What's in your Wallet?

The organ at the small country church where I serve does not run on electricity.  Before electric organs made an appearance, pump organs were all the rage.  As the organist pulls the stops out and plays the keys, her (or his) feet are in constant motion pumping the foot pedals to force air into a bladder which in turn pushes air through the pipes creating the sound.  These pump organs aren’t (and never were) designed for contemporary Christian hymns and even though some traditional churches try to play the modern songs on the pump organ, they sound much better bellowing out the old standards.  Remember those old songs?  How Great Thou Art.  Rock of Ages.  Amazing Grace.  Without even trying, the mournful sound of the pump organ returns to my brain and I hear the one song that defined my childhood churchgoing years:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.  O what a foretaste of glory divine.  Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior all the day long.  This is my, this is my song.  Praising my Savior all the day long.

The melody soars as the tune carries us along promising everything in the covenant.  We are heirs of every good thing that God has for us.  And yet most of us only know the first verse and the first words.

Blessed assurance.

I have lots of cards in my wallet.  Each one of them promises something to me.  They assure me because I bear this card, I can use it in time of need.  Beyond my driver’s license, I would guess that my most important card is my insurance card.  If anything were to happen to me (God forbid – as if by saying those words ‘God forbid’ I am somehow forbidding God to allow things to happen to me) I can be taken to the hospital, looked after, cared for, be fed and treated,

And I don’t have to pay a thing – well, that’s not entirely true. 

I just have to pay the premiums and show them the card.  Kind of like a Get Out of Jail Free card in Monopoly.  I can do whatever I want; I can buy whatever I want and if I get in any kind of trouble that would fence me in, I just show them my nice card.

That’s what some people think faith in Jesus is like.  It is something like the picture of a benevolent Jesus smiling down on us from above not caring a bit what our daily lives are like.  As long as we have the Jesus card, we can get out of jail for free.  We can do whatever we like; we can buy whatever we want and if we find ourselves in a place where we are locked in, just flash them Jesus shining face.  Manipulate the system however you want.  Didn’t Jesus say have abundant life?  Have the best of all worlds.

Mark Sayers , in his book The Road Trip that Changed the World, calls this new type of believer ‘atheistic Christians’ who profess their dedication to God on Sundays or in certain places that require their Jesus faces, but the rest of the time they live as if there is no God.  Or, if there is, he certainly agrees with all of their decisions.

They don’t really care because they’ve got

Blessed Insurance. 

Insurance is something that you have to have but something you hope you never have to use.

It’s interesting that the hymn, Blessed Assurance, has three verses and the first verse only uses the phrase ‘blessed assurance’ once.  Yes, we understand the promise of grace given to us.  But, the second two verses start with the words, ‘Perfect Submission.’ 

Submission.  Ugh.  The word that no one likes to hear.  Submit.  Put others before you.  Assurance demands submission to the one greater than yourself. 

When Satan gave Jesus the opportunity to test God to see if he really was there, Jesus response was one of submission.  Jesus didn’t need to test the adequacy of God’s steadfastness; in the mission of submission, Jesus was simply called to trust.  It is enough.  Through submission, we lose the need to feed not only ourselves.  We look outward to those who do not yet know that they’ve found a winning lottery ticket in the back alley behind their house.  The card that says, ‘You’ve won it all.’  Now go and share.

This is my story, this is my song.  For that, I’ll praise my savior all the day long.