Punching Tickets for Heaven?

As someone who prides himself in informing, there is something I need to tell you tonight. This seemingly insignificant piece of information could change your whole perspective of sharing life with God. Or, you might dig deep into your well honed stance that has decided “how it works” already and thus sentence yourself to an unnecessary life of punching tickets. Somehow and not surprisingly, Christian folks have gotten it all wrong. They’ve worked out a system; a damn tough system. It’s the one where you play the game of trying not to sin and all you think about is sin, avoiding sin, worrying over your sin, magnifying sin and stubbornly living in complete bondage to it. All under the guise, the banner of heaven, the dire need to punch your tickets or….you may not get in! Gasp! What if you have got it all wrong? What if you don’t have to spend all your days examining yourself, trying to rid yourself of all your juicy bits? Imagine your life absent all that censoring. The problem with the modern philosophy is that it, as always, places all of the focus on man as the center of it all. Then we end with a whole nation of people working the system, being kind, giving gifts, loving the unlovable, for what? If you’ve got love in your heart, God bless you. But, if you are still trying to win the game of man vs God, do it myself rather than have Him do it for me, accept what you gave me and add 30%, if I work hard enough surely I could get in, you must not be aware of a better option. Living this way is arduous and robs you of countless years of joy and peace. Countless years! Are you still punching tickets for Heaven?

So there’s story about a guy named Jesus Christ who was supposed to be the savior of his people. As in save them. As in do something for them they could not do for themselves. As in the Deliverer of all mankind! That guy. If you have heard the story, he went through some terrible, terrible things. No other man has suffered at that level. Yet, he went through it so he could do for man what no man could ever do for himself. God sent him to save His people. So we all gladly accept his sacrifice for us, yet feel compelled to still play the tickets game. Honestly, if Jesus Christ paid the FULL price for your sins, how much do you feel you still owe? And here is the clincher, if he paid the full price for all of your sins, past, present and future, how can you add to that bill? By saying no to a glass of wine at the party?  Maybe you have some real box office worthy sins, evil at epic levels, and due to their “badness” some missed out on the sacrifice. Could that even be considered plausible? Imagine a perfect God flubbing up on a few details and leaving a loophole. The realty is that God solved our sin problem! Say it from the rooftops! God, in the sacrifice of His son, His willing son, His only son, found a way to solve that gnarly little sin issue that began back in Genesis. His perfect solution would do for man what man could not do for himself. Man is born with sin in his blood and no amount of “saying no” could ever change that. So God offered the perfect for the imperfect. The one who always chose correctly for every single time we chose incorrectly. I hope we are connecting. The point is since God solved the sin problem for us, we do not have to give it another thought. We can finally stop obsessing over sin, thinking sin, doing sin. It’s a non factor. Shocking statement alert: Once you get born again of God’s spirit by accepting Jesus as Lord, you are going to Heaven no matter what else happens in this life. OMG it is no longer about you and whether or not you went off track on Friday night. Yikes, now you are going to sin like mad. Are you though? Haven’t we all lived long enough to know that choosing poorly hurts? If anything, all we ever needed was a not guilty verdict. We were all playing this game trying to please God. Makes complete sense. But, we cannot please Him by cleaning our already dirty flesh life, no matter how many times we do it. We please Him by accepting what He did for us and, for the first time maybe, we start to really live instead of living in the perpetual dread of judgment. Your ticket was already punched!

At the end of the day, trite expression fitting, man’s basic misunderstanding is in not knowing how good God is. He is what you think is good, times a million. He completely gets our frailty, our humanity, our often and easily tricked nature. Do you think the Creator is not in touch with His creation? Like, wow didn’t see that one coming? Are we now that smart? Look! God knows you inside and out. He knows you better than you know yourself. He is not working against your best interests or, for that matter, making up behavior rules, for rules sakes. He is not tracking you all day maintaining a grand ledger of your good and your bad, to calculate an admittance into Heaven, or not. I can just speak for one Christian, if the measure is how good I am, I am in big trouble. I got way too much zesty to fit into that mold. Instead I know the true measure. No matter what I do, I remain sinless in God’s sight. Not enough work for you? Doesn’t matter. God did it and it is fool proof, no matter how foolish we may be. That’s liberation. That’s freedom. Now you can love because you want to and not because you are punching tickets. You already have a ticket! Now live…

Just some good thoughts…