It’s all about Pride!

Being in the church most of my life and always being around other church attenders offers some special  challenges to getting saved. You see we all assume that we are saved if we’re at the church. I mean it’s OK when someone obviously in sin gets saved but when those getting saved are regular attenders, workers, deacons or deacon’s wives, maybe even the pastor’s wife >gasp<  then some very real and very nagging questions naturally come up.

Many people I know always assumed that I was saved. I said I was so why would they believe otherwise?  Maybe, sometimes, I even believed I was; such is my capacity for deceit. At the church I attend I have seen folks who actually served there get up and testify that they had only recently gotten saved. What... I thought they were saved?! Some of them were in choir, one played the piano, one was working the sound equipment. They were around for years. How could they not be saved? And more importantly the question would always come to me: What about me? Was I saved? 

I would pull out the old tried and true verses to assure myself that I was indeed saved. This in spite of the fact that there was no REAL fruit of the spirit. Oh I would behave myself nicely at church or at social activities that demanded a “godly” behavior but in the privacy of my heart I was wicked in all caps and bold. I could shut God off with out any qualms. I was not a new creature. But I had that covered too. I would reason that my problems were besetting sins. I reasoned that I’d prayed the prayer of salvation (several times!) and, since I was still in church, that I was persevering. Wasn’t this evidence of salvation? But the nagging reality of it was that II Cor. 5:17 was just not true for me. This was painfully obvious. 

I was also hesitant to pursue the question of salvation because it would mean I would have to admit I was wrong. That I was not saved. I didn’t want to do that in front of folks.  Pride. Which was  really silly since those most likely offended were also most likely in the same boat with me. They would just blow off my salvation as emotionalism or a "new plateau of understanding". So when some old timer or charter member got saved we were quietly and politely accommodating. Ultimately my pride kept me trapped. As it turned out the life of “faith” for me was actually a life of fraud. I was trusting in a salvation I saw no evidence of and I knew it! It was all the work of the flesh. So I kept on hoping for the best and playing with sin. 

Finally I found myself sitting in my pastor’s office called out for sin and confronted  face to face with it. I was truly at a dead end or as they say, busted big time. Yet it was this very event (one that I had secretly feared would happen someday) that brought me to an end of myself. No talking would have gotten me out of the situation, no explanation would work. It was the end of the road. I sat, finally quiet. Nothing I could possibly do would have, could have, redeemed me. I was a shame to my self, to my God (I still didn’t know He did not have me) to my family and to my friends.  As I left his office that day I felt like someone after a car wreck, sort of stunned, wobbly and weak feeling. I was over.

From that day, I came to know the real lostness and sin-filledness of myself. I was a hollow empty shell filled with dead promises, broken resolutions and an anger that swelled up and down like waves on a dark putrid sea of shame. I don’t think I knew it but in the middle of what had happened I was coming to an end of myself. I was abased but not by any choice I had made or even could have made. My pride would never have allowed it. I was a mess and I knew it.

Andrew Murray wrote, “Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.”   That was me. Abased, empty. It was in this state that I was finally able to receive from God that which I needed most. Salvation! I do not yet fully understand my total and complete neediness but when I began to know who I was, then God was willing to touch me. He will not touch a life that is a total lie. I began just a small knowing that I was and am a tremendous sinner and that He is indeed a Tremendous God and then He saved me. God saved me and I was bathed in peace, surprised by joy!

It is a great thing to know a God who is willing to pick up the crippled one and that is who I am.