National Chaplain’s Religious Emphasis Article
September 2015
"In this actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at, or ignored their Christian duties, is a community on the rapid down-grade." Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President
What is your salvationworth?
Have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? Life has a way of bringing us to a point where we need Jesus, and I mean to a place where we feel that we can’t make it without Him. Many people think that they can use some other way to cope with depression or loss and many do.
They place their life and their future in things that mankind has made, why? We depend upon chemicals, legal or illegal, to make life more bearable. I know that there are people who do not look to chemical fixes to their problems, but the news seems to glorify people who do! Man-made fixes for problems may work for a time, especially if the problem is made by man, but even then thereal fix, the one that will lastingly fix the problem will ultimately come from God.
Regarding your salvation, many people seem to think that they can somehow have an impact on whether they get to Heaven or not. How can anyone think this way? We are not supernatural beings, we cannot have an influence over anything which might happen after our physical body dies! For many in the world today, when their life is over their religion teaches that they will come back as something or someone else or not and that is the extent of their “afterlife”. Some believe that when you die, that’s it. There is nothing, you will feel nothing nor see anything once this life is over. Death is the ultimate end to everything.
With that kind of world view, what would drive me or you to be or to do anything good in this life? What would you do if there wasn’t a hope of something better and more substantial after this life? To me, it would be a wasted, useless life if there was not hope for an “after” life. I mean, what’s the point? What really would be the point other than having stuff in this life and enjoying what you have access to now?
The point is that God created this world and everyone in it. He had a part in every person’s life from the beginning, but He also gave us a choice of whether to learn about His love and whether we will follow Him or not. We also have the ability to be adopted as sons through our belief and acceptance of Jesus as our Savior. Once we do that, our eternal life begins. That doesn’t mean that we will never die, but that we will live on after this body dies.
Doesn’t that sound preferable to being put in the ground or cremated and there being nothing after this life? The Truth is that Satan knows that there is an afterlife and if you don’t accept Jesus as your Savior, your next destination will be in hell with him and the demons with him. Hell was not made for us at all, it was created for those Angels that rebelled with Satan. But…when you reject God’s love for you and His grace through Jesus, you end up on the same side as the demons are.
Your life is worth far more to God than you can know or realize without Him in your life and until you do, your life will feel empty and without…something. That something is not drugs or anything man-made, but it is Jesus! He is what your soul is looking for! That is what the empty part of you is searching for and until you allow Jesus to come in, it will always feel empty. Until you fill your “God-shaped hole” with the One that is supposed to be there, it will always feel empty, so fill it with Jesus.
(Re-printed with permission)
The Living Message of Christby Gordon Eldridge
Respectfully submitted in the spirit of Fun, Faith and Fellowship!
Harl “Butch” Ray, National Chaplain