Do you think you are a pretty good person? How are you compared to others? Are you certain you are better than so and so? How do you measure up?

What about your good works? If you could place them on a balance beam scale would the good outweigh the bad in your life? I hope so.

But what is being used to measure up to? The question is … WHAT DOES GOD USE IN MEASURING US? It certainly is not how we compare to another person. What would that prove? God says that we are all sinners and fall short of His glory. His glory in this case is that which He uses to measure us. His glory is His perfection and holiness. He is pure and without sin. That is what He uses to measure us. None of us measure up to Him.

That is what keeps us out of heaven. We too must be pure and holy to be allowed into His presence. Since we don’t measure up we have a problem. What are we to do? We are born sinners. It is out nature. We can’t do anything about it, but God can. And He did something about it. He made a way for us when there was no way. He offers His solution to us freely. He won’t force it on us. He leaves it up to us. We can choose it or reject it. He wants us to choose it but, like I said, He won’t force us.

He paid a tremendous price in order to make this solution available to us. You can’t buy it. You can not do anything to earn it or get it except for one thing. And we all know what that one thing is.

Yes, we have known it since childhood. I know that because the bible (which is God’s Word) tells us so. 2 Timothy 3:15 says “…from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” We are without excuse.

Procrastination … delaying, putting it off … is a most dangerous thing. None of us know the future, especially our own future. We don’t even know if we have the next heartbeat or breath. We may not have another opportunity to accept God’s offer. We can’t count on it. Cemeteries are full of the graves of people who thought they had plenty of time. God’s offer of salvation expires when you do. Upon death your eternal fate is sealed.

Yes, we all stand guilty before the Lord. He is righteous and we are unrighteous. If there were only a way we could make an exchange with Him. If He could take our unrighteousness and give His righteousness then we would be okay … we would be acceptable to God. And that is exactly what He offers us. That’s the deal! … the only deal! And you know what? It is His way or the highway. Death cuts no deals!

Yes, Jesus takes us as we are and goes to work to clean us up so that we are acceptable to Him. It is as I stated earlier … a great exchange … He takes our unrighteousness and gives us His righteousness. It is a matter of God’s grace … undeserved favor.

When we come to Jesus and the salvation He offers we are able to testify that we know He has come into our lives and cleaned us up. We can testify that we stand clean before the Lord just as the song goes.

Just a side note: My wife and I are so blessed to have Nancy Honeytree be our worship leader in our small church in Fort Wayne. Nancy grew up here in Fort Wayne and in our grandfather church which no longer exists. Our small church is all that still exists of the family of what was once the largest church in Fort Wayne. Our pastor is the grandson of that grandfather church’s senior pastor, Paul E. Paino.

Back to what I am writing about … I can testify as to what I personally experienced upon praying to Jesus acknowledging my sin, asking for forgiveness … Upon inviting Jesus into my heart and life I truly felt clean … like a new person. It was unlike anything that I had ever experienced before. It was a wonderful feeling. However, it is my understanding that not everyone shares this testimony. Some say they had no emotional experience. Although I can’t identify with that I have to accept it as it is their testimony.

What I am saying is … don’t concern yourself with human emotion. What matters is what God has said in His Word and placing faith in what God has said. Most of those who have testified that they did not experience anything emotional went on to say that as time went along God made it all very real to them. And that is what is really important.True faith is always more important than our feelings. Faith needs to be based on fact. The fact is what God has said. God can not lie. We can and we need to place our faith in everything He said. He will never lead us astray.