Happy Girl

"Jesus, the One we are singing to, is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last (Revelation 22:13). He is the Final Amen (Revelation 22:21). He is the Bread of Life (John 6:48). He is the Chief Cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20), Christ our Creator. He is our Deliverer (Romans 25:26). He is our Everlasting Father (Isaiah 6:9). He is God (Jn. 10:30). He is the Good Shepherd (Jn. 10:14), the Great Shepherd (Hebrews 13:20), the Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14), the Holy One (Luke 1:35), the Hope of Glory (Colossians 1:27). He is the Great I am (Exodus 3:14). He is the Image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the Judge of the Living and the Dead (Acts 10:42). He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev. 17:14). He is Majestic and Mighty and no one compares to Him (Jeremiah 10:6). He is the Only Begotten Son (Jn. 3:16) to the Father Full of Grace and Truth (Jn. 1:14). He is the Power of God (1 Cor. 1:24). He is the Resurrection and the Life (Jn. 11:25). He is the Supreme Sacrifice (1 Jn. 2:2), the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn. 14:6), the Very Word of God Made Flesh (Jn. 1:14).
Jesus is all of these things, but we have reduced Him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for you to accept Him. Accept Him? As if Jesus needed to be accepted by you (Acts 17:25)? Jesus doesn't need your acceptance. He is Infinitely Worthy of all Glory in all the Universe (Rev. 4:11). At this moment, there are multitudes of creatures surrounding Him-one of whom whose beauty, if it were in this room, would startle us all (Rev. 7:9-12)-and they are all doing His bidding and singing His praises (Psalms 103:20). He does not need your songs. He doesn't need your prayers, your church attendance or your bible study. He doesn't need you at all. You need Him. You are desperately in need of Him (Psalms 142:6). You need Him for every breath you breathe (Acts 17:25). Every person in this room. The only reason your heart is beating at this moment is because Jesus Himself is giving it rhythm. Where did we get the idea that Jesus needed us to accept Him?

I am convinced that multitudes of professing Christians have been sold a lie when it comes to their Eternal Destinies. In our contemporary efforts to spread the Gospel to as many people as possible, I believe we have so maligned and manipulated and misrepresented the very Gospel we have wished to spread. We have formulated the Gospel as a "plan of Salvation" and forgotten the Gospel as the Power of God for Salvation (Romans 1:6). We have paired it down to the minimalist picture, smallest picture, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, into a shrink-wrapped presentation, that if one delivers it and gets someone to say the right things back to them, and even pray the right things back to them, then we pronounce them Saved and move on. And multitudes of professing Christians have been told that as long as they prayed that prayer or walked down that aisle or signed that card that their Salvation is complete (Philippians 2:12). The result is a host of professing Christians, including many people in this room, that think they are eternally Saved from their Sins when the reality is, they are not. The reason is because we have taken the Gospel, the very Life Blood (Jn. 6:53), out of Christianity and we've put Koolaid in its place.

What haunts me as a pastor, what keeps me awake many nights, is the thought, the idea, that sitting in front of me Sunday after Sunday, not just sitting in front of me, I, myself, could one day stand before Jesus and have Him look at me, or multitudes of you, and say "I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers (Matt. 7:23)." Do you think Jesus could say that to you?"

-David Platt