If Salvation is a gift, why do so many people works so hard to keep it?

I have a friend whose church teaches that one can lose ones salvation. He qualifies the belief by saying that one would only 'lose' their salvation if the sin they committed was deliberate and habitual. Firstly, every sin is deliberate. We don't sin by accident. Further, being born sinners sin by our very nature is habitual. They go further to call it backsliding. That is where, say, a person gets saved, goes to church, becomes involved and active in the church, suddenly decides that this isn't the way they want to go, and leaves it all behind. My question is, why would anyone who had received Jesus want to do that? I mean, we have just received eternal life, been rescued from the maw of hell, and promised a home in heaven eternally. You would be mad if you threw that away. But according to the Bible, at least the way it speaks to me, one can't throw it away once one has received it. First of all, it is a passive receiving. In Ephesians, in the whole armour of God passage, all the 'takes' are active verbs, ie take the sword of the spirit, the shield of faith, the shoes of the gospel of peace, etc, EXCEPT for the one where it says "take the helmet of salvation". That is a passive verb. In other words the helmet of Salvation is placed upon the head of the one who receives it.

Romans 6:23 says, "For the Wages of Sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is a gift. When I was a kid, and I got a birthday gift or a Christmas gift, these were not gifts I picked out. These were gifts that were given to me. Free. And do yo know, my parents never came to me and said, you know, you don't deserve that gift anymore, I am taking it back to the store. (There was the one time where I was given a really nice Tonka VW Beetle for Christmas, and I smashed the roof in with a rock, and then told my mom it had been in a bad accident...that time I lost all my trucks and cars for a month I think) But what kind of father would take away a gift he had given his child. Furthermore, no matter what I say or do, I will always be the child of my parents. There is nothing I can do to change that. With God, not only are we Born Again (John 3:3) into His Family, we are also adopted as his heir (Galatians 4:4-8). So not only were we born, making us family by blood, but we were adopted. When a family fosters a child, they are looking after that child, meeting his needs practically, but when he comes of age, he goes out and is not part of that family. A family who adopts a child, however, has stated that not only do they wish to meet that child's needs practically, they want to make him one of their own, to meet his needs emotionally as well. So how can that be undone.

When Jesus met the woman at the well, he told her that "...He who drinks of the water I shall give him shall never thirst..." (John 4:14) To me, never means never. No matter what I do.

In another place Jesus says,

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. John 10:27-29

No man, means NO MAN, (Not even myself)

So what about backsliders? Good question. I went through a crisis of Faith for ten years from 1999 until 2009, when my mother died. There were many reasons for it, which I won't go into here, but at no time did I ever stop believing in Jesus. I knew when, where and how I had gotten saved, and I knew that this malaise I was going through was not permanent. It was my mother's death in February of 2009 that jerked me back onto the road. I felt perfect peace in my heart even as I sat there and held my dad's hand as she took her last breaths. She was gone, but I KNEW right then and there that she was in the presence of Jesus. So being backslidden, to me means that we stopped or strayed from the path He has us walking. But HE is always right there, and as soon as we turn our eyes on him and repent, bang, he forgives us. When the prodigal son returned to his home, and asked to be a servant, did his father say, "No you left me and your brother (and presumably his mother) and went and did what you wanted, and no way am I letting you back in this family."? No. He saw him from far away, and ran to him. This is of course a picture of Jesus waiting for his straying child. The lamb who strays still belongs to the flock.

I come to the conclusion that God is more powerful than me. If I am in His hands, how on earth can I get away? If I am His child, is He going to deny me? As He IS my Father, why would I ever deny Him? I would never tell someone that I don't know Wallace Gene Burchard. No way. That is my dad. My Daddy when I was little. And When in Galatians God says we cry "Abba Father" the meaning is the same. God wants to be that loving Daddy to us. Why on earth would he ever take that away from us. To my friends out there toiling to please Him and keep their salvation, take heart. He has given you a gift. HE isn't going to take it away, and you don't have the power to throw it away. So stop working to placate God, (because Jesus already did that once for all) and work because you LOVE HIM.

Something that really Bugs me

In this day and age when everyone is supposed to be "going green", there is a tred taking place in the retail area that is really disturbing to me. It is packaging and labelling. Yesterday I bought clothes. I bought 8 items of clothing and removed a total of 14 tags from them. Whenever we buy an item of small to medium size, it is packed in plastic (usually heat sealed Polyethylene) which will still be around for the next new millennium. I was thinking about the clothes though. If each item has an average of 1.4 tags on it, and a billion people buy an article of clothing every day, (random number, no statistical backup on that) that is that many pieces of cardboard that gets thrown in the trash. Hopefully people use their recycle bins. When I think of how much trash we generate as a family in a week, I feel okay, as we recycle a lot of things. But manufacturers of consumables should really work on cutting down on the packaging they use. The other day I opened a Little-est Pet Shop toy my daughter was given as a 'hope you feel better' gift after breaking her arm. It was in a cardboard box (1) sandwiched between two molded polyethylene sheets, (2 and 3) with another pet sheet wrapping each individual toy (4, 5 and 6) each one of them was tied to the cardboard box by two of those plastic twisty things that bread bags used to be closed with. (7,8,9,10, 11 and 12) So in a box 3 inches square by in inch thick there were 3 toys and 12 pieces of packaging. I don't think this is evil or insidious, but it is unnecessary and a waste of resources. It may not seem like much when looked at by itself, but imagine the millions of identical packages in toy stores all over the world....the mind boggles.

The thing is, we CAN do something about it. Go to the websites of the manufacturers of things you buy that you notice have excessive packaging. Every company has a feedback function on their site, or should. I once read that one letter received equates to 20 thought of but not sent, and companies do pay attention to that.

So let's get on them.