For it is by Grace you have been saved...

My heart rejoices in this fact. Praise the Lord that He has been so gracious as to save a sinner like me. I am absolutely sure that on my own two feet without the Lord’s provisions that I am not only lacking and destitute, but I am completely and utterly bankrupt. I tried for many, many years to be righteous in of myself, and my answer to people that would ask me if I was a good person was well I’m not perfect but I know that I am better than this person over here or that group over there. My standard was always based on a mathematical type of averaging, if you will. I would look at all my friends and be like well I am doing a lot better then most of these guys on the “righteousness scale”. This scale was based mostly on things I didn’t do for example I might get drunk every weekend but at least I wasn’t doing cocaine every weekend, or sleeping around every weekend; I figured I deserved some righteousness points for these things. Surely if I racked up enough of these points by the time I died then how could God keep me out of heaven, after all I was a shoe in. After I committed my life to Jesus I soon learned of my total depravity and my inability to offer Him anything in way of righteousness. As Jesus says to the Saducees (a group of religiously righteous) you do err because you do not understand the righteousness of God. This was my problem before, you see I thought that God was grading man on a curve and whoever got a 70 % or higher was in; what I failed to realize is that Heaven (the place where the Lord dwells) is not merely a college who only accepts the top 10 % or even top 5 %. Rather this is Heaven, it is perfect. The Lord’s standard is perfection. DISQUALIFIED? Don’t feel bad we all are, but as Jesus said, “with God ALL things are possible”. The upshot of this truth is that we are all human and we all fall short none of us, until we have accepted Christ, are in any better situation then any body else. Accepting Christ means that we accept His perfection and atoning death and resurrection on our behalf, knowing that we ALL fall short and cannot make ourselves righteous no matter how hard we try. This salvation is a gift from God and is NOT earned. Go to the cross, go to Jesus and He will give you rest for your weary souls. Talk to Him.