Q:
My neighbor says she's given her life to Jesus and has been saved, but I don't understand what she thinks she's been saved from. I thought she had a pretty good life before she got religion, but I guess she decided she needed something else.
A:
If you were to ask her, I’m sure your neighbor would tell you that she did need something else — and that “something” was a personal relationship with God.
Why is this? The reason is because you and I don’t simply have a body and a mind; down inside of us is something else, which the Bible calls our soul or spirit. We can spend a lifetime pampering our bodies and filling our minds with knowledge — but if we ignore our souls, our lives will be incomplete and unfulfilled. Many people go through life without ever thinking about this, and yet down inside their lives are empty and without meaning.
But God didn’t intend for us to be this way. God gave us our souls or spirits — and He gave them to us so we could know Him. Pleasure and possessions can never satisfy us — and the reason is because we were made for God. And God has done everything possible to bridge the gap between us and Him — a gap caused by our sin. He did this by sending Jesus Christ into the world to take away our sins.
My prayer is that you will face your own need of God, and then do what your neighbor did: Ask Christ to come into your life. Jesus’ promise is for you: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).