I’ve recently realized how many things I take for granted.  I turn on the hot water and step into the shower.  I turn the key and the car starts (usually).  I pull out the frozen mac-n-cheese, and three microwave minutes later I’m enjoying my favorite guilty pleasure.

It’s really a long list of things I just assume will be there: Fast food, cable TV, clean clothes, good books, aspirin, salvation….  What?!!!  Salvation?  Heresy!

Yep.  Sadly so.  I confess there are moments I take my salvation for granted, sort of like an item on a bucket list that I can check off and say, “Cool, that one’s done.”  There are those times when the gravity of the price Jesus paid for my salvation takes a back seat to more carnal and temporary things.

I’m not proud of this.  In fact, I’m ashamed at how self-absorbed and apathetic I can be about something of such incredible, eternal magnitude.  But there’s something even worse.  As much as I take my own salvation for granted, there are times I care even less about the salvation of others.

When I stop and consider that Jesus, the creator of the universe, the lover of my soul—submitted Himself to people He created so they could drive nails through His limbs, and hang Him on a cross so I could be free, I should be in a state of perpetual worship.

But when it comes to others and their salvation, I should be equally burdened.  You see, I’ve been granted eternity with my Lord and freedom from the fate of hell.  So how can I become apathetic about those who have not received this gift, or even heard the name of Jesus?

There’s something wrong here—something that doesn’t add up.  Jesus said He came to seek and save the lost, and then he told us to be the vessels through which others would hear about Him.  As I write this, I feel the hypocrisy rising up in my heart.  I want to stop pressing keys on the keypad and say, “You have no right to write this.”

But I have to.  For me.  For you.  For the sake of those who have never heard.  Maybe you can relate to what I’m saying.  Maybe, like me, you realize you can do better.  But where does it really start.  Is it guilt over my failure?  Is it the sense of obligation that I should be doing what I was told to do?  Is it so that I can earn more favor with God?  I don’t think any of these is the right answer.

I think it starts with a deep sense of awe and wonder at the depth of God’s love for me.  When I more fully realize that, then sharing that love with others happens much more naturally.

Read this part of Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians.  “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Wow, take a few minutes to chew on that nugget.  Really?  His love for me surpasses knowledge.  Its’ so wide and long and deep and high that I really can’t even grasp it?  And as I grow deeper in understanding it, I can be filled with the fullness of God like basking in the sun on a warm summer day.

You see, sharing Christ with our neighbors next door or our neighbors around the world isn’t a matter of guilt or obligation.  It’s a privilege, rooted in a profound understanding of His boundless love for us.  Get a grasp on that, and the rest will come naturally.

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