LOST?
USE GPS
They're everywhere today. You've seen them and handled them. They have the potential to keep track of your location 24 hrs a day. Sometimes they are located in or on your vehicle, while other times in your cell phones. And in some countries today, they are planted beneath the skin on your person. They will be placed in shoes, and they are already in fitness watches, and boats. There appears to be no limits to their use. We know this device as the Global Positioning Satellite.
If you had the misfortune to break down in your vehicle or were involved in an accident, the GPS in your vehicle can be used in conjunction with the vehicle's assistance program to help locate you at any time of the day. You could be in any number of situations out of a vehicle, but with a cell phone, and as long as it is powered on, your position can be found to locate and help or save.
There is another use however, and it is a spiritual one, and it is tied to an acronym: GPS. It is God's Plan of Salvation . It is much more reliable than any satellite system, and it never breaks down or runs out of power to locate those that are lost and save them. Please make note, it is not my plan, nor is it a church's plan, and neither, an organizational plan or college plan of salvation: It is merely and wholly - God's Plan of Salvation .
It began before the foundation of the world in the foreknowledge of God. He knew that man would sin and as a result, be in need of a Savior to redeem him back to Himself. Man could not stand in His presence with his sin; neither could he enter heaven with his sin. Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Godhead, came to earth in a miraculous fashion by taking on flesh through the use of a Jewish virgin girl named Mary. To be our redeemer from sin back to God, He had to live without sin. He did so every single day of His human life. He was never confused as to why He came or confounded why He was never received by His own. He came to seek out and save those that were lost (Luke 19:10). He was and became GPS. At the end of His public ministry He was accused of something He did not do and was crucified for what all of us have and will do: sin. Our iniquities and sins were laid upon Him - all of them, for all of us from all time, to all time. His sinless, precious blood paid the price required by the Father for a sacrifice to be acceptable in His sight. He cried loudly, " It is finished!" And it was. He had paid the debt of sin that you and I owed. He had taken our punishment for wages that we earned. The fact of His literal bodily resurrection proves that what He had done was sufficient to satisfy a Holy God. He had finished the work that the Father sent Him to do. He ascended into heaven, but instructed His own first that they should go, go everywhere and take the Gospel of Christ to everyone. To all who believed on Christ and His finished work, they were to follow the Lord in believer's baptism and be discipled in the Word of God. Those who received the Lord Jesus Christ were first lost. The GPS found them, exposed them in their sin and showed them the futility of attempting to save oneself. A Savior saves all the way to safety - to home in heaven . GPS pointed out that only the Lord Jesus Christ could save. Other plans of salvation were frauds - adding to or taking away from its power to save. GPS saved by His grace or by man's works, but it could not be both (Rom.11:6). Both Romans 4:5 and Eph.2:8-9, let us know that GPS is apart from any and all works. Faith alone was man's part and was not ritual, ceremony, or work. Faith was required to be saved (Heb.11:6, Acts 13:38,39;16:31; Gal.2:16; Romans 3:24-28).
To all who have come to Christ as Savior by faith, there has never been a power failure, a spiritual short or surge. He has declared that He saves to the "uttermost;" that He gives eternal life to them; that He will finish what He started in those He saves; that He indwells them in the Person of the Holy Spirit; that they are Biblically justified, regenerated, redeemed, sanctified, and have the power over sin in their lives in the present - the which, all of us know that we did not possess or desire while we were lost; that we are new creatures in Christ and all things spiritually are new because we are new and spiritually alive for the first time; and that, as our sin was imputed to Christ on the Cross, the resurrected Christ's righteousness was imputed to us - enabling us to stand before Him. The greatest evidence that we do truly belong to Christ now is not the profession of our faith, but the remarkable changes that occur in our lives day by day, which are conforming us to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have much to thank mankind for his technology in locating places and people for informational purposes, but mostly for those that are lost. We praise God always for His wisdom and foreknowledge to provide for all mankind, if they choose to avail themselves of it - GPS.
Before all else fails, and it will, use God's Plan of Salvation . You will never be disappointed or desire another plan. Stick with the perfection that produces results. Compare yourself to God's Plan of Salvation , and if lost - use the GPS that has never lost a soul yet and never will.
