As much as it pains me to say this, I was recently thinking of the movie The Sound of Music. The reason it pains me so much to say that is because one summer while I was in grade school, my older sister watched The Sound of Music every single day of the summer. I was sick and tired of that movie and have been ever since.
But, the other day, I had the opportunity to do two of my favorite things at the same time - run and talk about Jesus. It all began the Sunday before with an invitation from a guy in my church to go running. I knew he wanted to do more than run, but I didn't know exactly what was going on. So we ran, and we talked. It was great!
As we talked and ran I was able to tell him about God's love. The fact that God loves us where we are, but He also loves us so much that He won't leave us where we are. Honestly, I don't know if it gets any better than that. There are a lot of people that will say things like, "You need to get saved so you don't go to hell." Now, in light of recent news stories let me make it very clear that I believe in hell and that the only way to be saved from our sins is through Jesus Christ. It's just that I also believe that Scripture is clear that salvation is much greater than just being saved from our sins. God desires to save us from our sins, but He also desires to save us from the effects of our sins.
Sin is more than just a "spiritual" matter in our lives. Sin destroys every part of our life. It is sin that leads to pain, brokenness, captivity and so on in our lives. And, as God works within our lives in order to bring about salvation, God also restores our lives to how they were intended to be before sin ever entered the world. Now I also believe that this process won't be made complete until eternity, but this process can begin right now when we allow God to work within our lives.
When Jesus was here he told us that the Kingdom of God had come. But we also know that the Kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness. However, since the Kingdom of God has come, we don't have to just wait until eternity to share in some of the blessings of being a part of God's Kingdom.
Anyway, we talked about that - God's love, God's grace, and God's full salvation - and we ran, and I found myself humming along with Julia Andrews.
