"Save to the Uttermost"

"Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them."

-Hebrews 7:25 (KJV)-

I have many friends who have left -- some to get pregnant out of wedlock, others to drugs and alcohol, and others just the path of "self-fulfillment," which inevitably turns into a place of darkness in your soul that no one can shine a light bright enough to cast away the black emptiness.

I know because I've been there. Not even the most well-meaning friends or family can drag you out of that place. You sort of wander from thrill to thrill, outwardly happy, but inwardly dying a little more every day.

I convinced myself for a long time with excuse after excuse that yes, I was happy, and yes, this is what I am supposed to do. But you never can quite reach that itch that is so deep inside you don't even know where it is you need to scratch, that wound that is so hidden you can never find it to stop the bleeding no matter how hard you try.

It takes people different lengths of time to realize and then acknowledge they have this burning,
throbbing pain inside their core. Some people are such good liars that they never can reach that place of total honesty. But there is always something missing.

Don't believe me? Let me try another tack.

Love is supposed to be the numero uno, the most important thing in life to attain. Lennon famously sang, "Love is all we need." But is it?

50 percent of American marriages now end in divorce. 50 percent! Even the evangelical church loses half of its family units to divorce. BNET.com reports that 59 percent of their survey respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 say they have recently experienced a breakup.

So if half of marriages end and well over half of the relationships in the first quarter of your adult life end, is love really all you need? All those marriages pledged to love unto death do them part. I'm fairly sure most of those relationships said, "I love you," to each other and meant it to varying degrees.

Apparently, Lennon was wrong.

So back to my original thought. If even love of a spouse or boy/girlfriend, cannot truly complete you, what can?

I contend that love of a different kind completes you. And in that, Lennon was not wrong. Love IS all we need -- the love of God and the love for God. He is the Missing Piece. If you believe He created us, then you must also believe He created us for a reason.

That reason is to find and love Him, with a superceding passion that can indeed carry you through every crevasse and canyon, over every mountain and peak, and across every raging river and impassable ocean in life.

But we will not know we need to find Him if nothing tells us we need Him. And that is where the missing piece in our hearts, the itch that is so deep we cannot reach it, and the wound that is so hidden we cannot find it, come in. WE tell ourselves we need God! God created us needing something, and that something is HIM.

If we are not open to finding Him and loving Him, then we spend our whole lives searching. Look at Brad and Angelina! They have how many kids now and they want still more?? They spend their time on so many continents no one knows where they are from one day to the next, and are so wealthy that three mansions aren't enough, but they must have one in every country they like. They appear happy and content, but their lives clearly speak otherwise. Always more,
always new, always something else.

But they are an extreme case that perhaps a lot of people can't relate to.

So I take myself -- an average girl sitting next to you at a table in the college library. The man sitting across from me thinks I'm doing my science homework. But here I am pouring out my burden to the world wide web.

Three years ago, come April, I was looking for something. From 14-18, I developed quite a few bad habits during my search, so many that even my family was despairing of bearing with me.

I was a thief.
I was a liar.
I was a control freak.
I was materialistic to an extreme.
I exaggerated.
I was a flirt.
I was self-absorbed.
I was selfish.
I was apathetic.
I was passionless, except about having fun.
I was ... lost.

How many of those characteristics can you ascribe to yourself at sometime in your life? Probably many of them. The fact is we are all like that -- really awful people under a pretty wrapping job (reality shows especially dramatize that). We are all missing some sort of chip in our physical computer. A chip that only Christ can fulfill.

So back to my friends. I worry for them and I pray for them everyday -- sometimes multiple times throughout the day. But when I start to feel as though I have to do something to save them, I've been stopping myself to look to the One who loves them even more than I do, Who wants them to be saved more than I do, and Who knows them better than even I do (and therefore knows what they must go through before they can find Him and love Him.)

I truly believe He IS ABLE TO SAVE TO THE UTTERMOST. He saved me, one of those "lost causes." I trust that anyone who comes unto Him, no matter what their background, He will save them, and keep them to life eternal.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

-Matthew 7:7-8-