KNOW: SAVED

THE PRAYER        

• Find a quiet space.        


• Breathe deeply and recognise God with you in this moment.        


• When you are ready, speak to God about this time together.        


• After you've finished praying, go through the following passage a few times slowly and thoughtfully (preferably out loud).    


• Allow God to meet you in these words.

The Lord helps the fallen and lifts those bent beneath their loads. The eyes of all look to you in hope; you give them their food as they need it. When you open your hand, you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness. The Lord is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him in truth. He grants the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. The Lord protects all those who love him, but he destroys the wicked. I will praise the Lord, and may everyone on earth bless his holy name forever and ever. Psalm 145:14-21 (NLT)

THE FIRST READING

Read this passage slowly (preferably out loud) as you allow God to meet you in these words. Pay attention to anything God might be saying as you do.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” 8 And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:1-10 (ESV)

RESPONSE

Take some time to respond (write down, draw, pray, etc.) to God’s prompting in the first reading of the passage. What is he highlighting and saying to you through this?

THE SECOND READING

Read the passage again (slowly and preferably out loud) through the “lens” of what The Spirit highlighted in the first reading. Listen for anything else the Spirit might be saying.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” 8 And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:1-10 (ESV)

THE REFLECTION

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (C.S. Lewis)

The central and saving message of the Gospel is that Jesus is Lord. If Jesus is Lord, then we are not. The Gospel is good news, precisely because it rescues us from the tyranny of our own self-governance.

To dumb this down in an effort to make Jesus more palatable is to make an idol of the most dangerous kind. An ego projection of our own sinfulness dressed in Jesus clothes, sitting in the reeking muck of our rebellion and calling it home. Like a trojan horse, we readily invite this “jesus” through the gates of our lives at great cost to ourselves and to those we claim to love. It is hard to heal a cancer that we’ve labeled a cure.

Salvation came to Zacchaeus’ house precisely because his eyes were opened to the life-changing revelation that Jesus is Lord. In the wake of this new Lordship, his own kingdom of deceit, greed, and broken relationships had to give way, and it did. He never settled for lip service.

He responded in costly, redemptive repentance, giving half of all he owned to meet the needs of the poor and returning fourfold of all he had stolen. How much do you think he had left? And that is exactly the point. Zacchaeus is one more seeker who stumbled on a treasure hidden in a field and sold all he had to buy it.

This is what it means to be saved.

What if instead of settling for “sinners' prayers” and empty conversions, we contended for this kind of transformation in people's lives and in our own? How different would our Church look? How much more could we love our world to wholeness?

This is why no Christian truly loves without agenda. Our love, just like God’s, must be agenda-laden. We must ache, pray, and labor with the same heart that led Jesus to the cross. We must live and love from the overflow of a deep conviction that "all must be saved, all can be saved, all can know that they are saved and all can be saved to the uttermost" (John Wesley, The four “Alls” of Methodism).

As you live the story of Jesus today, who might Jesus be inviting you to love unto this kind of salvation, and how might he be inviting you to do that?

In your own life, how do you need to be reminded of the joy of your salvation?

What is your fourfold response to Jesus today?

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