The Jesus Sim Card

[This is the first article contributed by a member of our forum, Starsky. It was inspired by the pastor Daniel from Arise Church]

A guy was walking down the street. He was on the phone and in the middle of a very important conversation. Then unexpectedly his phone cut out for no reason and all that was left was an annoying beeping sound in his ear. He was confused as he had full battery, signal and had hours of free talktime left. Annoyed, the man rang up Vodaphone services and explained his situation to the operator. The operator calmly asked “Is your phone in good working order sir?”. And the man, still upset at losing his important phone call replied that yes, he was using it to ring the Vodaphone store so obviously was working. So the operator checked his record and noticed that he had recently changed his plan to a better one, the best there is. The man confirmed this, not sure where the operator was going with this. The operator said not to worry, that there was nothing wrong with the phone, and that there was nothing wrong with the plan, both were working fine. The problem was with the man’s sim card. Unfortunately his current sim card couldn’t manage the better plan and was keeping the phone from connecting to this new plan.
It’s the same with us and God. Often we hear preaching that tells us that there’s something not right in our lives and that it needs to change. But that’s not always the problem. Romans 3:23 says that “all have fallen short of the glory of God” and so there’s no change that we can make to ourselves to make ourselves able to connect with God (or the plan in the man’s case) with out a little extra help. We need a new sim card. We need something to connect us (the phone) to God (the plan). And yeap, all you smart people guessed it! That’s where Jesus comes in. He bridged the gap between us and God and allowed us to connect to the better plan, the best there is. Jeremiah 29:11 says that God has a plan made especially for each one of us and His plan for us is better than anything we can find anywhere else.
But here’s the thing, if you have 2 identical phones and put a sim card in one but not the other, on the outside they look exactly the same. In fact, on the phone without a sim card you can do pretty much everything you could normally do with a phone that has a sim card. You can add contacts, play games, take photos, check your calendar, add notes and birthdays etc. But here’s the catch:
…That’s not what phones were designed for…
They are add-ons. Secondary. The “B-team”. A phone is designed to be A PHONE. It’s designed to make calls, receive them, text, send photos, and connect the owner with the world. Without a sim card, a phone can’t do what it was created to, it’s only good to look at it. It’s empty. Luke 3:9 says that “the axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Likewise, if we want to be a generation to rock our world, to do what we were created to do, we need the right sim card, the right connection, we need Jesus. Two thousand and seven years ago Jesus worked this out and realized that we needed someone to connect us to God, to put Heaven as an achievable goal. For that very reason, He came to Earth and died one of the most horrible deaths so that we could come to meet and know God. THAT is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that is the message that was, is, and always will be. Amen.
John 15:13… “The greatest love a person can show is to die for his friends.”

Author: Starsky (inspired by pastor Daniel from Arise Church)