Finding Salvation

I was sitting with a teen recently who is in their last year of high school and, as many seniors in high school, she had spent the last few months applying for colleges. Now she was in the wait-and-see time—the time that seems like forever, existing between when you send out your college application to when you finally hear back. 

This student had heard back from many of the colleges that she had applied to and even gotten some full-ride scholarships to some of them, yet she was not satisfied. Talking about her post-high school plans she looked at me and just said, “I don’t know what I will do if I don’t get into Stanford. That has been my goal, what if it doesn’t happen?”

I don’t know about you, but I find that when God is trying to say something to me, I am constantly being bombarded by a similar topic. Lately I have been thinking and processing a lot about the topic of salvation.

I was listening to a sermon while I was running at the gym the other day—something that I do a lot—when I heard the preacher make a statement that hit me in a different way. He said, “Whether a person believes in God or not, we as humans are all looking for salvation.” 

The pastor went on to explain that as humans we are all on this process toward redemption. We are all trying to work, push, and move toward a goal, event, or reality that will rescue us from our current situation, or said other way: redeem us. 

Redemption can take many forms. For some, redemption looks like getting that house, living in the right community, or getting into the right college. For others, redemption can take a ‘religious’ overtone to look like getting good enough to come to God, saying a special prayer, or to finally being baptized. No matter what it is, we are all looking for redemption. Sadly, I think many of us are looking in the wrong place or are maybe too busy trying to save ourselves to see that we are drowning.  

I started to think about how I was looking for redemption in my life. After 30 minutes of sweat induced running and sermon listening, it hit me; I was looking for redemption in how others perceived me. If I was not liked by everyone, especially by the teens in my youth ministry and the families in my church, somehow salvation and been moved out of grasp. It was then up for me to work really hard to try to be saved once again. 

It is fear that drives this desire in us to work toward our own salvation: fear from not getting into the right college, fear of death; even the fear of not being liked.

As I continued to process what God was trying to say to me, I started to think about the life of Jesus. How the purpose of him being on earth wasn’t to make people like him, to get into school, or even to be good. His purpose was to be what I could not be, to fulfill the law for me, to be shamed, die and resurrect for me. Ultimately, Jesus came to save me because no matter what I run after or what I fear, I can never save myself. 

That itself is the beauty of the gospel: Jesus saves us while we are messed up, living out of fear, and trying to find salvation in other things. 

My prayer during this Holy Week and Easter season is that I do less and that God does more; to be transformed by God and learn what it means not to work toward my own form of salvation, but allow God to save me. 

What is your prayer?