Seeing salvation blog linked to Premier Radio series




What does it mean to be saved?  It’s something personal, practical, purposeful and out of this world. In four 15 min Premier Radio programmes we’ll be looking at salvation under these four headings in scripture, song and testimony and could we be looking at any more important topic? It’s the distinctive of Christianity since, as Peter says of Christ in Acts 4v12: ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved’. Listen again at https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-1


What does it mean to be saved? In a terrible accident a girl only seven was severely burned and taken to hospital. It’s told that on the last night of her life all the patients were quiet in the ward where she lay, and nothing was heard but the tick and strike of the clock, when suddenly she then broke the silence by sweetly singing from her favourite Sunday School hymn ‘Jesus the name high over all’ [on the audio below] the line ‘Happy, if with my latest breath I may but gasp his name’. With that she died but not before many had heard most powerfully from her dying lips the message of salvation. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-1


What does it mean to be saved? ‘This is eternal life’ we read in John 17 verse 3 ‘to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent’. To be saved is to welcome intimacy with the Creator who's shown himself in Jesus Christ. When I look at the stars I think of the poet Dante who said it's Love that moves them.  The Love that made and moves the stars came to earth to move and enter human hearts. He has entered mine. Christians are those who've heard Jesus knocking on the door of their heart and opened up to intimacy with God. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-1


What does it mean to be saved? To be saved is to enter an intimate personal relationship with God that is the gift of Jesus Christ. There is of course an imbalance in that relationship in that we love God as creatures loving our Creator with a love that's a shadow of his for us as expressed by songwriter Carey Landry [on the audio below]:  ‘My own belief in you, my Lord, is only a shadow of your faith in me…your deep and lasting faith’. This is salvation - to know the Creator’s faithful love and to live and move in it, something personal, practical, purposeful and out of this world. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-1


What does it mean to be saved?  There are few questions as important as this and you can listen below to the second 15min Premier Radio programme from a series addressing the  question under four headings: salvation as something personal, practical, purposeful and out of this world. You’re invited to listen to biblical teaching, songs and testimonies from mid-Sussex folk on salvation as the practical gift it is, freeing us from the power of sin, fear, sickness, death and the devil.  With St John’s second letter my prayer is: ‘Grace, mercy, and peace ... be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love.’ https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-2


What does it mean to be saved?  ‘Peace, perfect peace is the gift of Christ the Lord’ is a song by Kevin Mayhew on today’s audio link [below]. Russian Saint Seraphim lived in the 18th century and he's famous for practical teaching on the Christian life. One of his most famous sayings is this: ‘Acquire inner peace, and thousands around you will find their salvation’ - a wonderful, powerful image of how people find themselves drawn to those who have peace within themselves. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-2


What does it mean to be saved? Lack of inner peace is a basic human problem and it’s a consequence of living at a distance from our Maker. We have problems, we humans, but our Maker knows so, anticipates this and has provided a practical way through our problems. Many a time he remakes us through the problems we face. I fall short in my relationship with God - we call that sin - but whenever I recognise my failure to trust him, or lost chances to serve my neighbour, I come to Jesus who died and rose for me and say sorry, I gain a clean slate and I get remade and empowered to live better. To be saved is a thoroughly practical process. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-2


What does it mean to be saved? ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling Paul writes ‘for it is God who is at work in you’. If you’ve ever been involved in making paths using concrete, you’ll  know you start humbly, digging out the way and building a frame, usually in wood. Only then do you mix the concrete, pour it and leave it to set. ‘Working out our own salvation’ is like the preparation work of digging out and constructing the frame as we clear our sins and lay hold of God’s promises of forgiveness and healing. Then, like concrete poured, God does the bit that lasts as we ask and receive from him. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-2



What does it mean to be saved?  What a question! Is there any matter more significant than this? The Acts of Apostles gives us a direct answer in Chapter 16:31 from Paul and Silas: ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved!’  In these four 15 min Premier Radio programmes [audio link below] we’re examining salvation as such a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ attained by repentance, faith and baptism. To be saved is something personal, practical, purposeful and out of this world. In the link below we listen to the great salvation hymn: ‘God is working his purpose out’.  https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-3


What does it mean to be saved? We are saved from sin to serve this purpose of winning God glory! In practical terms this means openness to his invitation for his work. Christianity is a historical religion of salvation. We trace God’s people back to Abraham and then to Moses sent to free God’s people from slavery. When God came among us in his Son a new exodus began from the slavery of sin. This forward movement gathers momentum through the Church and impacts the whole creation, which, as Paul states ‘waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God’. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-3


What does it mean to be saved? To be saved is to make your purpose one with the saving work of God announced by his Son Jesus Christ establishing his kingdom of justice, mercy, peace for which the creation itself is yearning. We are saved to serve and be part of this aspiration in our deeds and also in our words of witness. Salvation places us under the authority of Jesus who gave us this great commission: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’. (Matthew 28:19-20)


What does it mean to be saved? It’s believing in the risen Lord Jesus Christ, accepting him in repentance and faith, and it’s something personal, practical, purposeful and out of this world. In St Mark’s version of Our Lord’s Great Commission we read his promise that ‘The one who believes and is baptized will be saved’, which reminds us that our purpose for living as believers is inseparable from that of the Church which is the gathering of the baptised. Salvation is solidarity with the Church and the Holy Spirit’s work of perfecting the baptised.


What does it mean to be saved? Through a daily audio link [below] to four 15 min Premier Radio programmes we’ve been looking day by day at the most important thing in the world, salvation as God’s gift to all who welcome his Son Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. We’ve been reminded how it’s something personal, practical and purposeful as we look at it from this world. We conclude by looking as best we can at salvation in its dimension out of this world. When you’ve encountered God personally, experienced his saving help and woken up to his purposes for yourself and the universe it’s natural to take him at his word for the full salvation of heaven. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-4


What does it mean to be saved? Before I worked as a priest I worked as a scientist. Many a times we plotted graphs drawing lines through marked up experimental data. In this way we could extrapolate beyond our existing data to uncharted realms currently beyond experiment. I like to draw an analogy with charting God’s saving help through the years of my life. I have seen him keeping his promises to me of answering my prayers, freeing me from anxiety, guiding me and so on. As I see the results of God’s faithfulness over the course of my life I can’t but extrapolate beyond my death to see delivery of the promise of eternal life with him. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-4


What does it mean to be saved? I have been saved. I am being saved. I will be saved. This is the faith of those who commit to Jesus Christ and it rests on his conquest of death. As Stuart Townend’s hymn expresses it: ‘Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered; and we shall reign with him, for he lives, Christ is risen from the dead!’ When you’re saved you look forward to the fulfilment of God’s call upon you, a gift of the fullness of God shared with all the saints. To be saved is to be put you more on your feet for a purpose - the transformation of the universe as it is gathered under the reign of Christ including the populating of heaven.
https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation/Clips/Seeing-Salvation-Episode-4


What does it mean to be saved? John saw ‘the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’. These words speak of heaven as like the consummation of a marriage as we finally see what we’ve believed we’d see. ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them… death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more’.  To believe God has made his home with mortals is at the heart of Christianity. It is affirmed at the start of the Gospel of Saint John for Jesus and here, at the end of the Revelation to Saint John, it is affirmed for all believers.

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