The Language of Salvation
My grandmother owned and operated a restaurant and bar. She enjoyed sharing great food, soul music, cocktails, and interesting conversations with her friends and customers. When the bar closed for the evening, she cleaned up, turned down the lights and climbed the stairs to her apartment.
Every Sunday, her older sister and her young daughter encouraged her to come to church with them. On occasion she joined them, but wasn’t interested in a relationship with Christ. The women at church told her she had to stop smoking cigarettes, drinking liquor, wearing cocktail dresses, and dancing to the “devil’s music”. She was overwhelmed by the list of things she couldn’t do, so she continued living the high life.
She suffered with arthritis in her spine and lived with chronic pain. Spinal surgery was her only option, and the probability of a positive outcome was slim, so she refused. One Sunday she decided to go to church, and went to the altar to get prayer for her spine. They prayed for her, and she accepted Christ. She left church and returned to her home above the bar. The music she loved to sing and dance to, and the voices of friends whose company she enjoyed for years vibrated the floor. The enticing aroma of liquor and tobacco seeped up through the vents, but she resisted.
She prayed to God for help with smoking and drinking and He removed the taste from her mouth. As she worked in the church, her pain subsided and God healed her spine. My grandmother replaced the joy of her occupation with the joy of salvation. After maturing in her relationship with Christ, she regretted not coming to Him sooner. She often wondered why the church women never told her about the joy of serving the Lord, His healing power, and the peace she would gain in Christ.
God chose her and she remained faithful, steadfast in her faith, and committed to the work of the church. And, she lived above the restaurant and bar until the Lord called her from labor to reward, never tempted by what was happening beneath her.
In closing, I hope her story will encourage anyone who is in the early stages of their relationship with Christ, and anyone who may leave church and return home to an environment that challenges their commitment to Christ. Learning to live holy is like learning a foreign language. With faith, practice, patience and time you become fluent. Christ has chosen you. Accept Him, follow and serve Him. With prayer, perseverance, patience and consistent fellowship with the people of God you become fluent in the language and lifestyle of Christ.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear
fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
John 15:16