The Gift That Keeps On Giving

“Even the very will to be saved by grace is not of your own but is a gift from God.” – C.H. Spurgeon

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my best friend John when we were both about 15. It went something like this…

“Do you believe in God?” John asked me.

“I guess so,” I replied. “I figure it’s safer to believe in Him and be wrong, than not to believe in Him and be wrong.”

Not exactly the best theology, I’ll admit, but what do you expect from a teenager who – despite being raised in a churchgoing family – had never once heard the gospel message? Instead, I was depending on my good grades and mostly moral behavior to get me into heaven… if it even existed.

However, a year later, I was introduced to Jesus Christ and my entire perception of God, salvation, and eternity changed. No longer was I counting on my straight A’s to get me past the pearly gates. I now understood that I was a sinner and that only Christ’s shed blood could fully atone for my sins.

Over my 64 years of life on this planet, I have been given a lot of very special gifts. However, none of them begins to compare with the “very will to be saved by grace” that God gave me in March 1976.

In advertising parlance, that continues to be “the gift that keeps on giving.”

“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 (BSB)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President