Our first vehicle was a 1967 Chevy Impala. It was a bright sky blue color and I thought it was beautiful. Bob bought it when we were still dating. He made payments of $96 a month, insurance included, for three years. We drove it until it was almost literally falling apart and then my brother bought it from us, he said for parts but I really think he just felt sorry for us that we were driving such a heap of junk!
As I said, we drove the tires off of that car, literally. We always carried at least 2 spare tires in our trunk and we needed them, usually both of them, every day. At that time Bob worked with his uncle hanging sheetrock, and every morning we would drive to Garrison to meet him. Bob would ride to work with him and I would have the car to use during the day. I would usually have to change a flat before I could go get Bob that evening, then maybe change another one while I was waiting for him to arrive.
Bob and I, or one of his friends, or all of us, would frequently (every evening) drive around the ridge (Glade Top Trail) to see if we could spot any kind of wildlife that might be worth hunting (when the proper season opened, of course).
One afternoon when we were driving around that rough old gravel road, we had our usual flat. Delbert was with us that evening, so he and Bob jumped out and changed our tire. Another mile or so up the road we had another flat. No problem, we also had another spare, so they changed the flat again. Another 2-3 miles, and we had another flat. Guess what, we had one more spare, so they changed the tire again and we continued on. Now we were getting a little bit uneasy. We didn't have any more spares in our trunk, but as we discussed it, we decided we had already had 3 flats, we couldn't possibly have another one, could we?
We could, and we did.
We had our fourth flat of the evening, and no more spare tires. We were still quite a way from anybody's house, and this was long before anybody had anything like a cell phone. There was only one thing to do, so Bob walked out to a house on the highway and called my dad, who brought us a couple of tires to get us home with.
Another time we were on our way to Big Creek to go sucker grabbing, and we had a wreck. We were going pretty fast, and we came up out of a dip in the road and met a pickup coming around a curve on our side of the road, so Bob took the car over the bank of the road. We barely missed an enormous oak tree and finally slid into another, smaller oak. We were both safe and sound, but our beautiful blue Chevy had a crumpled front fender. If we had collided with the pickup instead, we would have probably been killed, and at the least we would have been in serious trouble, as we soon found out.
When we got our car fixed, we found out a surprising fact. We had collision insurance, but no liability insurance. We had thought we had full coverage on the car, but somehow when they had bought the car, they had failed to get liability insurance on it. The collision insurance paid for getting our car fixed, but we had been driving around for over a year without any kind of liability. If we had been hit by the other vehicle, although it was the other driver's fault, we would have had to pay for everything, just because we had failed to have the most important kind of insurance on our car, liability.
So, now to the moral of my story.
Salvation is not meant to be insurance, but some of the same ideas apply.
You can be a good person, the best person in the world. You can do good works and deeds, and have everybody admire you. You can even attend church every time the doors are open, have church membership, read the Bible every day and pray until you are blue in the face, and none of it will matter unless you have asked Jesus Christ to forgive your sins and to be your personal Savior.
All the other things can be compared to having collision insurance, but no liability. You may think you are covered, and that's all you need, but until you are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, you have nothing. He has made Himself liable for us all, He took our sins upon Himself and died on the cross because He loves us and so that you and I could be saved from hell. He offers us the gift of salvation because He loves us, and I hope that if you haven't yet, you will accept this gift of love from our Savior and return the love to Him that He so deserves. Probably the most read, most memorized verse in the Bible and one of the most beautiful-John 3:16.
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