A life shaped with salvation is much different than a life shaped with destruction. Shaping our lives with salvation means that we step out of the way and let God save us. (After all, when we try to save ourselves, we ultimately fail. We will die someday. No amount of exercise or will-power will change that fact. But if we give ourselves to Jesus, though we will die, we will live.) Being shaped with salvation gives us the ability to answer those who taunt and words to speak to kings. Being shaped with salvation gives us hope and freedom, honor and love. That’s a good way to live!
Being shaped with salvation isn’t a lazy roll-over stature on our part. We don’t sit on the couch, eating potato chips and expect God to give us abs of steel. We don’t sit at a buffet gorging ourselves on everything that looks apetizing adn then expect God to give us healthy arteries and enduring stamina. No, the key to being shaped with salvation is allowing God’s hands to mold our lives… which means that we stop resisting his massaging and learn to move with his movement. We do this with our committed effort. We act as God acts upon us. We change as he changes us. We must continue to obey God’s commands, to be bold before others in faith, to delight in God’s words, and to meditate on his opinions and plans.
Does this reflect your heart, soul and mind today? Here is the sixth section of Psalm 119 (the letter "Waw"):
Let your love, God, shape my life
with salvation, exactly as you promised;
Then I’ll be able to stand up to mockery
because I trusted your Word.
Don’t ever deprive me of truth, not ever—
your commandments are what I depend on.
Oh, I’ll guard with my life what you’ve revealed to me,
guard it now, guard it ever;
And I’ll stride freely through wide open spaces
as I look for your truth and your wisdom;
Then I’ll tell the world what I find,
speak out boldly in public, unembarrassed.
I cherish your commandments—oh, how I love them!—
relishing every fragment of your counsel.
[~Psalm 119:41-48 (The Message); photo taken from sethbarnes.com]