Assurance of Salvation

Hector Vega’s journey to faith began in the most unlikely place: Rikers Island Prison. One night, correction officers rushed in. An inmate named Jose Vega had committed suicide. Due to a mix-up, prison staff mistakenly identified Hector as the deceased and notified his family. For several days, while the prison was on lockdown, Hector’s family believed he was dead.

Reflecting on this, Hector said, “There’s something powerfully symbolic in how I was ‘dead’ but not yet buried. Looking back on this moment in my life, I believe God was beginning to show me that although I was physically alive, I was spiritually lifeless.”

Raised in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, Hector struggled with feelings of inadequacy. To fit in, he began drinking at 11, then moved to marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Multiple prison sentences followed. A turning point came through his girlfriend Michelle, who, frustrated by his addiction and aware he wasn’t ready for fatherhood, turned to God and prayed for his deliverance. She encouraged Hector to attend a Christian recovery program.

Hector recalls, “I also started feeling deep remorse and shame over the pain I had caused people in my family, especially my mom and dad. So, I started attending prison chapel services. From there I started reading the Word of God, and gradually it got a tight hold on my heart.” He clung to passages like Psalms 27 and 91, and Galatians 5:1–13, which speaks of freedom in Christ.

With the support of mentors, Hector surrendered his life to Christ. Since then, he has served as executive director of a homeless shelter and addiction-recovery program, and since 2009, as pastor of East Harlem Fellowship. Married to Michelle for 30 years, they have raised four children. Hector now travels globally, sharing, “When the world had labeled me an addict and a career criminal, his love and mercy overwhelmed me… I was made in his image and worthy of being presented as a trophy of his grace.”

In his book, "Wisdom of Tenderness," Brennan Manning tells:

Several years ago, Edward Farrell of Detroit took his two-week vacation to Ireland to celebrate his favorite uncle's eightieth birthday. On the morning of the great day, Ed and his uncle got up before dawn, dressed in silence, and went for a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney. Just as the sun rose, his uncle turned and stared straight at the rising orb. Ed stood beside him for twenty minutes with not a single word exchanged. Then the elderly uncle began to skip along the shoreline, a radiant smile on his face.

After catching up with him, Ed commented, “Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell my why?”

“Yes, lad,” the old man said, tears washing down his face. 'You see, the Father is fond of me. Ah, me father is so very fond of me.”

Within its first year, a dolphin develops a unique signature whistle which is the equivalent of its name; it uses this to identify itself to other dolphins. Adults are adept at copying the cries of other dolphins as if calling them by name. This is a fact backed up by a research study in Scotland which concluded that dolphins respond when another dolphin calls out their name.

An American research study concluded that dolphins recognize other dolphins even if they lost contact many years previously. One experiment proved that they could still remember each other’s whistle even after being apart for twenty years. Dolphins are socially complex mammals, and their social bonds with family and friends are very important.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible says that God knows each one of us by name … that we belong to him. We are each unique individuals in God’s sight.

Philip Poniz needed a well-protected place to stash his collection of rare watches. He had been gathering unusual pieces since he was a teenager and he became an internationally known expert in the history and restoration of high-end timepieces.

At first, he kept his personal collection in his house, but he wanted something more secure. The vault at his neighborhood bank seemed ideal. In 1983, he arranged with his bank to rent a safe deposit box. In the vault were hundreds of stacked metal boxes, each protected by two keys. The bank kept one; the customer held the other. Both were required to open a box.

Then, in April of 2017, he lifted the thin metal lid of his box. His box was empty. “I thought my heart would fail,” Mr. Poniz said. “I was devastated,” he said. “I never felt like that in my life before. I had never known that one can have a feeling like that.”

There are an estimated 25 million safe deposit boxes in America, and there are no federal laws governing the boxes. No rules require banks to compensate customers if their property is stolen or destroyed. Every year, a few hundred customers report that valuable items—diamonds, jewelry, rare coins, stacks of cash—have disappeared from their safe deposit boxes.

Mr. Poniz began piecing together what had happened: His bank had evicted another customer for not keeping up with payments, but bank employees had mistakenly removed Mr. Poniz’s box instead. He estimated that the value of his loss was more than $10 million. That would make it one of the largest safe-deposit-box losses in American history.

“My impression about safe deposit boxes was that it was like you were putting things in Fort Knox,” he said. “Nothing could happen to it.” He doesn’t think that anymore.

Possible Preaching Angle: Assurance; Security; Trusting God – No bank can guarantee the safety of our possessions. Physicians cannot guarantee the length of our lives. Insurance companies cannot promise the safety of our homes in natural disasters. But our eternal Father unfailingly guarantees the protection of our eternal souls and our rewards in heaven.

Mary Kidd and her colleagues meet every week in a loft in New York City with a clear mission—to digitize and preserve old VHS tapes. The loft has racks of tape decks, oscilloscopes, vector scopes and wave-form monitors that help ensure a quality transfer from analog to digital.

Kidd and the others are archivists and preservationists for XFR Collective (pronounced Transfer Collective). And while the mood is light, there is a sense of a deadline. That's because VHS tapes probably can't survive beyond 15 to 20 years. Some call this the "magnetic media crisis" and archivists, preservationists, and librarians like the ones in the XFR Collective are trying to reverse it.

Sounds and images are magnetized onto strips of tape, but over time the tape slowly loses its magnetic properties. Most tapes were recorded in the 1980s and '90s, when video cameras first became widely available. That means even the best-kept tapes will eventually be unwatchable. The thing is, many people don't realize their tapes are degrading.

And some who do know —like Mary Kidd — haven't even gotten around to their own tapes. "Sometimes I do fall asleep at night thinking to myself, 'Oh my gosh, is this tape in the storage space that I own slowly turning into goo?'" So the volunteers devote themselves to this work because if they don't save these intimate, personal histories, it's possible no one will.

Possible Preaching Angle: Protection, Divine; Rewards; Memories; What we store with God is safe for eternity without loss, decay, or fading. As Paul told Timothy, "I … am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day." (2 Timothy 1:12)

In many instances, duct tape is highly reliable—but as a means of water transportation, it may not be a prime choice.

Just ask the Alaskan man who attempted to cross a channel near Juneau on a "homemade watercraft"—more specifically, "an inflatable, duct-taped craft"—complete with a paddle, his dog, and a conspicuous lack of a life jacket.

A local news outlet stated that while the "[w]eather on scene was reportedly calm with 9 mph winds," a local Coast Guard crew still ended up coming to the man's aid: when the makeshift boat started to fill with water.

Having "deemed the craft unsafe," they "transferred it, the man—and his dog—to [nearby] Douglas Harbor."

(Perhaps to guard against embarrassment, the news release "did not identify the man.")

Potential Preaching Angles: This man's "boat" was homemade, patched together with duct tape and carrying no life jacket on board—yet he still trusted it with his life (and even his dog's life). Is there anything in our lives that we rely on to give us health, happiness, and meaning when we should instead be relying on the ship that will never sink, the fortress and refuge in which we trust (Ps. 91:2)?

The holidays may be the most wonderful time of the year—but if you're going to the airport, they may be one of the most stressful times of the year, as well. A couple of travelers through LAX discovered that their airport experience could become even worse than they'd imagined, as they were informed by the TSA and their airline that their giant teddy bear could not accompany them on their flight.

To make matters worse, the TSA posted an Instagram picture of the gigantic teddy sitting next to a trash can, where he had been "abandoned by his owners" when they learned he could not come with them (even though they had actually purchased a ticket for him). The caption read, "Why does this gigantic teddy bear look so sad? He was abandoned by his owners at LAX after the airline and TSA determined that he was just too big to be screened as a carry-on and taken on the plane," the caption read.

The post led to hundreds of comments, many of them outraged: "This is NOT OK TSA," "omg this makes me sad." A headline for Time magazine read: "The TSA Just Made This Giant Teddy Bear Homeless."

But now the TSA says that it was all a ruse. An updated TSA Instagram post read, "This was a stunt to see if he could get the giant bear on the plane. He even made up a backstory that the bear was a gift for his girlfriend. The bear did not belong to a child."

Potential Preaching Angles: Abandonment hurts more than just stuffed bears; it hurts real people. Fortunately, with Jesus Christ you'll always have a seat on the plane.

Nicole Cliffe became a Christian on July 7, 2015, after what she called "a very pleasant adult life of firm atheism." "The idea of a benign deity who created and loved us," she writes, "was obviously nonsense, and all that awaited us beyond the grave was joyful oblivion … I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings." But here's how she describes what happened to her:

First, I was worried about my child. One time I said "Be with me" to an empty room. It was embarrassing. I didn't know why I said it, or to whom. I brushed it off, I moved on, the situation resolved itself, I didn't think about it again.

Second, I came across John Ortberg's CT obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John's daughters are dear friends, and they have always struck me as sweetly deluded in their evangelical faith, so I read the article. Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity."I believe in sufficient depravity," he responded immediately. "I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, 'I merited this.'" A few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst into tears again. And the next day. While brushing my teeth, while falling asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would burst into tears.

She read more Christian books and every time she cried all over again. She emailed a Christian friend and asked if she could talk about Jesus. She writes:

But about an hour before our call, I knew: I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian … I was crying constantly while thinking about Jesus because I had begun to believe that Jesus really was who he said he was … So when my friend called, I told her, awkwardly, that I wanted to have a relationship with God, and we prayed … Since then, I have been dunked by a pastor in the Pacific Ocean while shivering in a too-small wetsuit. I have sung "Be Thou My Vision" and celebrated Communion on a beach, while weirded-out Californians tiptoed around me. I go to church. I pray …

[Evan after accepting Christ] I continue to cry a lot. [I read a news article] that literally sank me to my knees at how broken this world is, and yet how stubbornly resilient and joyful we can be in the face of that brokenness. My Christian conversion has granted me no simplicity. It has complicated all of my relationships, changed how I feel about money, messed up my public persona … Obviously, it's been very beautiful.

In his book, Prayer, Tim Keller writes:

Speech-act theory makes a convincing case that our words not only convey information; they get things done. However, God's words have power infinitely beyond our own. God's words are identical with his actions … We humans say, "Let there be light in this room," but first we have to make sure the room has been properly wired. Then we have to walk across the room and flick a switch, or go to the cabinet and grab some matches so we can light a candle. Our words need deeds to back them up and can fail to achieve their purposes. God's words, however, cannot fail their purposes because, for God, speaking and acting are the same things.

Possible Preaching Angles: This illustration could also be used as an object lesson by walking over and turning on a light switch or holding a candle and using a lighter to light it.

Bob Mankoff is the cartoon editor for The New Yorker magazine. His jobs is a laugh-a-minute. The New Yorker has published more than 80,000 cartoons since its first issue. In an interview on 60 Minutes, Mankoff said that the Grim Reaper has appeared in the magazine's funny pages more than any other character. For example, in one cartoon the Reaper's latest acquisition is saying: "Thank goodness you are here—I can't accomplish anything unless I have a deadline."

Mankoff told 60 Minutes, "Honestly, if it wasn't for death, I don't think there would be any humor … Grim Reaper's going to get the last laugh. Until then, it's our turn."

Possible Preaching Angles: One day, the Grim Reaper will be fired and abolished. He won't get the last laugh, at least not for the follower of the Risen Christ.

Tim Keller writes:

Many years ago, in my first pastorate, I met with a teenage girl in our congregation. She was about sixteen at the time, and she was discouraged and becoming depressed. I tried to encourage her, but there was a revelatory moment when she said, "Yes, I know Jesus loves me, he saved me, he's going to take me to heaven—but what good is it when no boy at school will even look at me?"

She said she "knew" all these truths about being a Christian, but they were of no comfort to her. The attention (or the lack of it) of a cute boy at school was far more consoling, energizing, and foundational for her joy and self-worth than the love of Christ. Of course this was a perfectly normal response for a teenage girl. Nevertheless it was revealing of how our hearts work. [Jonathan] Edwards would say that she had the opinion that Jesus loved her, but she didn't really know it. Christ's love was an abstract concept while the love of these others was real to her heart.

Mark Twain held a wide range of views on Christianity and the Bible at different times in his life. His theological beliefs changed many times as he dealt with the tragic deaths of family and friends, as well as considerations of his own mortality. His misconceptions of sin and guilt may have contributed to his rejection of the gospel. In his book, Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era that Shaped His Masterpiece, Butler University's Andrew Levy wrote about Twain's faith:

He spent his Sundays in a church where the preachers were very clear about hell and the odds of a wayward child going there. He wept to his mother that he had "ceased to be a Christian," but his "trained Presbyterian conscience," as he later called it, swallowed guilt like air. There was no death in his family or among his friends he did not blame himself for: "I took all the tragedies to myself, and tallied them off in turn as they happened, saying to myself in each case, with a sigh, 'Another one gone—and on my account.'" Later there would be no economic or social injustice in which he regarded his hands as clean.

Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly donated the plasma in his blood to three patients, echoing what one of his former patients did for him before he left Liberia. Brantly was caring for sick Ebola patients with the aid group Samaritan's Purse in Monrovia, Liberia, when he became the first American diagnosed with Ebola. His condition was worsening before he was flown to the United States in an air ambulance, but before he left, one of his former patients, a 14-year-old Ebola survivor, gave him "a unit of blood" for a transfusion.

After his recovery in August 2014, Brantly donated his plasma to Samaritan's Purse colleague Dr. Rick Sacra and freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, both of whom were receiving treatment for Ebola. Another American Ebola patient, Dallas nurse Nina Pham, also received a blood donation of some kind from Brantly.

Here's how doctors think it works: When confronted with a virus, the immune system creates antibodies to specifically target that virus, kill it, and keep it from coming back. Once a person has antibodies, they stay in their blood for life. If the Ebola antibodies found in an Ebola survivor's blood can be imported into a struggling Ebola patient's body, those antibodies can theoretically help the patient's immune system fight off the deadly virus. Doctors say that even though the sick person's body is trying to make antibodies, an infection can be so overwhelming that the sick person's immune system might not be able to keep up with the invading virus. As a result, the sooner someone gets a plasma transfusion, the more likely it is to help that person recover.

Possible Preaching Angle: In a much more potent and effective way, Christians have been cured by receiving the blood of Christ. His blood is 100 percent effective in providing new life to those who are dying without hope.

Walter McMillian was convicted of killing 18-year-old Ronda Morrison at a dry cleaner in Monroeville, Alabama in 1986. Three witnesses testified against McMillian, while six witnesses, who were black, testified that he was at a church fish fry at the time of the crime. McMillian was found guilty and held on death row for six years—all the while claiming his innocence.

An attorney named Bryan Stevenson decided to take on the case to defend McMillian. Stevenson told a reporter:

It was a pretty clear situation where everyone just wanted to forget about this man, let him get executed so everybody could move on. [There was] a lot of passion, a lot of anger in the community about [Morrison's] death, and I think there was great resistance to someone coming in and fighting for the condemned person who had been accused and convicted.

But with Stevenson's representation, McMillian was exonerated in 1993. McMillian was eventually freed, but not without scars of being on death row. One of those scars was early-onset dementia. Stevenson comments, "Many of the doctors believed [the dementia] was trauma-induced; [it] was a function of his experience of being nearly killed—and he witnessed eight executions when he was on death row." So even after McMillian was free from death row, free from prison, and an exonerated man, in his mind he was still a prisoner. When Stevenson would visit him in the hospital, McMillian was still telling his lawyer, "You've got to get me off death row."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Justification by Faith; (2) Prison Ministry; Racism; Prisons; Prisoners; Race Relations—This illustration also shows the lingering effects of racial injustice. In the NPR story Stevenson concluded, "One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly."

Think of Christ's resurrection as a store receipt. If you're in a department store and you buy some clothes, you should always ask for the receipt. Why? Because if you're still walking around the store a plainclothes security person could stop you and ask, "Excuse me, can I look in your bag?" And if you don't have a receipt you could get in trouble. So you if somebody stops you, you want to be able to hold up your receipt and say, "Oh, plainclothes security person, trouble me not because this proves that this has been paid for and I do not have to pay it again." The resurrection is a giant receipt stamped across history for all people to see, a receipt that allows you to know that your future is certain if you believe in Jesus Christ.

Editor's Note: In the same sermon, Tim Keller said, "If someone goes into jail because the law says that ten years in jail is the punishment for the crime, the day that man comes out of jail he has paid for the crime. That law doesn't have a claim on him anymore. He's free man. The wages of sin is death, and when Christ went down into death, he paid for our debt. When he came up out of the grave that meant it was paid. Christ's resurrection proves that it was fully paid."

Picture this: a bride and groom dashing out of the church, through the showers of birdseed and into the limo, all aglow with the light of love from the vows they've just taken. In the backseat of the car, en route to the reception, they embrace and kiss. Then the groom announces that he has something to say.

Now you realize, my dear, that, as far as I'm concerned, we can't really say we're married, because I don't know yet what kind of wife you'll turn out to be. I hope for the best, of course. And I'll help you all I can. But only at the end of our lives will I be able to tell if you've lived up to my expectations. If you have—then, and only then, I'll agree that we truly got married today. But if you don't, then as far as I'm concerned we were never married at all. After all, how can I call you my wife if you fail to be a wife to me?

Under such circumstances, it will not be a happy honeymoon—if there's one at all. A wife cannot be a wife if her whole existence as wife is conditional and under constant scrutiny (likewise for a husband). She will certainly fail. This groom has completely misunderstood [the power of marriage to transform the beloved]. The couple that tied the knot only 60 minutes ago is every bit as married as the couple celebrating their 60th anniversary. Whatever happens in the course of the marriage does not affect the "married-ness" of that couple.

Possible Preaching Angles: Justification by Faith, Gift of Salvation—In the same way, how can we be expected to love and trust a God always watching us like a hawk to see if we fail? Right standing with God isn't something that we have to generate from within ourselves. Right standing with God is a free gift—and that's what helps us grow to trust, love, and obey God.

Max Lucado tells the story of being dropped by his insurance company because he had one too many speeding tickets and a minor fender bender that wasn't his fault. One day he received a letter in the mail, informing him to seek coverage elsewhere. As he reflected on how he wasn't good enough for his insurance company, the spiritual tie-in was too obvious. "Many people fear receiving such a letter [from God]," Lucado writes. "Some worry they already have."

Lucado then imagines this correspondence, straight from the Pearly Gates Underwriting Division:

Dear Mrs. Smith,

I'm writing in response to this morning's request for forgiveness. I'm sorry to inform you that you have reached your quota of sins. Our records show that, since employing our services, you have erred seven times in the area of greed, and your prayer life is substandard when compared to others of like age and circumstance.

Further review reveals that your understanding of doctrine is in the lower 20 percentile and you have excessive tendencies to gossip. Because of your sins you are a high-risk candidate for heaven. You understand that grace has its limits. Jesus sends his regrets and kindest regards and hopes that you will find some other form of coverage.

This is how it goes for a slave, who constantly lives in fear not knowing enough, not doing enough, not ever measuring up.

Treadmills are fun if you want to get a little exercise. Unfortunately, for many people, religion feels like running on a treadmill: they're working hard but getting nowhere. That's a good image for one way to approach the Christian life, especially if you consider the history behind the treadmill. Elyse Fitzpatrick writes:

In Victorian England, treadmills weren't found in air-conditioned health clubs—they were found in prisons. Treadmills, or treadwheels, as they were called, were used in penal servitude as a form of punishment. Some treadwheels were productive, grinding wheat or transporting water, but others were purely punitive in nature. Prisoners were punished by spending the bulk of their day walking up an inclined plane, knowing that all their hard labor was for nothing. The only hope the prisoner had was that, at some day in the future, he would have "paid his debt" to society and would be set free. He couldn't even look on his labor at the end of the day and know that, if nothing else, he'd been productive.

As you struggle with [sin in your life], remember that [Christ] has set you free indeed and that you're no longer sentenced to be chained to the treadmill of sin and failure. He has paid the ransom demanded for your release from sin, and you're now walking in the freedom of the glory of the sons and daughters of God.

Matt Chandler tells the following story about what happened after speaking at a conference near his hometown:

When I was done preaching, I decided to hop in my car, drive twenty minutes to the town in which I grew up, and look at the houses that I remembered from back then. As I drove into town, I passed a field where I once got into a fistfight with a kid named Sean. It was not a fair fight, and I did some shady, dark things in that fight. I completely humiliated him in front of a large crowd of people …. Then I drove past my first house, and I thought of all the wicked things I had done in that house. I passed a friend's house where once, at a party, I did some of the most shameful, horrific things that I have ever done.

Afterward, on the drive back to the conference, I was overwhelmed with the guilt and shame of the wickedness that I had done in that city prior to knowing Jesus Christ …. I could hear the whispers in my heart: "You call yourself a man of God? Are you going to stand in front of these guys and tell them to be men of God? After all you've done?"

In the middle of all that guilt and shame, I began to be reminded by the Scriptures that the old Matt Chandler is dead. The Matt Chandler who did those things, the Matt Chandler who sinned in those ways, was nailed to that cross with Jesus Christ, and all of his sins—past, present, and future—were paid for in full on the cross of Jesus Christ. I have been sanctified "once and for all" …. He remembers my sins no more …. And I no longer need to feel shame for those things, because those things have been completely atoned for.

There is a great story about a little boy who killed his grandmother's pet duck. He accidentally hit the duck with a rock from his sling-shot. The boy didn't think anybody saw the foul (sorry!) deed, so he buried the duck in the backyard and didn't tell a soul.

Later, the boy found out that his sister had seen it all. And she now had the leverage of his secret and used it. Whenever it was the sister's turn to wash the dishes, take out the garbage, or wash the car, she would whisper in his ear, "Remember the duck." And then the little boy would do whatever his sister should have done.

There is always a limit to that sort of thing. Finally he'd had it. The boy went to his grandmother and, with great fear, confessed what he had done. To his surprise, she hugged him and thanked him. She said, "I was standing at the kitchen sink and saw the whole thing. I forgave you then. I was just wondering when you were going to get tired of your sister's blackmail and come to me."