Perfect Attendance

Do you recall the days when you received perfect attendance awards at work or for not missing church on Sunday? Growing up, I made sure that I earned every pin for perfect attendance. I still have my seventeen years worth of perfect attendance pins.

I was quick at the scripture hunt on Sunday night youth group. I had all the answers for the Bible questions. I thought that I was close to the perfect Bible student. Then I went to college. A Christian liberal arts Bible college.

My first class was in Old Testament history. Professor Phillips came into the room for the first class and hopped up on his desk. Standing above a class of thirty students, he proceeded to tell us that Moses had been struck by lightning and that was why he, as the writer of Genesis, had all those crazy ideas about how the earth was made and the creation of Adam and Eve.

His speech lasted for about ten minutes as he raged on about the myth of creation. “How could he say such things in a Bible College?”, I asked myself. I became angry that he had attacked the facts and truths I had learned as a child. Then he got down from the desk and said, “Now, prove me wrong!”

For the next four years, I learned of the faith, trust, and grace of God from this wise professor. For the first time in my life I had to get personal with the Lord. I learned that seventeen years of perfect attendance was good for learning the law of God. But I had missed the redeeming love of Jesus. I had missed His grace.

Where are you in the journey to understanding the power that comes from God’s grace? His Son was sent to give us hope, peace, love, and forgiving grace.  More importantly I found the love of the Jesus in giving his life rather than the law that kept the hammer over my head to bop me on the head to get back in line when I did things wrong.  That was the law portion of the Old Testament.

Is your relationship with the Lord including a daily time thanking Him for His grace? If not, perhaps it should.   It is in building a person relationship and not a religion that you become a Christ Follower and not just a Christian as a religious name.