DAILY DEVOTIONAL – September 23, 2020
“Reservation Confirmation”
Prayer: Heavenly Father, Abba Father, we confess we too often turn to ourselves, our own piety, and our own success, as the basis for our hope and assurance of Your favor. By Your Spirit that You have put in our hearts, remind us each day that our peace and confidence of heaven comes from no one and nowhere else but the cross of Christ, Your Son, our Lord, in whom alone we find life. Amen.
Scripture: John 14:1-6
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Devotion – “Reservation Confirmation”
Perhaps one of the most frustrating things that can happen to you when you are traveling is a hotel, rental car company, or restaurant ‘losing’ your reservation.
There is a hilarious episode of the show Seinfeld in which this very thing happens to Jerry. Jerry approaches the reservation desk at a car rental company to pick up the mid-size rental car he reserved; with receipts and confirmation documentation in hand. The dialogue went something like this:
Jerry: I made a reservation for a mid-size vehicle.
Rental Car Agent: Okay, let’s see here. What name was the reservation under?
Jerry: Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld.
Rental Car Agent: I’m sorry, we have no midsize vehicles available at the moment.
Jerry: What?! I don’t understand. Do you have my reservation? Can you see it on your computer screen?
Rental Car Agent: Yes, Mr. Seinfeld, we have your reservation, we just ran out of cars. We have no more vehicles left to rent.
Jerry: But isn’t the reservation I made and have receipt of supposed to keep the car here? That’s why you take reservations, right? To ensure your customers get their vehicles?!
Rental Car Agent: I think I know why we have reservations, sir.
Jerry: I don’t think you do. You see, you know how to ‘take’ the reservation, you just don’t know how to ‘hold’ the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take a reservation!
I can relate to Jerry’s frustration. The last time my family and I took a trip to California, I had made reservations well ahead of time, and like Jerry, I had my receipts and confirmation documents to prove it. When we landed it LAX, a massive thunderstorm was rolling through, flooding streets, and backing up traffic causing us to have to drive two hours to a destination that should have only taken 45 minutes to get to. All this, after wrangling two small children for 6 hours worth of air travel in two airplanes.
When we finally did arrive at the hotel, it was still pouring and there was no option but to walk outside in the rain from the parking garage to the entrance which was about 25 yards away. Now drenched from the rain I finally get to the doors, and they’re locked. After the concierge at the front desk rolled their eyes because I was interrupting their cell phone call, they came to the door and let me in, only to tell me they couldn’t find my reservation.
Aren’t you glad that our reservation in heaven hasn’t been entrusted to any man or woman, or even ourselves? Jesus assures us that our salvation, our eternal reservation in the presence of God is secured by His promise. He says, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” This same Jesus, who time and time again told His disciples that He would have to suffer and die, but that He would rise again on the third day, and who in fact did rise again from the dead, defeating sin, death, and the devil, will also keep His promise to not only make our reservation through His own blood poured out on the cross, but keep our reservation in His mighty hands.
Jesus said in John 10, “27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
When you consider all the various world religions that claim to provide you with a reliable reservation in Heaven, it always seems to come with an “if you do this” or “if you do that.” Jesus said from the cross, “it is finished.” – John 19:30. God’s Word assures us in 2 Corinthians 1:22, “It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” When did God do this? How can you know that God has put His Spirit in your heart and that He in fact has established you as His child? When you were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is where God says in 1 Corinthians 12:13 we were baptized in and by the Spirit into one body of Christ, and Peter proclaimed in the first sermon ever preached (Acts 2:38), “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Only Christianity proclaims the truth that our eternal reservation and salvation is absolutely secure in Christ Jesus, because our salvation is not made nor kept by the efforts or religion or knowledge or even the beliefs of sinful men, but instead, our salvation is secured by the promises of God Himself, through His good work and through the blood of His resurrected Son Jesus. Unlike Jerry’s rental car company who ran out of cars, Jesus says that there are “many rooms”, there’s more than enough room in heaven for all who repent and confess Christ as Lord and Savior. Ephesians 2 says that it is “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” The confidence we have of our salvation comes not from boasting in ourselves or anything we have done, but in what God has done for us. “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” – Galatians 4:6.
Rest assured in your salvation my friends, secured by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
