Did I Call or Did You?

Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 8:28-33, John 6:44, Romans 3:10-12

One morning during our family devotion time we began discussing how we have "Americanized" the salvation of our souls. We have so many freedoms, we have almost begun to believe that we can choose Jesus on our own. At some point the church began to teach that we needed to make a "decision" for Christ. Churchgoers are asked repeatedly to "walk the aisle" and decide to make Jesus their Lord. While I do not want this sound like I am contradicting the church, I do want to point out that Jesus IS Lord whether we accept Him as that or not. We do not make Him Lord. He IS Lord. Let us not forget that.

We see in our verses for today that the truth of scripture is that we bring nothing to the table when it comes to salvation. For years we believed that we brought our faith to the table, that we were saved by our faith. But, after studying these verses, we have to say this is just not true. Ephesians 2:8 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God". This means that the faith it takes to call on Jesus as Lord is a gift in itself. It is not of ourselves. We would never choose God on our own.

In fact the Bible teaches that God draws us to himself. He foreknew us, He predestined us, He justified us, and He will glorify us in heaven one day. That fact is as certain as if we were already there.

Let us never be deceived that we are the ones who chose God. Let us always be thankful that He convicted us of our sins and revealed Himself to us. Sometimes we go through life thinking that we turned to Christ all on our own. Give Him the glory and honor He is due in humbling ourselves before Him in thanksgiving for His mercy. He called you! All you did was answer.

"I was wondering - I mean - could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to - to Somebody - it was a name I wouldn't know - and perhaps the Somebody would let us in. And we did and then we found the door open."

"You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion.

- Conversation between Jill and Aslan taken from The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis

written by B.J. and Elaine Price