* Tommy McDonald

Easter

During the course of my life I have tried living without God and I have tried living with God.  Without doubt living with God and accepting Jesus as my Savior is far superior to anything else I have ever experienced in this world.  As a teenager I was baptized and joined a church.  It was my hope that this event would assure my entry into Heaven when my time on earth was done.  Unfortunately, it made no difference in the way I lived my life.  I failed to realize that salvation is not just an event but a lifelong journey.  My entire spiritual future was based on the hope that Jesus would return on a Sunday and find me in a church.  I have since realized that sitting in a church does not make a person a Christian any more than sitting in a tree makes one a bird.

Satan’s oldest trick is to convince us we have plenty of time and we can always come closer to God later.  Like many others, I fell for this excuse.  The unexplainable love God has for us has always been a mystery to me and I was convinced God could not love someone who had turned his back on Him.    This is another lie that Satan places in our minds.  But, this is sort of where God’s unending grace enters the picture.  Grace is the eraser which blots out all the reasons we believe we are not acceptable to God.  I now know that there is no life that is so messed up that the saving Grace of Jesus Christ cannot redeem and make whole again.   This message finally got through to me while attending an Emmaus Walk several years ago.

I am far from perfect and the older I get the more I know this is true.  On my best days I generally mess up before breakfast.   I am just a redeemed sinner who keeps on trying.