A Faith RefinedSample

A Great Relief

I love writers’ conferences. I enjoy spending time with fellow writers and speakers who write books or proclaim the Gospel through the spoken word. But I always find when I go that I run into one or two people, who, although are very kind-hearted, drone on about all the ways God has blessed them with book contracts and accolades within the past year.

It's not that I don't wish them well or I don't want them to succeed. But it’s especially hard to hear about a person's sixth book contract that year when I’m struggling to get one, or when someone gets an award, and I wasn’t even a finalist.

There's no competition in the Kingdom. Every person who is writing books or speaking on topics that glorify God should be celebrated. But it can be difficult when a person who is bragging about their accomplishments neglects to mention that it wasn't them who got those opportunities, it was God who moved on their behalf.

If we’re honest, we'd love to be able to work our way into heaven. If we just do all the right things, read all the Bible verses, or serve in our local community, it would be comforting to know that we received the golden ticket into heaven. But the reality is there's nothing we can do or say that will allow us to earn our way into heaven. We’re' assured we’re going to heaven simply because of Christ’s death on the cross.

For Christians, this should be a great relief. No longer do we have to compare ourselves to others, balancing the scales in the hopes that we've done enough good things and avoided enough bad things to earn our way into heaven. In God's view, a person who's only spoken one white lie as opposed to a person who has committed murder both have the same opportunity to go to heaven. Christ died so that all our sins—whether it was in the past or anything we do in the future—are covered by Christ’s blood.

We can be assured that Christ’s death on the cross covers all our sins: past, present, and future. That’s a big relief for all of us.