When the pressure becomes too great, men bend or break.  My greatest tears come from seeing the innocent tortured, but next to that it is watching as men refuse to heed God’s call and discipline in their lives.  What is a Sovereign Lord to do if He has chosen us for salvation and we avoid, ignore, walk away from or simply close our ears to His invitations?  Some would agree that He should simply just give up on those who refuse to answer.  Is that How you view God’s love, shallow, quick to dissolve, relenting?  Or do you see God’s Love as relentless, caring, patient, long-suffering and omniscient?  He knows who will eventually come to Him, He knows the exact moment and the pressure necessary to assist each heart in surrendering to salvations’s call.  Pride resists salvation, guidance, forgiveness and conformity to Christ.  Therefore pride is the enemy of each of us in our quest for relationship with the Lord.

“Take my hand”, is always the cry of someone trying to pull the dangling person to safety as they hang from the ledge.  We must first have the will to live, the desire to survive otherwise we would simply drop or hang there until our energy expires.  By nature it is the act of submission to the offer of assistance necessary to escape the predicament.  We must first comprehend our circumstance and accept that we cannot save ourselves before we may effectively reach out for the offered hand of salvation.  Pride must give way to reason and free will choice.  God will not force salvation upon anyone, but He may have to allow you to make such bad decisions that you end up hanging from the ledge in order to provoke that precious moment of decision and surrender.  We are all sinners hanging from that ledge where death is the wage for our willful acts.  Some will choose to accept His hand of salvation and others will eventually fall, but make no mistake either is by choice.

I look around and see so many people refusing the hand of Christ, dangling from the ledge they cry out for help, yet refuse Him who stands ready to save.  If you can hear me as your energy diminishes, I beg you to put aside your pride and self-reliance.  We cannot get to heaven on our own performance.  It is a gift of God that brings us back into relationship with a Holy, Mighty and Caring Father.  There is one way to salvation, and that through Christ.  This world will have no mercy upon any of us, it will say to each of us, “save yourself, fool”.  I do not wish to die for the sake of proving that I could not learn.  My pride is secondary to my reason and conscience.  I choose Christ because He is the only route to God, now and in eternity.  Take my hand Lord, pull me from this firey ledge.  I don’t want to fall and I cannot save myself.  Free me from my bondage, no matter who created it, it is You who holds the key.  Praise God in the name of Jesus Christ the King.