SUCH IS MAN

You wake up one morning and, as usual, you try to check your phone, but you realise it is not coming on. Then you clean your eyes to be sure you are not dreaming and try again. No change.

“But I charged it before going to bed. Everything looked fine. What is going on?”

Soon, you start sweating. You cannot understand what is happening. Nothing you have tried is working. You got the phone not quite long ago to satisfy your needs. You bought it for your pleasure, to respond to you when you needed it. But here you are, bewildered by the rude shock. It is not working. It is not serving its purpose.

Such is man.

Man, created for God’s pleasure, has gone his own way. He has found a “new way to function” outside what he was made for. It is as though the phone decided that it no longer needed to respond to you, even though you are its owner. We have turned away from God. We have taken the life He gave us and tried to live it without Him. We have accepted His breath, His world, His gifts, and His goodness, yet rejected His right to tell us how that life should be lived.

This is what sin is. It is not merely doing bad things. It is creation turning away from its Creator and deciding to become its own master.

Yet our Creator did not abandon us, His creatures, to our ways, our decisions, or our choices. In His love, He reached out to us. We went our way; He sought reconciliation. We decided against His will; He resolved to mend what we had broken.

A person may throw away a device that no longer serves its purpose and simply buy another one. But God did not throw us away. He did not replace us or leave us to destroy ourselves. He loved us, not because we had served Him perfectly, but because love is who He is.

In His Son, Jesus Christ, God came down to us. Jesus took our place, carried the blame for our choices, and bore the judgment our rebellion deserved. He died to put an end to that old way of life and rose again to give us new life, to show us the right way, and to bring us back to God’s side.

What love He has shown to us!

The One we rejected came looking for us. The One we sinned against paid the price for our forgiveness. The One whose authority we refused took the punishment for our rebellion so that we could be reconciled to Him.

All that is left is to believe that He has done this for you. But this belief is more than agreeing that Jesus once lived or that He died and rose again. It is trusting Him enough to surrender the life you once claimed as your own. He did not save you so that you could return to living without Him. He saved you to become your Lord, to restore you to the purpose for which you were made, and to teach you how life was always meant to be lived.

With your heart open, you can simply say:

“Lord, I believe You. I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins and rose from the dead. I confess that I have lived the life You gave me as though it belonged entirely to me. Forgive me. I turn away from my own way and surrender myself to You. Be my Lord and my Saviour. Give me new life, and teach me to live for Your pleasure. Amen.”

It is not the arrangement of these words that saves you. Jesus saves. These words are simply an expression of a heart that has stopped running, turned back to its Creator, and placed its trust in what Christ has done.

You were made by God, for God, and your life will never fully make sense apart from Him.

It is time to come home.

What part of your life have you been trying to live as though it belongs entirely to you?

Where have you confused independence from God with freedom?

What would it mean today to return to the purpose for which you were made?