Minute Meditations

There is a story about a school teacher addressing her class which was studying statistics. She informed them that somewhere in the world there is a woman having a baby every 12 seconds. Her question to the class was, ”What do you think about that?” One brightyed student spoke up excitedly saying, ”Find that woman and stop her.”

Statistics won’t mean a thing to us if we fail to understand what they are teaching us. Statisticians throw a lot of numbers at us in order to convince us that we should buy this product or that. When it comes to the Truth, the one statistic we learn from God is that the majority is always wrong. You can never prove you are in the right by quoting the number who support this belief or hold that doctrine.

At the time of the flood there were at least one billion, thirty million people on the earth. (This is worked out mathematically using only five children to a family based on Genesis 5.) Of this number only eight entered the ark. When God decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham hoped God would save cities if there were 50 righteous found in them. Concerned this figure might be too high, he finally hears God assure him that he would save the cities if there were ten. Unfortunately this figure was still more than twice as many as were found there.

When they asked Jesus if there are few that be saved his reply was, ”Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” In Matthew’s gospel Jesus said, ”Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”

So the fact is that while many seek to enter, only a few do. What is the difference between the many who seek and the few who find it? Certainly Christ died for all; Peter tells us that the Lord is ”not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentence.” Why then are so few going to be saved?

The simple answer is that most will not be saved because most did not really want salvation more than anything else in all the world. The key is in the difference between seeking and striving. Jesus told us to strive, which according to the Companion Bible means to struggle or agonize. The word seek has simply the meaning of desire. There is a saying in the world that ”if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” A beggar usually is too lazy to work hard enough to provide his own transportation but he doesn’t mind wishing.

If we simply wish to be saved, then we won’t; but if we really strive to be saved, then we will. Jesus tells us that it is his Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. We cannot earn it, but God is not going to give it to those who do not want it more than anything else in the world.

Even in this life many people are failures because they do not want success enough to work for it. We are to ”work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.” Not that our work will earn it, for as the next verse explains, ”It is God which worketh in us both to will and to do his pleasure.” God is willing to work in us and through us if we really want to receive His gracious gift of salvation.

God is not going to grab anyone by the heels and pull them kicking and screaming into the Kingdom. If we don’t want the kingdom enough to strive to enter, then rest assured, we won’t be there. On the other hand, God’s good pleasure is to give the kingdom to all who really want it with all their hearts. The one statistic to remember is this: God is not willing that any should perish but most will. If we will truly strive to enter in at the strait gate, Jesus will be there to say to us, ”Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”