Wall at Coffee Bay, and I literally couldn't swim back. I almost drowned...or it felt like it. We were a few guys and girls swimming very far out through the hole into the ocean and the current made it difficult to swim back, and I got overwhelmed by the waves and current and I got scared. God had put me in that situation to teach me how to let go of my own salvation! I had to allow other swimmers to help me swim back...I had to allow God to save me!
And I must say, it was horible and liberating to have experienced it! What a Savior and what a God we serve!
Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love
live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first. (1 John
4:14-19 NLT)