Do you remember playing the lava game when you were really young? The rules are pretty
simple. You have to get from one part of the room to another, but you can’t touch the floor.
This is because the floor is hot lava, and if you stand in it, you’ll die. So you have to jump
from furniture to furniture to stay alive. But sometimes, the distance is just too far, and you
can’t make the jump. You try, but you land on the floor and lose.
When I was young, I realized at a very basic level just how distant I was from God. One day,
my parents explained the Gospel to me. Gospel means “good news.” The good news is the
story of who God is and what He does for us. I remember understanding the gist of it, but
the illustration my Father added made it all click. He told my older brother to jump from
the sofa to the love seat on the other side of the room. The jump landed him about half way
across the carpet. Dad then told me to try. I already knew that my attempt would inevitably
end in failure. I mean, if my big brother couldn’t do it, how could I? But I guess there’s no
harm in trying, so I clumsily raised myself on my two legs. And I jumped. Well it may be
more accurate to say I fell, off the sofa. It was at this point that my father laid himself
prostrate on the floor and told us to walk across. My six-almost-seven-year-old-brother
leapt back on to the sofa and with cat-like ease strutted his way across Daddy’s back to the
loveseat. I was not so agile. If I remember correctly, I slid myself off the sofa and found a
position for each foot on which I might balance my weight. At an embarrassingly slower
pace, I began to walk forward. I imagined the gray carpet to be a red-hot river of lava. My
Father’s back was the bridge to safety. As I reached his shoulder blades, I lost my footing
and almost teetered off. But by some miracle I caught my balance, stretched out my arms to
the loveseat and pulled myself up.
My Father explained that in this activity, the loveseat was God and we were separated from
him, sitting on the sofa, because we are not perfect. God is perfect and we can never be with
Him unless we are perfect as well. The problem is that each of us has done bad things. God
calls these things “sin.” And sin makes us imperfect. This is because sinning is rebellion
against God and when we sin we have to be punished. That punishment is death. And no
matter how hard we try, we can never be perfect by ourselves, saving us from the
punishment. But God loves us, so He sent Jesus Christ to make us perfect. Jesus died taking
on the punishment for our sin. He became the bridge that would bring us close to God.
I knew that I could never reach God on my own, just like I knew no matter how hard I tried,
I would never get as far across the floor as my brother. And he barely made it half way! I
didn’t know everything about God, but I could tell that He was pretty great, so I decided to
pray with my Dad to ask Jesus to bring me close to God. When I did that, God forgave my
sin, and made me part of His family.
In the many years since, God has continued to draw me closer to Him. It has been quite a
journey. We’ve gone on countless adventures together, and I look forward to where He is
taking me next. Over the course of this journey, I have consistently wandered away and
needed saving. Now, because I am part of God’s family, no matter what I do, I will never be
separated from God. But I can still live my life in a way that is bad for me and does not
please Him. And that’s what I have done many times. I have pursued the love of other
people around me. I have pursued money, I have pursued accomplishments, life styles and
seemingly everything else that has come my way. God saved me from my sin that day when
I was four, but He has also been faithful to save me each time I try to run away from Him.
He always brings me back to Him and makes everything alright again. He gives me
something far greater than anything else I can find here on earth, and that’s Himself. I am
already seated on that loveseat as his beloved child. But in this life, I constantly look
forward to the day when he returns or calls me home to Heaven where He lets loose the
fullness of his greatness.