Forgiven For Little or Much?

"Moses said to the people, 'Remember this day which is the day that you came out of Egypt, out of the place you were slaves, because the LORD acted with power to bring you out of there.'" Exodus 13:3

I remember the day the Lord saved me. I remember the joy of being rescued from the world, from the curse of being a slave to sin and the darkness of it all to feeling my heart come alive with the Spirit of God. I was more thankful to the Lord for that than I had ever been for anything in my life. I had gone from utter darkness to pure Light.  It was a radical transformation because I was acutely aware that I had been saved from so much. My heart was on fire.

Jesus said about the woman who kissed His feet, washed them with her tears and anointed them with oil, “Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little." Luke 7:42

It is not that this woman was forgiven for more than others were, it is that she recognized how much she was forgiven.  We are all forgiven for sins. Not all transformations may seem as outwardly obvious as mine or the woman's, but we were all saved from the same spiritual blindness, the same emptiness of heart, the same hell. We were all sinful and we all needed a Savior. And for all of us the Lord acted with His power to bring us out of Egypt--out of the world, out of our sins and their eventual consequences of being separated from God for eternity.  

The more we recognize the depths from which we have been saved and the far-reaching love, grace, mercy and power of Jesus Christ that saved us, the more grateful we will be and the more we will love our Savior. And that gratefulness gives us, like the woman, a desire to be a blessing to the Lord, not to repay Him, because that gift can never be repaid, but to honor Him and join with Him in giving ourselves to the building up of the Kingdom of God.

After a while, though, we can forget the life we were rescued from and begin to take this new one for granted. The level of thankfulness we once had can be forgotten. We get caught up in the daily grind of our lives and forget that we were saved for a purpose: to bring glory to the Lord. Our service wanes, we set aside our spiritual gifts and we live lives that look much like they did before that day of salvation.

But if we purpose in our hearts to remember our day of salvation and all that we’ve been saved from we will be filled with love and we will desire a more intimate relationship with Christ.  We will be filled with thanksgiving, and the gratefulness we allow to penetrate our hearts will spur us on to good works.

Remember that we were taken out of the devil’s grasp by the power of God and by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Remember how many sins we were forgiven for and how many we were saved from committing had we lived in our sins another day.

We have only a short time here on this earth.  We can waste it, or we can remember and be thankful, loving the Lord more each day, and allowing Him to do great things through us.

All for Him,
Dorci