Heart Tracks - Freefall

"Jesus answered, 'It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' " Matthew 4:4

I recently heard Elizabeth Hasselbeck relating on her preparing to make her first skydiving attempt. She said that one of the most important parts of the preparation is knowing who it was that "packed your parachute." That foundation of trust had to be there. There needed to be confidence in the skill and ability of the person who did the packing. She said that when you got into freefall, that time between jumping out of the plane and the pulling of the chord of the chute, you needed to know you could completely rely on the one who had packed it. What filled that chute bag which her very life depended on. She then connected that experience to the believers day to day living. What is that fills our life when we enter into our own "freefall" moments? Who is it that has "packed our chute," and is our trust in His ability and skill to the degree that we'll willingly risk our very lives on that skill, ability, and trustworthiness?

I remember a cartoon where one of the characters leaps out of a plane, pulls the chord on his parachute, and an anvil pops out. The anvil then drags him down to an unpleasant landing. It brings to me the question of when you and I are in our "freefall" moment, what comes out of our "chute bag", that which is the foundation of our faith life; an anvil or a parachute? Who have we relied upon to "pack our bag?" What is it that fills our hearts, minds, and consciousness? Is it His Life and His Word, or is it something else? Someone else? Anything else, self-sufficiency, religious philosophies, secular formulas, all will fail us. And all have their root in the value system of the enemy. All will be heavy anvils that plunge us to ruin.

We are living in a time when the philosophies of the world, the so called new age thinking, are increasingly finding their way into the teachings of the church. Disguised as sound doctrine, they are little more than what some have called "Christian magic." A great deal of emphasis is put upon what we can visualize in our minds and then see come about as reality. With God's help and approval of course. Many have bought into it, many more are being seduced by what has at its center, not Christ, but self. When the freefall moments of life come about, they find that those teachings and ideas are nothing more than anvils of destruction. Someone other than Him has "packed their parachute."

One thing is certain in this life; you will have that time when you enter into freefall. Likely many times. Here's something even more certain; when the time comes for you to leave this temporary realm and enter into eternity, who is it that you have relied upon to fill and define your life? Who packed your chute? Jesus Christ and His words and life, or that one who is everything Christ is not. Your answer defines where you'll spend eternity; with Him, or....totally without Him. One is eternal life, the other, eternal death.

Blessings,
Pastor O