05-03-15 Basic Training: Salvation on a Credit Plan

I knew that April would be busy, but I foolishly thought that things might let up a bit in May.  Foolish, foolish Kevin...  Between graduation preparations, awards nights, Mother’s Day preparations, prepping for Summer classes, etc., things are still pretty much hopping around here.

For instance, this Sunday, we not only took time to eat the Lord’s Supper together in our service, we also welcomed in three new official members into our church family -- Terri Doremus, Anna Wietharn, and Alex Wright.  Granted, both Anna and Alex have been floating around the halls for over a decade, but it’s significant that they wanted to make the statement to really commit themselves to being active, engaged parts of the congregation, and not just “youth on the sidelines” of things.

Speaking of youth, our Youth Group will be taking over the service this coming weekend for Mother’s Day.  Every year, we give them the opportunity to direct us in music, set up the service, give their testimonies, lead us in prayer, and share the message for the week -- and they always do a great and conscientious job of it.  If you can join us next week, please set aside the time to do so (if only to be on hand for Alex and Stephen’s string duet during the offering).

We’ll also be honoring our graduates this coming Sunday.  We have five students graduating from Junior High to High School, and five more graduating from High School to college (actually, one of them will be heading off for a year in Sweden before going to college!).  Please join with us in praying for all of our graduates, as they make the significant paradigm jump from one stage of life to the next.

In our message this week, we continued looking at chapter 4 of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. 

If you’re paying attention to the world around you, you’ll notice that multiple countries are dealing with the ripple effects of massive debt spending (for instance, Greece luckily -- barely -- re-paid its €200 million loan to the International Monetary Fund today... but no one is sure how they’re going to make their €750 million repayment coming due on the 12th).  In the United States, our own national debt is up to $18 trillion -- and rising by $10,000 every second.  In short, a lot of people around the world are suddenly coming to the realization that we owe more than we could ever repay in this world... and that’s a sobering concept.

The same is true in our spiritual lives as well.  The truth is, we owe God so much more than we can ever repay.  He’s given us everything in life -- including life itself -- and we have nothing to give Him other than what He’s already given us.  On top of that, when we sin -- whenever we sin -- we earn death and distance from God, and that’s something that we can never repay on our own.

But praise God that He extends His limitless credit to our accounts -- not because He takes into consideration all of our “good” works, but because He chooses not to take into consideration all of our bad works.

Take a moment to thank God today for not taking your worth into consideration when deciding to love you. 

How can you and I live that out tangibly toward others this week?