Salvation: The Greatest Part

"For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself."  Colossians 1:19-20

If the best part about Salvation to us is that we don't have to go to hell, then we've missed God.  We'll become complacent and unthankful.  We were created in His likeness for relationship with Him.  We were saved for the same reason: relationship with Him.

My desire is to become more and more desperate for God Himself; not what He has saved me from, not what He can give to me (possessions in this life), but Himself.  I did not get married so that I would simply not be unmarried anymore, nor for the things that my wife would do for me.  I got married so that I would be able to experience my wife in relationship for the rest of my life.  In the same way, I must seek after the greatest part of Salvation: God Himself.  In this is true thankfulness - a constant awareness, not of what I was able to miss, but of Who I was able to gain.

Out of this fullness of relationship with God come the fruits of God and the blessings of God.  Seek first His Kingdom - then comes the rest (Matthew 6:33).  The fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23 do not come by me practicing them.  They come by seeking after the One who owns them, that He may bestow them to me.  In the words of A.W. Tozer, "Press on into the deep things of God," where all fullness dwells.