A Come-To-Jesus Post

In the midst of the current financial crisis with people loosing their jobs, homes, cars, retirement funds ,and their ways of living, for God only knows what reason, my first quarter book sales at www.bluefishbooks.info have been better than they have been in ages.

Odd that.

I attempted to understand what’s going on by reading Jonathan Salem Baskin’s book Branding Only Works On Cattle (Business Plus. N.Y. c.2008). Mr. Baskin runs a global branding consultancy; he has 26 years experience in the field of brand marketing.

Most of the time I have no idea what Basking is talking about. I’ll never make a businessman.

However, three things he said struck a cord with me:

First, he said, “If you own a hammer, all the world’s problems look like nails”.

I thought that was the coolest quote.

In another place he says, “You won’t get the sale if you don’t ask for it”.

Then, in the one quote that really grabbed me, Baskin says, “The medium is not the message—the message is the message”!

How these observations fit with the increased sale of my books, I can’t figure. The books sell because readers buy them. That’s good. I like that. It gives me hope as a writer.

But, I feel that I’ve been remiss, especially in this on-line diary chronicling my own life and interests. Mostly I do what I do because I do it. That’s what I write about, and I rely on perceptive readers to pick up any deeper message than that.

I need to make a transition here and I’m not sure how to do it. Please bear with me because I want to move from books and blog to more important things. Much more important things.

Every once in a while in these postings, I write something that reveals I am not a preacher, just a common, ordinary, garden-variety Christian. I hope that Christ shines through my life—well, maybe not shines, but is at least obscurely visible behind all my foolishness.

As a result of reading Baskin’s book, I question just how much of my true message gets lost in the constant me, me, me murk of my postings.

And since the message is the message, I feel I should state it here:

Jesus Christ is Lord.

That’s it.

That’s my message.

It’s familiar.

Every Christmas we hear the Scripture—And His name shall be called wonderful, counselor, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father…Emmanuel, God with us…. And the angel told Joseph, “Thou shall call His name, Jesus, for He shall; save His people from their sin”.

Yes, no matter what we have done, no matter what has been done to us, God came in the flesh to rescue us because He loves us; it’s in His nature to love.

From the beginning God had some purpose in mind for creating you and me, a purpose that would result in His glory and our happiness. But the world the flesh and the devil debased us, degraded us, squelched the glory that should have been. And this happened with our overt (or sneaky) full cooperation.

We have done deeds of darkness in broad daylight.

Yet we want other people to think well of us. We wear masks so we’ll look good—Somehow I think of that weird masked guy in the Burger King commercials.

And behind our false fronts, behind our false deeds, behind our worse sins, our hearts yearn. Like a thirsty deer in a parched land sniffs the air for a scent of water, so we thirst, so we long for something more, for Someone More, for God. Our hunger’s never satisfied with this world’s bread; it leaves us stuffed but hungry still. We want to be home. How shall we sing the song of the Lord in the land of a stranger?

Sprawled and hungover and headachy we wake amid the debris, litter and consequences of last night’s party, we straighten our clothes and brush our hair and try to look presentable as though nothing had happened. We say we’ve done nothing wrong, nothing everybody else isn’t doing too.

Even so, we fake it. Yearning for God, we continue in our addiction to self, sin and satan. We’d like to change the unpleasant aspects of our slavery, at least momentarily on the morning after, but we slip right back, powerless to quit.

And those of us who aren’t party people sneak our sins in the privacy of our own homes and look down on those caught out in public. We snobs get to think of ourselves not as sinners but as superior—which compounds our own situation as rebellious, miserable offenders.

We serve a miserable master. We chose to. On some level, we like it that way.

We call it being human.

And we’re right.

But God too became human. He came to destroy the works of the devil. He healed the sick. He taught the ignorant. He fed the hungry. Whatever was wrong, Jesus made right.

We tortured Him to death for His efforts. We nailed Him down hand and foot. Stuck Him in the side with a javelin like a skewered pig. Mocked. Capped with thorns. Spit on.

Killed Him dead, we did.

In due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Now, here’s the kicker.

Death could not hold the Lord of Life. He rose under His own power. He is declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection form the dead. King of kings. Lord of lords. The bright and morning star. The living God.

Death.

Life from death.

Jesus rose or rotted.

We also will rise or rot.

Death comes on all men because all have sinned.

You and I will spend all eternity somewhere.

If Jesus is not true, then nothing counts.

If Jesus is true, then nothing else counts.

Now comes the call to action.

St. Paul said, “”If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”.

This is where the faith hits the fan.

Mr. Baskin’s expertise in marketing tells me that I won’t get action unless I ask for it. OK, I’ll ask.

Is there any reason you should not make Jesus Christ the absolute lord of your life, right here, right now, today?

As you sit right there in your pajamas in front of your computer, I ask you to do three things:

1. Pray—Simply tell Jesus that you chose for Him to live His life as Lord in your heart. If some specific sin occurs to you, ask Him to forgive you; that’s between you and Him.; He’s more willing to forgive than we are to ask. Scary stuff this, isn’t it?

2. Relax—He does the rest. This is a supernatural transaction between you and God going on here. He’s alive, remember?

3. Tell—Then I ask that you tell what you’ve just done to the next person you meet, your wife, your husband, your kids, your mailman, the pizza delivery guy, whoever. Just say, “You know what I just did? I’ve asked Jesus to come into my heart as Lord. What do you think of that?”

Congratulations. You’ve just become a Christian, a follower of Jesus. No telling what’s going to happen next! He still has in mind that purpose He created you for in the first place…Wild times. Peaceful times. Dangerous times. Fun times. Painful times. Joyous times…. Who knows? With Jesus in charge, the world’s a different place and you’re a different you:

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away, all things are become new and all things are of God. Think of a scene from mythology, think of a shining dragon just hatching out of the egg, spreading glossy new wings, born now empowered to fly—that’s you.

Or, it could be.

Baby dragons can’t choose to come out of the shell; we can.

You can never choose any time but today. Yes, this very day. There is no other time. Our only freedom is in choosing.

When I began reading about sales techniques, marketing books, and branding cattle in Mr. Baskin’s book, I never expected to end up writing a post like this.

Please let me know what happened.

I’m interested.