Commentary: Reality check
By Carmen Fowler, The Layman, March 4, 2010
When I checked in, my boarding pass indicated that my flight would leave from gate C42. I got my coffee and sat down to wait. I processed through some e-mails, returned a couple of calls, read my morning devotions, and then started to wonder. It seemed as if my flight should be boarding but I was virtually all alone at gate C42. I verified the information on the boarding pass, I verified the information scrolling in digital red letters over the desk where the gate agent should be. It seemed as if I were in the right place at the right time, but no plane, no other passengers, no movement toward my desired destination. 
Carmen Fowler
I collected my things and headed across the terminal to a gate that was populated. I inquired, “Nashville?” and without looking up and without a word, the gate agent pointed back to gate C42. This was a person who thought they knew, but clearly did not know. Had I trusted this blind shepherd, I would have missed my flight. How could I have known that the P.A. system was down in that section of the terminal and that a gate change announcement had been made? The airline representative should have known, but did not. He should have verified the information that he was dispensing, but he was too busy with other concerns to care much about one lost passenger.
Time was evaporating. I was entering that collapsing window in which you can be denied a seat if you’re not in the gate area. I was confident that my flight was boarding, I just didn’t know where. I scanned the terminal for the screens. My flight was listed as boarding – at gate C42! I knew that was not the truth. I pulled out my cell phone and called the airline’s toll-free number. After navigating through the menus I heard a voice ask, “How can I help you?” The answer I was looking for came quickly, “gate C24, it looks like someone reversed the numbers.”
I made my flight.
There is more to the Christian life than just having your ticket in hand for the final destination. There is actually navigating the Christian life in the meantime. There is misinformation, there are false teachers and there are blind guides. You cannot simply sit and wait for someone else to take responsibility for you, at some point, when the signs all indicate that you’re in the wrong place, you have to get up and start moving!
It is time for each of us to apply ourselves to the process of sanctification. As the Bible instructs, we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Certainly, the “work” of Christ upon the cross is all-sufficient to achieve our justification, but “salvation” encompasses already, not yet, and right now realities.
We are already justified: by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
We are not yet glorified, but one day we shall be!
We are right now being sanctified: being conformed more into the likeness of Jesus Christ, from one degree of glory to another.
Sanctification is the every day in every way process of dying to self and being raised to newness of life in Jesus Christ; of putting off the old self and putting on the new self; of taking every thought captive to Christ, speaking the truth in love, and walking in step with the Spirit.
It does not happen automatically. It happens intentionally by actively yielding ourselves to the Holy Spirit working within us.
The debate about nominal Christianity (people who are Christians in name only) and those who are fully devoted disciples (followers) of Jesus Christ begs the question of sanctification. It can be argued that just calling out “Lord, Lord,” will prove itself to be insufficient. Receiving Christ’s act upon the cross for the forgiveness of your sins and counting on riding His coattails into the Kingdom is not authentic discipleship. He is Savior, surely, but He is also Lord.
Are you walking with Him? Toward Jerusalem? Is your face “set” with His toward Calvary?
Are you praying with Him? For the unity and the purity of the Church? For the Father’s will to be done? Giving thanks for everything in all circumstances, even in Gethsemane?
Are you dying with Him? Crucifying the desires of the flesh every day? Dying to self-centeredness and offering your life as a living sacrifice?
Are you rising with Him? Living the abundant and joyful life of a child of God, co-heir of the Kingdom, with a promised inheritance that is beyond imagining?
This is a good day for a reality check. God is really God. Jesus is really Lord. The Holy Spirit is really alive and present and moving. The Bible is really the Word of God. The Lost are really perishing. The Church is really called. The End is really coming. The message is really urgent.
Let us lead lives that are worthy of the calling to which we have been called and let us do so today.
Carmen Fowler is president of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and executive editor of its publications.