EPHESIANS EXTRA #5
TRULY ALIVE
I was dead. No, I (Susie) didn’t have an out of body experience when I had my heart catheterization yesterday (Sept. 2000). I’m talking about before I accepted God’s gift of salvation through Jesus. I was dead in my sin. My body was living and breathing. I was an active teenager. I made good grades and was the model child at church, the type that Mark Twain was describing when he said Tom Sawyer “knew the model boy, and loathed him.” I’m sure there were girls that were quite weary of hearing their mothers ask them to be like me. I would have never admitted my sin of pride, but it was definitely there.
It was that pride that held me back from being reanimated. What would people think if I walked down a church aisle asking about salvation? I was active in the youth group, sang in and occasionally accompanied the choir on piano, and helped with children’s choir. I couldn’t admit that I didn’t really know the Lord! But God’s grace overcame my pride. By his grace, he put me in a witnessing training class at church. When asked to write my testimony, I realized I didn’t have one; therefore, I made one up. So, by his grace, he sent me to camp to hear a musical called “Real” that addressed the topic of faking Christianity. I stood up at campfire and sang a song I’d written about the Lord I’d only heard about. God’s love would not give up on me. He sent an old-fashioned, hell-fire-and-brimstone preacher for our church revival. Afraid of the man, I could not bring myself to go forward.
When that summer of God banging on my door ended, he kept quietly whispering to me. One Sunday afternoon when I was scheduled to play piano, sing a duet, and sing in the choir that night, I demanded that our Education-Music-Youth Minister stop his quartet rehearsal and talk to me. He led me through Romans, and I accepted the gift of God’s grace. Since that moment I have been alive in Christ, and any “good” seen in me is the result of “the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.” I am who I am by the grace of God.
Father, thank you for taking my dead self and filling it with your Holy Spirit that I might be truly made alive. Help me to continue to live by grace as I was saved by grace. Thank you for the promise that you will complete the good work you began in me (Philippians 1:6).