A little girl decides to make her mom’s birthday cake. Dad helps buy all the ingredients: the cake mix, frosting, and candles. “This is going to be the best cake ever!” she proudly states.
However, after much time and effort, the cake is a little lopsided and full of crumbs. She’s ashamed to give her mom something so awful. But Mom knows just what to say, “I love you. You did your best.”
Isn’t that what we all want to hear? Playing sports, taking a test at school, tackling that big project at work — there are plenty of times when all that’s expected of us is our best.
People carry this philosophy into their spiritual lives.
A holy God would never say, “Come and enjoy heaven because you did your best.” Instead, he demands, “Be perfect . . . as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
Do we think God should be less fair than a judge in court? Should God say, “I know you didn’t believe in me, but because your faith in gurus was sincere, you can enter heaven anyway?”
It matters what we eat, and it matters what we believe. (Try eating sand and sincerely believing it will nourish you.)
There is only one way to eternal life, and that’s through Jesus. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Who else but Jesus would leave the riches of heaven to live in a sinful world for sinful people? Who else could keep all of God’s commands? Yes, it matters!
Who else’s blood is so precious that it pays for every sin ever committed by every person who has ever lived? Yes, it matters!
Who else but Jesus could rise from the dead for us? Yes, it matters!
Pastor R.
