God’s Coast Guard
 
There are so many people out there that think they can get away with sinning because no one will see or no one will ever discover their misdeeds.  All of us are guilty of sin and fall short of the Glory of God.  Even though we are Christians because way back when in the old days we gave our selves to the Lord asked Christ to come into our lives and accepted him as our Personal Savior. We still fall short!  Why because we still sin.  Now we have all seen the bumper sticker that says I am not perfect I just a Christian.  Yes you are forgiven and your sins were washed away on the day you made up your mind to follow Christ.  But let’s take time to talk about what happens after that.  
 
 Let’s pretend for a minute that you are drowning.  Your in the middle of this gigantic lake and you are either splashing around trying to keep your head above water or you are struggling to swim ashore fighting the current that is just pushing you back 1 stroke forward 2 strokes back.  Now here comes a helicopter and lowers a rope down to you for you to grab onto but you have to make a decision to stop struggling grab hold of the rope and get pulled to safety.  Some of us can do that.  But there are some of us who are too tired and going down for the last time and they don’t have the strength to hold onto the rope so they slip back down into the water.  Just to be back in the same situation.  So the guys in the helicopter says this isn’t going to work and so they lower a basket down to you and put you in the basket and raise you up to the helicopter.  Now here again you have to decide if you are going to stop struggling or let go and let the guy from the helicopter rescue you.
 
Take a moment think about it.  Your in the basket safe but you are in so much shock that you are still struggling trying to splash around or trying to swim.  The guy from the helicopter is just watching you shaking his head.  Don’t you look ridiculous?  Now more than a couple of things can happen here.  They guy from the helicopter can 1) knock you out so you can’t struggle any more 2) Gently try to console you so you will calm down with the danger of tipping the basket knocking both you and him back into the water causing yet another person from the helicopter to have to try and rescue you or there is always 3) Just throw you back in and say forget about it this one doesn’t really want to be saved.
 
Our lives are built around decisions that we make big and small.  When we made a decision to follow Christ He said Follow Me he didn’t say I will follow you.  Got that!  He isn’t even the guy in the helicopters in the story above (those are the people he sent to you to minister to you before you accepted him.) No Christ is the Guy on the shore that seen you were in trouble sent the helicopter and when you wouldn't listen to them he waded out in the water and said Hey you idiot just stand up the water isn’t that deep we can walk out of here together and get back to the shore.  Just follow me and I will show you the way.
 
So now we stand up and say ok I’ll follow you and get to shore. You start walking but on your way to shore you take your eye off the guide and you see this really pretty rock it is just a couple of feet off the path you could run over and grab it and be back on the path in no time at all.  So you do that and you grab a hold of the rock it is heavier than it looked but you don’t want to turn it loose so here you go struggling to catch up but your lead is getting further and further ahead of you cause you can’t go as fast because the rock is weighing you down.  So you holler out hey wait a for me I’m coming your getting to far ahead of me.  So Christ turns around and says didn’t I tell you to follow me what are ya doing way over there and what are ya doing with that big rock are ya trying to drown yourself.  So again you realize how stupid  you are just a few minutes ago you were drowning just a few seconds ago you were being rescued but you had to go off by yourself again now you are almost right back were you were.  With another decision to make.  Either drop the rock hurry back up to the guide or try and keep your eye on the guide and struggle along the path carrying the rock.
 
Don’t fool yourself we all are wading out of the water and we all see the pretty rocks to be picked up along the way and we all are tempted along the way to stop and pick up the rocks.  Jesus is walking ahead of us showing us the way he isn’t carrying any rocks so he has to keep stopping and waiting for us to catch up because of the load we are carrying.  
 
When we get to shore he is going to say what took you so long?  We are going to have to say I was weighted down by all these pretty stones I picked up along the way.  I can see him now rolling his eyes and shaking his head at you.  He'll say look around you on shore the rocks are prettier.