Before John Wayne passed away! Most of you know he as an actor.You may not know what happened to him before he died. This is that story!
Robert Schuller’s teenage daughter, Cindy, was in a motorcycle accident and had to have her leg amputated. John Wayne is a big fan of Robert Schuller. He heard Dr. Schuller say on one of his programs that his daughter had been in an accident and had to have her leg amputated.
John Wayne wrote a note to her saying: Dear Cindy, sorry to hear about your accident. Hope you will be all right. Signed, John Wayne. The note was delivered to her and she decided she wanted to write John Wayne a note in reply.

She wrote: Dear Mr. Wayne, I got your note. Thanks for writing to me. I like you very much. I am going to be all right because Jesus is going to help me. Mr. Wayne, do you know Jesus? I sure hope you know Jesus, Mr. Wayne, because I cannot imagine heaven being complete without John Wayne being there. I hope, if you don’t know Jesus, that you will give your heart to Jesus right now. See you in heaven. And she signed her name.

She had just put that letter in an envelope, sealed it, and written across the front of it “John Wayne” when a visitor came into her room to see her. He said to her: What are you doing? She said: I just wrote a letter to John Wayne, but I don’t know how to get it to him. He said: That’s funny, I am going to have dinner with John Wayne tonight at the Newport Club down at Newport Beach. Give it to me and I will give it to him. She gave him the letter and he put it in his coat pocket. There were twelve of them that night sitting around the table for dinner. They were laughing and cutting up and the guy happened to reach in his pocket and felt that letter and
remembered.

John Wayne was seated at the end of the table and the guy took the letter out and said: Hey, Duke, I was in Schuller’s daughter’s room today and she wrote you a letter and wanted me to give it to you. Here it is.

They passed it down to John Wayne and he opened it. They kept on laughing and cutting up and someone happened to look down at John Wayne. He was crying. One of them said: Hey, Duke, what is the matter? He said (and can’t you hear him saying it?): I want to read you this letter. He read the letter.

Then he began to weep. He folded it, put it in his pocket, and he pointed to the man who delivered it to him and said: You go tell that little girl that right now, in this restaurant, right here, John Wayne gives his heart to Jesus Christ and I will see her in heaven.

Three weeks later he died!

Anonymous

The act of Salvation aka ‘being born-again’, ‘getting saved’, ‘coming to Jesus’, etc is a process which can know of but not control. We are called to seek Him and get it, not the other way around.

The wind blows where it wishes.

You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

John 3:8

So don’t chase the wind, seek God and everything else will be unto you as proclaimed here:

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

Matthew 6:33

This verse is often associated with people seeking worldly success but it also applies to salvation for it is God’s greatest gift. The point is to always seek the Giver not the gift.

Salvation is not some type of alien abduction but more of an emergency rescue of the distressed. Well, at least for some like yours truly. I came in the hard way. I was severely stressed and God orchestrated a series of events to help bring me into enlightenment. I guess I needed a break down before I was able to have a break through.

If you are NOT fully assured of your destination to Heaven, then I suggest you get your nose into the BIBLE [Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth), then get your ears upon some good gospel preaching (I really like the OnePlace app and especially good local church), and use your mouth to ask, ask God first and foremost and then other believers for guidance.

And you can always use your spirit to seek God’s Holy Spirit as described here:

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

Romans 8:16

God tells us to seek and we shall find:

“Ask, and it will be given to you;

seek, and you will find;

knock, and it will be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

However, many whom have be saved have come the other way. By learning from others at a younger age about God and receive Him before the age of accountability, before our hearts are severely hardened. The seed is planted in soft, fertile soil. Parents, family and teachers can help cultivate the Word. This is coming in the easier way. Hopefully by learning from OPM (Other people’s mistakes).

Even by the ideal method, we can get lost. Jesus knows His own and diligent seeks to save. As we read herein:

“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying?

Mathew 18:12, Jesus

If you find yourself in a terrible trial, call out and look up. God loves to save. Even if you consider yourself a Christian, you may find yourself in an awful situation, know that God is ready, willing and able to respond for your best. Keep in mind that He works in strange and mysterious ways.

We see here:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways My ways,”

says the LORD.

Isaiah 55:8

So we need to be open to respond to His intentions, not necessarily our own preconceived ideas. When we study the Bible, we can learn and peak behind the curtain a bit. It’s impossible to fully comprehend or understand God, or He would be much of a God now would He?

However, He has revealed what we need to know. We simply need to trust and obey, for there is NO other way. He makes is all possible.

God created us. He knows us best. Better than we know ourselves! We simply need to cry out, “Father, Dad, Papa, Abba – Help me”.

By faith and obedience to His call, we shall overcome. Indeed:

Then the angel said to me, “Write this:

Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!”

Revelation 19:9

P.S. If you are wondering IF YOU have been called, IF YOU have been invited to the great wedding, IF YOU are wondering if YOU are eligible to have YOUR NAME written in Book of Life just read and internalize and his famous passage:

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Did you catch the ‘whoever’?

If YOU are reading this that includes YOU.

I believe. Do YOU?

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

SUPPORTING SCRIPTURE

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Romans 4:25
He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification.

Romans 5:6
For at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Romans 5:7
It is rare indeed for anyone to die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.

Romans 8:32
He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?

Romans 8:39
neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Ephesians 5:2
and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God.

SELECT COMMENTARY

Pulpit Commentary
Verse 8. – But God commendeth his own love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The emphatic “his own” is lost sight of in the Authorized Version. It is not in contrast to our love to God, but expressive of the thought that the love of God himself towards men was displayed in the death of Christ. This is important for our true conception of the light in which the mysterious doctrine of the atonement is regarded in Holy Scripture. It is not (as represented by some schools of theologians) that the Son, considered apart from the Father, offered himself to appease his wrath – as seems to be expressed in the lines, “Actus in crucem factus es Irato Deo victima” – but rather that the Divine love itself purposed from eternity and provided the atonement, all the Persons of the holy and undivided Trinity concurring to effect it (cf. Romans 3:24; Romans 8:32; Ephesians 2:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:16: John 3:16; 1 John 4:10, et al.). If it be asked how this Divine love, displayed in the atonement, and therefore previous to it, is consistent with what is elsewhere so continually said of the Divine wrath, we answer that the ideas are not irreconcilable. The wrath expresses God’s necessary antagonism to sin, and the retribution due to it, inseparable from a true conception of the Divine righteousness; and as long as men arc under the dominion of sin they are of necessity involved in it: But this is not inconsistent with ever-abiding Divine love towards the persons of sinners, or with an eternal purpose to redeem them. It may be added here that the passage Before us intimates our Lord’s essential Deity; for his sacrifice of himself is spoken of as the display of God’s own love.
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KIRK’S COMMENTARY

What a plan! Talk about a superhero. Talk about not only saving the day but the whole of eternity of many souls who simply respond by faith to His amazing grace in amazing love.

Was sending Christ to the cross God’s first choice, as a pastor of a local church once asked me? (implying that it was) I think not. If it were the case, why send all the prophets before He? This story Jesus told must be about this very subject.

Parable of the Landowner 33“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT AND DUG A WINE PRESS IN IT, AND BUILT A TOWER, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey. 34“When the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce. 35“The vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. 36“Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them. 37“But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38“But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’ 39“They took him, and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40“Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?” 41They said to Him, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.” 42Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?

43“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. 44“And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

Did Adam and Eve not have a choice, a free will choice, to choose whether or not to partake from the forbidden fruit? Did God compel them to disobey His one command regarding the garden that is recorded?

No way. That would be cruel, unjust and unlike a the loving God expressed in the Bible. Did He know they would disobey Him?

Sure, if God chose to look forward in time.

Did God at that moment? I am not sure. Take a look at this analogy. As a human, we can watch life in live mode only. God has the ultimate DVR. He can watch the whole of eternity whenever and however He wants as He is omniscient. When I record a ballgame, it sure is a lot more exciting to watch the game if I don’t know the final score yet alone every play prior and move, though I could choose to find out in advance. Actually, I intentionally block out finding out when possible. I reckon God does something similar with our lives. I am persuaded that for love, life and relationship to fully reach its pinnacle there must be a choice.

Or what is it?

Where is the thrill and adventure if it all be preordained?

God the Christ chose to obey God the Father and die for us while we were dead in our inherited sin. We see His struggle bleeding precious tears of blood in the garden. What amazing redemptive love.

This is Easter!

This is love in action!

He died so we can live. If we are born twice (physical and spiritual), we die only once (physical). If we are born only once (physical), we die twice (physical and spiritual).

No, the Bible demonstrates Christ death wasn’t His God’s first choice but for our sakes, it was His best choice.

This is why the day Jesus went up on that rugged Cross is called Good Friday.

PRAYER

God, thank You for caring so much, even unto death of the immortal.