Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;
    make known among the nations what he has done.
Sing to him, sing praise to him;
    tell of all his wonderful acts.
Glory in his holy name;
    let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
Look to the Lord and his strength;
    seek his face always.

• Psalm 105:1-4

And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

• Acts 2:21

The Boilerplate

My wife started to write her thoughts down at one point in her life.  Some hints point to 2018 and 2019, after she had her open-heart surgery.  In spite of her trials and the atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) that required her to take blood thinners, this was before her major health decline.

Sometimes, she wrote a thought.  Other times, she wrote a Bible verse, and maybe her idea on that day.  Other times, it is a prayer, but I am going to take one entry at a time and try to write about it

Her comment

“And it shall be that everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved.”

• My wife’s next comment in this notebook

The Discussion

As I have written in some of the past posts in this final series, I have no idea when my wife wrote this, but it was probably 2018-2019.  That would put it after her open-heart surgery, but before everything else fell apart, namely end stage kidney failure.

But this verse of Scripture is one we talked about a lot.

We knew a lot of people who said the right words, but made no effort to put them into practice.  We even heard a pastor once tell us in a church leader meeting that he believed that it was impossible for an unbeliever to say, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.”

My argument to the contrary and my wife agreed, was that the non-believer is in the control of Satan and Satan is the master of lies.  Anyone can simply say those words, especially when they do not even know what they mean.  Those kinds of people will say anything, any lie, to get what they want.  And what many want these days want is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace.’

They want to say a few “magic” words that get them into Heaven without making any changes in their life, never believing in Jesus, never trusting in Jesus, never surrendering to God’s will.

So, in some kind of way, I think the calling upon the Lord in Acts 2:21 must be from the heart, not empty words from a tongue that is filled with lies.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory