What For? - 40 Pack

While walking in a church and seeing an image of Jesus on the cross, a young girl asks the question, "What did You do that for?"
 
What For?
 
While listening to a salvation testimony (story) being given by a friend, she said that at eight years of age she saw a statue of Jesus hanging on the cross and asked the question, “What did you do that for?” (referring to His crucifixion).  
 
Those words melted into my soul and into my heart as I felt the love of God running through it.  I thought of my life without Christ, and how far and how deep He had to reach down to lift me up out of that miry clay.  As Psalm 40:2 says, “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”  And I thought of how many times He had saved me from killing myself and others around me by the reckless life I had lived in sin and disobedience.  
 
There was a time before Christ entered my life that I needed a drink so badly that I sold the expensive tools with which I made my living for a mere three dollars.  Another time I took back the expensive present (a large and beautiful Rocking Horse), that we had given to our first-born son, so that I might buy a drink to get me through the day.  
 
Then there was the time that God saved me from harming myself and others.  That is, I had just purchased a car, and that night while driving home drunk as usual, I veered off the road and went down into a very deep embankment. It was approximately twenty-five to thirty feet deep.  I crawled up the embankment, limped to a nearby gas station, and told the attendant that I had gone down into a ditch.  He looked at me and saw that I was drunk, and also that my forehead was spilling out blood.  So, needless to say, he did not believe my story and called the police. 
 
Then there was the time, while playing in an all-night poker game, that I went outside on the porch to get some air.  I started hollering out profanities at a passerby.  He did not appreciate the words that I chose to describe him, so he stopped his car, pointed a gun at me, and said that he was going to end my life right then and there.  A friend heard the threat that had been given to me and literally begged for my life to be spared.  
 
As I look back on my life, the words ring out, “Amazing grace, how can it be, that thou my God would die for me?”  In God's Word (the Bible), we find the answer to that little girl's question, “What did you do that for?”  Why did you give your life on that old cross?  The answer is in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world (you and me) that He gave His only begotten Son (His love, His life), that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
 
Years ago, I was invited to New England to stay as a guest of a clean-cut young couple that had recently made the decision to follow Christ.  As I walked into their home, it did not take me long to see that they were very wealthy. 
 
While there, the couple took the opportunity to share their salvation story with me.  The wife was the first to trust Jesus.  She said that after her conversion, she was filled with so much joy and happiness that she found herself jumping up and down on the bed.  Her husband could not explain her behavior so he took her to the doctor.  Then her husband got saved and he too was full of joy.  But he didn't say that he too was jumping up and down on the bed, LOL.  
 
The next day, the wife took me on a tour of their home.  Then she purposely showed me a room that was approximately twelve by fourteen feet in size.  In the room were treasures/idols (see Psalm 115:3-8) piled up to the ceiling from their life before Christ.  There were ebony and ivory and perhaps some silver statues of the gods they served until they met the one true God, the Father of heaven and earth.  Isaiah 46:9 says, “Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me.”  The fact is that we serve the only living God, Jesus Christ the righteous.  Mathew 28:6 pronounced, “He is not here, for He is risen.”   Isn't it great to know that God is not a respecter of persons (He shows no partiality), as the apostle Peter stated in Acts 10:34-35, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that fears Him (God), and works righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
These above true stories are testimonies of persons raised differently: the first one of myself who was soaked deep in sin, the other two who were clean-cut, but also sinners.  And, we were all on the way to hell.  Romans 3:10 declares, “There is none righteous, no, not one.”  There are two different stories, but one Savior, Jesus Christ.
 
Jesus said, “I lay down My life” (John 10:17).  The story of the cross is an awesome story, because it is a true story of a new life, hope, and victory. In John 6:37, Jesus tells us, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.”  
 
Here's the rest of the story of my visit with the clean-cut couple.  As I was saying goodbye, they told me that I could have anything that I wanted from their beautiful home.  I mean anything!  Well, I looked around, and finally I saw what I wanted.  It was a small plaque that read:  Someone asked Jesus, “How much do you love me?”  He answered, “This much!” as He stretched out His arms and died.
 
The original question asked by the small 8-year-old girl was, “What did you do that for?”  The answer to her question came later in her life when Jesus knocked at her heart's door and she accepted Him as her personal Savior.
 
If you believe that His being on the cross was for you as well, then write your name here: _______________
and with a heart of repentance and confession, ask Jesus to forgive your sins, taking Him at His word that “as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12)
 
Christ dying on the cross was the payment for your being right with God.  Romans 5:18 proclaims that “through one Man’s righteous act the free gift (of eternal life) came to all men, resulting in justification of life.”  Now, live like a child of the living God, knowing that God who cannot lie (Titus 1:2) has given you eternal life.  1 John 5:11 affirms, “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”  Amen.
 
B.V. Monjarez, B.R.E.