Dear Loved One,

    Just a note to say that we are still praying, and not giving up.

    Certainly Jesus has not given up. Though true God, He shed His heavenly glory for people like me and you. He became vulnerable, opening His heart wide, taking all the insults, all the mockery, all the shame, all the pain that humans and hell could inflict. He did it to say, in the clearest way possible, "I love you."

    Jesus Himself said, "God so loved the world . . . ." Paul understood, and said, "I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Jesus' loves us: not just in words but in action. He suffered to pay the punishment for us. The very insults he bore, he bore for us (Isaiah 53:4-5). Because we know his anguish for our sins, we do not want to keep sinning, We know what Jesus was bearing on that cross. "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree . . . . by His wounds you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

    My sins were there - in His pain-racked, ruined body - just as surely as Pilate's sins and Judas's and Peter's. Your sins are there. Our sins are there. For what purpose? For them to be paid for in full and completely forgiven! As the quote from Peter says, "He Himself bore our sins . . . so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" (1 Peter 2:24).

    In the face of such incredible love, how can I deliberately add more weight to His cross. For where do the sins I commit go? If they are ever to be pardoned - and there is no other way of salvation - my sins are going right back to Jesus at Golgotha. They are entering into His crucified body!

    I am not able to do anything about Pilate's sin or Judas's or Peter's. But, with heaven's help, I can make my own choices and decisions. I can keep from deliberately adding to the stinking mass of rebellion, which Jesus personally carried into the jaws of judgment.

    After receiving knowledge of salvation, deliberate rebellion is nothing other than crucifying Jesus all over again (Hebrews 6:6). At the cross, the Roman soldier did not understand the significance of the One he violated, nor what it all meant. In ignorance he thrust the spear into the side of our Savior. That was bad enough. But you and I are not ignorant of our sins' consequences upon our Lord. I know. How can I willfully, deliberately, drive another rebellious spear into the side of Jesus? How can I hammer another sin-infected nail into His hand that reaches out for me?

    He has revealed to me how deeply he cares for me. Love to the point to dying for me! How can I drive a dagger into that holy Heart, which opened so wide to me?

    This is why believers who fall away are in a "worse" state than those who never heard (2 Peter 2:21-22). They are like dogs going back to eat their own vomit again. We are warned that those who keep on crucifying the Son of God can reach a point where they cannot be brought back to repentance (Hebrews 6:4-6) and there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 10:26-27).

    How can they possibly hear God's call, having once heard it, they deliberately keep on blocking their ears? How can they possibly feel any tug of conscience, when they keep deliberately drowning it beneath willful rebellion? If the most powerful expressed and costly love no longer touches them? What will ever touch them? Who can possibly do more to reach them?

    We come to you like family members and friends who have come to the bed of one in a coma. If you can hear anything at all, if you have any feeling left, any tingle of conscience, please show some sign of life. Please make contact with us or others who also love you so dearly. Please respond to our calls. The times we spent together were real, not a figment of imagination that Satan would rather erase from consciousness. Our pleading is not for ourselves. We plead for your life. We plead for Jesus' sake, for He is the One you are hurting most deliberately and most painfully.

    Don't listen to Satan's lie that you will make it right with God later. God is gracious, but he does not play games with sin. If you listen to Satan now, he will make sure that there will be no feeling - no twinge of conscience- left later.

    Deliberate rebellion is already killing any sense of responsiveness. There is a simple test for this: How are you, right now, feeling about this letter of appeal? How do you feel toward those who have confronted you with your sin?

    If Satan is having his way, you can be sure that he is deafening your ears. He has no interest in softening your heart. His direction is away from, not closer to the waiting Father. His destruction, along with those who follow his way, is clear. There is no reason to follow that way. Anything you might think you gain, is merely Satan's bait to entice you into his trap (James 1:13-15).

    Please give us a sign that you hear. Let us see that you want to reawaken your spiritual consciousness. Each time you choose something right, it will revitalize your conscience. Each time you choose God and his people, your coma lifts.

    Take a step toward home. Come back to the Father who made you. As in the story of the prodigal, He will see that first tentative step. He will come running to embrace you (Luke 15). Such is the Father of our Lord Jesus. How irreversibly tragic if His opened arms were finally ignored! Please come home to us, please come home to God. We are waiting by the window, looking and longing for your return.

HEARTLIGHT(sm) Magazine is a ministry of loving Christians and the Westover Hills church of Christ.
Edited by Phil Ware and Paul Lee.
Copyright © 1997, Heartlight, Inc., 8332 Mesa Drive, Austin, TX 78759.
May be reprinted and reused for non-commercial purposes only if copyright credits are appropriately displayed.
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