Getting saved. Again.

I've been in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians this morning and found myself laughing at Paul's back and forth narrative with the church at Corinth:

The good news: You lack no spiritual gift because you've been enriched in every way - in all your speaking and in all your knowledge.

The bad news: Despite your spiritual giftings, you still have a propensity to divide into factions over the smallest details.

The very good news: ...the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

That whole idea of being saved strikes me as a great comfort. Salvation, from God's perspective, is a complete and total act. To ask Him if it's finished is a little awkward, what with Him being beyond the scope of time and all that. To the rest of us, though...living dot to dot on the timeline, it's not quite so cut and dried.

I committed my life to following Christ when I was eight years old. I was saved. I'm convinced of it. I'm also being saved every day. Why? Because I need it. It's very comforting, actually, because thirty years later, I am still flailing miserably in the shallow end of the pool, struggling for a breath and valiantly fighting off most attempts at rescue.

My inner Armenian tells me it was done once and for all, by my own volition, thirty years ago. I could blow it...and probably will by noon. My inner Calvinist tells me that He pursues me daily, rescuing me time after time in spite of my best efforts to the contrary.

The dichotemy of that is puzzling, but Paul has a word for that too..."the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

God is actively at work at stripping away our identity until we realize that smart or not, rich or poor, we're still all going down for the third time. Grab the rope. Just grab the stinking rope and hold on for dear Life.

Coming to know Jesus is a process. So is learning to walk with Him daily. Hope you get saved today. And again tomorrow.