My wife was witnessing to an elderly rich lady on her death bed, one day, and she asked, "What must I do to be SAVED." My wife said, "Just believe in JESUS CHRIST, receiving HIM as LORD of YOUR LIFE, and You will be SAVED." The elderly lady said, "I will never believe that, BECAUSE IT IS TOO SIMPLE." A few hours later she passed away. No indication that She had ever received Jesus Christ. How sad!
There is a truth and a lie within the view the lady was speaking.
The truth is accepting Jesus as our saviour is too simple, like getting a ticket to get on a train.
But to admit we are worthy of judgement, to be destroyed and punished as our just reward,
and to know we resist anything good and righteous unless it benefits us, that is hard. It strikes
at the heart of our walk in life and all we achieve, which often we take pride in and would be
deeply hurt if we lost.
Then to accept Jesus, a preacher, a man of love and ethics is God the Lord of All, the judge,
the creator, the source, the beginning and End, the one who can take us home to this place
of the ideal, the perfect, the resolved and the contained, through the cross died for us so
that we might be forgiven, at which point we must give up the ways of the world and start
to walk in His ways.
That is hard, the hardest thing anyone can do.
I wonder when we present the gospel if we present it so it appears easy without depth,
we are probably not presenting the true emotional story of the gospel but ideas and statements.
I have met preachers who knew the words, but not the heart, and did not know conviction and failure,
just conformity and saying the right phrases. It is hard to distinguish between the two, if everything
is taught as a belief and not a heart reality.