A Confession: Part 1 of a new blog series that doesn't really have a name.

What if I do not have my name written in the Lamb’s book of life? Only God knows, of course, as Jesus delivers both the statement, “Well done good and faithful servant; enter into My rest,” and its opposite when He says, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”

“OMG….NO!!!” I shout as I receive the blunt word.

He need not even speak, “Yes.” There will be no reconsideration once the words are out of His mouth. There doesn’t need to be. He knows my faith wasn't faith at all. He speaks His judgment; it was so of me and now revealed. Thus I am sent into an eternal future.

Fears gripping my gospel hostage are of death and of life.

The gospel I tell myself exists allows me to be coddled by an assurrance my sin can be no other way, and God loves me in my sin. Of course, grace alone saves, and it does so covering all of sin. Yet this self-made gospel skirts the issue of a transformation unto holiness by focusing on positive and beautiful platitudes. I mold the gospel into something like a living room prepared for a Better Homes and Gardens cover photograph: immaculate in the beautiful composition of textures, colors and interesting focus pieces, but in which I do not actually live.

I am afraid of dying, and instead of realizing in the fullness of Christ in my heart that He dispels all fear of the body’s passing, I pursue worldly dreams of fulfillment so that the moment of death comes without regrets of I have not “lived” life.

I am afraid of dying impoverished.

I am afraid of dying ashamed of my accomplishments.

I am afraid of dying and never having connected honestly and deeply with others.

I am a afraid of emotional pain and avoid it, but ironically once I am on death’s door there is no changing all the bad decisions of self-comfort with which I chose to live.

Where is the faith in Jesus which fills all in all so that the world is nothing but an alien land through which I pass with my only reason to be as giving heavenly succor to others?

Which shifts me, obviously, to the decisions I make in life.

I am afraid of living…

Because I am afraid of loving.