You've Got a Reservation

Excerpted from A Simple Faith Will Do, my someday going to be bestseller.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, …

1 Peter 1:3 - 4

Don’t you love having a reservation? You pull up to your favorite place and notice that there is a long line of people waiting to get in. No matter. You’ve got a reservation.

You step past the waiting crowd and catch the eye of the maitre’d. “I called ahead. I’ve got a reservation. Table for two. The name’s Burger.”

As he checks his list you glance around. You notice people staring, others whispering with nods in your direction. You know what they’re saying. They’re saying, “How’d he get up there?” “He must be someone important; He must know someone. Do you recognize him?”

After just a few moments you hear, “Ah yes! Mr. Burger, Welcome! Right this way” And you are shown to your place.

At that moment you feel like somebody, don’t you? You might have had a lousy day up to that point. You’re boss might have made your day miserable. The kids may have been in trouble and even the dog gave you fits. But none of that matters at the moment. You’ve got a reservation and now you’ve arrived.

After a long, hectic week it’s nice to know you have a reservation at your favorite place, isn’t it? Well, after a long, hectic life it’s nice to know you’ve got a reservation, too.

There’s a reservation with your name on it at the end of this life. Peter said that there’s a place in heaven reserved for you. I’m not sure how it will look, or how it will all work when you get there, but you can be sure of this: You’ve got a reservation. Your place is guaranteed. You’re getting in.

Now this may be a brand new way to see things for you. You may be one of those who worry constantly, “Will I make it to heaven? O, I hope I can just hang on until Jesus comes.”

Maybe you’ve had a bad day or a bad week and you’ve wondered. If so, you can relax. We all have bad days, days where things just don’t go well. We’ve all had those weeks where nothing seemed to go as planned and our whole lives seemed to be unraveling. Situations get sticky and people get testy. Maybe you’ve even lost your temper this week; said something you shouldn’t have or wished people or circumstances were different because you don’t like either right now. Those are the times that we don’t feel much like Christians. Sometimes we just don’t feel very ‘saved’, do we? Here’s a question: What are Christians supposed to feel like, anyway?

I’m not trying to be critical, or to downplay those very real feelings. But the Bible teaches us that “the just shall live by faith.” Feelings come and go. Feelings will fool you. They’ll leave you feeling like a fool, too. This Christian life that we’ve embarked on is a life lived by faith, not feelings.
Feelings are fragile. Faith is not. And your salvation isn’t fragile either. It isn’t something we carry around gingerly; concerned that it may break or won’t last.
Many Christians worry that they might lose their salvation. That’s a question I get asked a lot. “Chaplain, can I lose my salvation? I’ve had a bad week, you know, and I’m kind of nervous about it.” Or, “I’m just not sure I’m saved anymore. It doesn’t feel like it used to. Is it possible I’ve lost my salvation, chaplain?”

I’ve been known to lose some things over the years. I’m really bad about losing things out of my pockets. I don’t mean to do it, but when I’m not paying attention things just seem to slip out and they’re gone. I’ve lost a lot of pocket change that way. In chairs, sofas, cars and everywhere else I sit. I’ve probably lost enough pocket change over the years to put my daughters through college.
I know people who constantly lose their keys. They set them down almost anywhere and then forget what they did with them. But I just don’t believe that you can misplace your salvation like a set of keys. And I don’t believe it can slip away from you like change out of your pockets.

How can you lose something that Jesus called “eternal”? Didn’t Jesus say, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”? And, “My sheep know My voice; I know them and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.”

That’s quite a word, isn’t it? Eternal. There’s no constraint on eternal. It’s not bound by time or environment. Conditions can’t change it and feelings can’t foul it. When something is eternal it is forever true and changeless.

I’m so glad Jesus used the word “eternal” in describing this life He’s given us.

Then there is Peter’s description of this hope that we’ve been born again into: … an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.
Somebody would have to explain to me how something that the Bible says is “imperishable” and “undefiled” and that “will not fade away” can be inadvertently lost. I just don’t see myself (or you) being able to lose something the Bible says is “reserved in heaven for you”. To think that I can lose what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross of Calvary kind of makes me much more important than I really am, doesn’t it?

Now you might be thinking, “Well, so-and-so used to be a good Christian, but now …” Maybe that’s true, but don’t you think there is a big difference between losing something and openly rejecting something? That would be akin to me taking the change out of my pocket and throwing it as far as I can away from me, scattering it in all directions. I didn’t lose it, I threw it away.

My point here is simply this: God has a place reserved in heaven for you. Jesus said, “There are many rooms in My Father’s home, and I am going to prepare a place for you.”

Feelings come and go. Bad days happen to all of us. That’s all a part of life. There may be many things in this life that bring you cause for concern. You may worry about your children. They don’t always do what we want them to do, do they? You might be concerned about finances. There’s just never quite enough to make ends meet. Just once you’d like to be able to do what you’ve dreamt of doing without the worry about what it will do to the budget. You may stew about things that just don’t seem right in life. But your salvation should not cause you to fret.
No matter how things go in this life, please remember: You’ve got a reservation! That one thought will carry you through the rough patches. One day, you’re going to get there and you’ll know: it was all worth it.

A simple faith will get you there.