Do You Have A Personal Relationship With Jesus?

May 15, 2020 Pastor Clay

As a small child we attended a number of different sorts of churches, but somehow I was not able to get a continuity for myself on what will happen to me if I die? I don’t think I was taught this directly, but from what I pieced together in my young thinking, it seemed that in the end, God takes your good works and weighs them against the bad ones, and if the good ones would tip the scale in that direction, then I could go to heaven.

Scale - God takes your good works and weights them against the bad ones.

The trouble was, when I did a reality check, it did not seem likely I would be able to pull that off. I asked my Mom, “What if I killed someone?” She replied, “Oh, you would never do that, you are a good boy”. But I wasn’t so sure! Not that I wanted to kill anybody, but I started to look up which states didn’t have the death penalty and maybe I would move there someday. It left me with a fear going to bed, what if I died in my sleep?

When I was about fourteen, my parents took me to a meeting at the church we attended. A lot of activity was going on, and I just sat and watched. A big fellow came over and sat down next to me and asked, “Do you know Jesus as your personal Savior?” I said, “I don’t know”. To which he replied, “We need some prayer over here”. A bunch of them laid hands on me, and I don’t know what they prayed, I was thoroughly confused. That is, except for one thing, the word “personal”.

For a couple months, I kept thinking about “personal Savior”. Then we were invited to go to a similar meeting. At that meeting, a girl shared her story. She said she tried to be good enough, and somehow she never could. I was listening! She said that it says that in the Bible and it is true about all of us. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). So no one can be good enough. I was with her! But, she said, Jesus is good enough! He died on the cross and took our place. What He offers is a relationship – not a religion! So instead of trying in vain to be good enough, she had asked Jesus to come into her heart. That sent me to bed thinking that night.

The next day, our leader challenged us to have a quiet time. The way He explained it, we would read a passage in the Bible, then talk to God about something we needed to. First of all I didn’t know what passage to look up, and I got it in an odd way. Either off a sticker or a patch on someone’s jeans, I don’t remember, it said, “Jesus, One Way, John 14:6”. So I looked that up. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes through the Father but through Me”. I recalled what the girl said the night before and realized I needed to do that too. So I asked Jesus to come into my heart. I had a new relationship, with a personal Savior!

Jesus didn’t create a new religion, He offers a new relationship. He didn’t just teach us the way, or show us an example of how to go that way, He IS the way.