All photos courtesy of Unsplash
In my teens, I bought a stylish pair of sunglasses that sadly became damaged after I headed a football during a break between college lessons. It was a good header, but not for the glasses. You can guess where they were! The shop was out of these frames, but as I liked them, I bought another, cheaper pair and attempted a repair job using the arms from the new ones. However, the screws did not fit properly, and since I had modified the arms to fix the old ones, I ended up throwing both pairs away. Two down!
The next time we played football, I ensured the third pair of sunglasses went safely into the front of my bag before the game. Unfortunately, I only realised that my bag had been taken to be used as a goal marker when one of the ‘posts’ were hit by a particularly hard shot. On inspection, it was immediately obvious that they were beyond repair. Three down.
At this point, I decided to invest in a pair of glasses made by a well-known brand. These were made with titanium frames and came with a lifetime guarantee. Actually, they might even have been trendier than the first pair but were not cheap. ‘Great!’, I thought. ‘If anything else happens to the frames, I can just get them fixed by the manufacturer’.
I left them on a bus. Four down!
There was no need to check the warranty documentation to know this would not be covered by the lifetime policy. Too embarrassed to return to the same shop, I got another pair of the same frames from a different shop. I am pleased to say that some twenty years later, I still have them and have not needed to claim the warranty!
It is commonly said that you get what you pay for, and that is often the case. Of course, on occasions, many of us will have been prepared to pay a bit more to benefit from the added value, but even lifetime guarantees have their limitations.
Thankfully, that is not so with God.
The Lord Jesus, speaking about people who had come to know and trust Him, said: ‘I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand’.
Sometimes people make promises that well-intentioned as they may have been, they were unable to fulfil because of circumstances outside of their control. What a wonderful promise this is! Because God is greater than all, He is able to keep it. Furthermore, God has a track record of never having broken a promise.
In the Bible book of Romans, we read that Christians can be sure that: ‘Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’.
While this guarantee can be received by anyone and is available for free, it did not come cheap. God delivered up His own Son to suffering and death to make it possible for us to be saved. We must turn away from our sin and trust the Lord Jesus to save us. When saved, our eternal security does not depend on us but on God, our Saviour.
Have you received God’s guarantee of eternal life?
Written by Tom Merriman for Messages with Meaning (20/09/21) & Your542Day
No comments
Post a Comment