1 Corinthians 7:23
You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.
Have you ever saved someone from death or injury? I have. It was 18 years ago on August 7, 2004, when my wife nearly died from a horrible wreck, when a car lost control and collided with her motorcycle, traumatically amputating her left leg and breaking her pelvis, leaving her to bleed out and near death. Thankfully, because of my military training in combat first aid, I placed a tourniquet on her upper thigh to stop the bleeding. Apparently, it worked! The surgeon told me that it worked so well, they left it on while they attended to a more urgent issue of internal bleeding due to the broken pelvis.
For the past 18 years my wife’s life continues to live on. Despite the constant and nagging pain, she endures every single day since then, her life was spared. But I believe it was spared, not so much of what I did, but what God did that day. Even the doctors told me she should have died that day, and it had to be God that kept her alive.
You see, I believe God did a great miracle of keeping her alive so He could open her heart to Him later. For both of us, though raised in a Christian home, we were not walking with the Lord for a number of years. That tragic day of August 7, 2004 has been engrained in my mind and my heart, as a day that God brought us back and out of our prodigal living.
As my wife recovered, we made a vow and committed to get back to church as way of offering our thanks and gratitude for what God has done. I knew we had strayed and we owed Him so much for sparing us the death we deserved, both physically and spiritually.
Today we can look back and see how far we have come by God’s love, grace and mercy. It’s been a challenge, but it has been rewarding. For we know now that our lives are in the care of the Most High God and by His Son, Jesus, with the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
We were indeed bought with a price so rich; we can never pay back. We have been redeemed, purchased, and saved with the precious blood of Christ, who bore our sins on the cross, and forgave us all our sins and was raised from the dead to give us the hope of the promise of eternal life.
No longer bondservants of men, we are now bondservants of Christ. We may never be able to pay back what God has given to us. But we can continue to live out our faith in His will and do good works because of what He has done for us. How about you? Who do you serve? What has God done for you that causes you to stop and think about your own life, and how He loves you and wishes not for you to die, but to come to Him and seek His grace and mercy and spare you from the wrath to come because of the offense your sins deserve?
Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Come to Him today. Don't wait for a tragedy like me and my wife did. You may not be as fortunate. Now is the time to be born again, renewed in the spirit and free from the condemnation of sin. You only need to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, born of a virgin, died for the forgiveness of all your sins, and was raised from the dead to give you eternal life.
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