Saving Others? Not.

“I, yes I, am the Lord, and there is no other Savior.” ~Isaiah 43:11

I remember the year, it was 1988 and I was what would be best described as a self-confident nineteen year old whippersnapper off to learn how I was gonna change the world. Yeah, me. All you’d have needed to do to confirm was ask me. Press 1 for Ken, press 2 you’re mistaken.

In my mind, God had called me to go and learn how to save people, and here I was being the obedient servant, “Her I am Lord, send me.” Surely the world was on its way to hell in a hand basket and I was gonna be the remedy.

God could certainly benefit from having a guy like, well… Me. No need for the Trinity. There was me, me and me. “I’m your go to guy, G.O.D.” The Father, Son and Holy Spirit could long at last take a breather, I had it handled. He’d pulled me out of a pile of garbage, and now I was gonna return the favor. What good could come from Detroit?… I was going to show the church world, the hour had come.

It was Dallas Texas, a place I had never been, and here I was at Bible College. Dealey Plaza , the legendary Cowboys and their plastic make pretend cheerleaders, Stars and Mavericks, and the Rangers in Arlington. On top of that, we’re talking Texas, a place annually competing for a top spot in the race to be God’s Country—Bible belt buckle material if there ever was such a place, and now they had me on their team.

My watch was ticking and my opportunity was ripe. I was gonna win the world, so I figured I’d better learn the lingo of a gospel preacher. The ins and outs and all that jazz. I’d shown up, I’d arrived and I was going places. My own Utopia. Shoot, I went to the most famous preacher on this planets church and sat in the front row, smack dab in the middle. Hands down, I was destined for this. It was the place to be if you were serious, and I was serious.

My pastor, most likely the country’s most well-known at the time, called me out of a crowd of maybe 3000 at a Sunday night gathering (and the joint sat more than that), “Young man, God’s on your life.” Turns out more than two decades later, he was spot on, but looking back (and hindsight does help), I didn’t take it the right way. Instead of seeing God was with me, I mistakenly thought God was hitching his train on me. Surely, in my mind, I’d be saving people soon. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. I figured that God needed me. Me, God’s little big man, or big little man. But little did I remotely realize at the time, he was the big God.

All I needed was some fine tuning. No craftsman can master his trade without some tools. High profile speakers would arrive each week to share with us, some big shots, and others humble men and women of God (the ones who decided against fleecing the people of God). Some had some pretty outlandish and crazy other-worldly stories about exploits they’d done for God and warned, “Follow Jesus, expect trouble and be a soul-winner.” The message rarely was, “All people need is Jesus, not you, so just give them Jesus.”

People who’d traveled the globe winning souls, taking Malaria pills and saving the lost. And I figured I could save the lost too. Wrong turn.

Upon graduation I was eager and itching to hop on a plane and travel to the utmost ends of the earth myself and share all of the wisdom I had gleaned, spew all of the bible verses that had sunk into my thick skull and seeped into my haughty heart by osmosis, and of course those I’d diligently committed to memory.

Instead, I landed back at my home church in Michigan as a youth pastor at the ripe age of 21, and I was gonna make my mark. I’d preach and teach when I wasn’t taking a kid who’d lost his father to McDonalds, or packing up the church van to take a bunch of wild-eyed hormone raging rowdy teenagers up north for a winter retreat to eat some of the worst food this side of jail. But we had a blast, we made it fun.

As time passed I began to realize that my hubris and grandiose plans of saving the world might have been a bit misguided, and that as much as I wanted to jump in and save a rebel 16 year old from running off the cliff to destruction, I couldn’t.

Yes, Paul writes to his young protégé Timothy, ”Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” And Solomon wrote in his famed Proverbs, ”…he that winneth souls is wise.”

But neither of these verses mean that you, I, or SuperPastor can save a single soul. We merely point people to the Rescuer. There is only one Savior. If you, or I, get the honor to share his love with anyone, great, but to assume we can save a single soul is heresy. I like David Stanley’s bio on Twitter, “I’m just a nobody, trying to tell everybody, about Somebody who can save anybody!”

So, if you ever see a sign like this out in front of a church, you might think twice about attending. Remember the next time you’re tempted to think you’re God’s answer to a perishing world, you can’t save a flea with a bad case of the flu, let alone yourself or anyone else.

Point people to Jesus, ain’t a soul that will be belting out the grateful tunes of heaven thinking, ”Because of Ken I am here.” No, that won’t happen.

It’s only and solely because of Jesus anyone will be walking the streets of gold.

HT (for image): Rae Whitlock @Facebook via “Stuff Fundies Like”

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