Shockingly Simple

 “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 11:3

Sometimes, the simplicity of the gospel can be shocking.  Salvation is not a twelve step process, or a business plan.  It is not a four week course or a weekend retreat.  There is just something about people, something in us, we want “do” something.  By that I mean, we want it to be something that “we do,” and not God.  We want it to lead back to our merits and abilities, and not His.  The salvation that Jesus brings is a simple salvation, but it’s not about your gifts or talents.  It is his gift, it is grace, and it is unmerited.  We do not obtain it by accomplishment, but by yielding.

In South Georgia there is this natural wonder, if you will, known to those down here as a blue hole or blue spring.  It is what it sounds like, a hole in the earth that is blue; why is it blue?  That’s a good question, it is blue because the spring water that shoots out of it is so pure and clear that it actually fills up the hole in the ground and causes it to appear blue.  The interesting part about these blue springs is that no matter where you find them you can always count on two things.  First, the water that comes out of it will be different than the river or creek water around it.  It will not be brown, or green, it will not have the same temperature or the same pollution.  The current that comes from the water springing out of the ground protects the blue spring from impurities.  The second thing, is that they are lasting and generational.  An eighty year old native of South Georgia can tell you about a blue hole that he hasn’t been to since he was a kid.  You can then go visit it and it will look exactly the same as he said it did years and years ago.  The blue holes that populate the South are attractive, scenic, and alluring.  They draw people to them because they are different and enduring.  They are the way they are not because of merit, action, or initiative, but because God made them that way.  The scripture tells us that the devil would corrupt us from the simplicity that is in Christ.  When we are in sin, the last thing the devil wants us to realize is that we are in sin.  He wants you to think that you have a broken marriage that YOU have to fix.  He wants you to think that you have an addiction that YOU have to beat.  He wants you to think YOU are rich, famous, intelligent, popular; whatever you have to be so you don’t realize that you are not serving God and you are serving yourself.  When you realize that you are lost in sin, it’s only a short hop until you recognize that you can be found.  When you accept that you are disobeying God, then it’s only a matter of time before you can understand how to obey him.  When you realize you are lost, and that you need a Savior, and guess what: it isn’t you that is when the simplicity of the gospel can take hold and you can find salvation.  It is not your plan, your process, your merit or your accomplishments that will bring you salvation.  No, it is only yielding; totaling yielding your heart and life over to the Creator so that he can make your heart anew.  By simply yielding your all over to God, we can be one with Jesus Christ; this simplicity can be shocking to a ME first mentality.

The scripture tells us that out of the heart are all the issues of life.  When God has your heart, he has you.  He has your check book, your marriage, your job, your family; he has everything.  God wants to change your heart into a blue spring.  A spring of righteousness that continually flows from within to the world that is without.  This is the salvation that Jesus brings.  You will not be affected by the polluted world around you, but you will affect it.  You will not wavier with the changing trends, but you will be steadfast.  Out of your heart will flow a continual current of righteousness that will keep you from sin as you keep yourself with God.  This will be lasting and generational, because it’s Jesus, its holiness, and he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  This is the simplicity that is in Christ.