Monday, December 11, 2006
Our friend, Vicki, is one very happy woman. For many years now, she has carried a heavy load of nagging credit card debt. If you've ever been in debt for a while, you know how it always weighs you down like this heavy burden on your back. Well, Vicki recently came into some money through an inheritance, and you know what she did with it! She had a party - a check writing party! All those debts are paid, and you can tell she feels like she just got out of prison!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Debt-Free."
There's tremendous joy in knowing that your debt is gone and you've got a new beginning. Especially when the debt is the one we all owe to God for all the wrong things we've ever done.
We all have things we've done that we're not proud of, that we're ashamed of, that we wish we could do over, but we can't. We've hurt people we love, we've said so many things we shouldn't have said, and we've done things we thought we'd never do. The weight of all that is a heavy burden on the human soul.
The weight even gets heavier when we read in the Bible what the penalty is for our spiritual debt. It says, "The wages of sin is death" ( Romans 6:23). There is an eternal death penalty for the way that we've run our own lives instead of letting God run them. The prospect of a hopeless eternity makes the weight of our sin almost unbearable.
But that's why Jesus is such awesome good news. The prospect of being spiritually debt-free is wrapped up in three words Jesus spoke just before He died on that cross. They're recorded in our word for today from the Word of God in John 19:30, "Jesus said, 'It is finished.'" In the original Greek language this was written in, that's just one word. It's used as an accounting word that actually means "paid in full." Like our friend's credit cards debts - nothing owed any more. So that when you stand before God on Judgment Day, where your sins once appeared in God's book, it will simply say, "Paid in full!" Which means the only thing that could keep you out of heaven is gone!
But you don't pay the bill. You can't! There's no amount of doing good that can pay a death penalty. But God loves you so much that He sent His only Son, Jesus, to that cross to pay what only He could pay, so you don't have an eternity without Him. Jesus absorbed all the guilt and all the hell of every wrong thing you've ever done, and then He declared once and for all, "It is finished. It's paid in full!"
This very day you can experience the incredible joy of knowing that you are forever free from the weight of your sin; the joy of a brand new beginning. What Jesus did on His cross removes your sin when you tell Jesus you're putting all your trust in Him to forgive you and to take you to heaven when you die. You will never have to face the judgment you deserve because Jesus faced the judgment you deserve.
Your new beginning starts the moment that you open your heart to Jesus. Would you do that right now, wherever you are? And tell Him, "Jesus, I know that what You did on the cross is my only hope of a relationship with God and of going to heaven, and of having my sins erased from God's Book forever.
He's been waiting a long time for you to reach out and take what He died to give you. We'd love to help you make sure you belong to Him if you'll just visit our website. It actually is set up just to do that. You can visit us at yoursforlife.net. Or you can call for my little booklet "Yours For Life," and the number is 877-741-1200. I hope you'll do that now while you're thinking about it, because I don't want you to go one more day with your sins unforgiven and risking the death penalty that Jesus already paid for you.
I'm praying that you will be able to go to sleep this very night saying, "I am forgiven, and I am free!"