I got saved when I became a Christ follower at seventeen. Jesus saved me FROM hell and eternal death and he saved me TO heaven and eternal life when I was seventeen.  I wanted to go to heaven and be with God when I died.  And I definitely didn’t want to go to hell.  That’s the arrangement I thought I was entering into when I asked God to forgive my sins and save me that day.  But I was wrong.

What I didn’t understand was that there was SO much more to that deal than just eternal life.

Being saved FROM hell and TO heaven was a great deal as far as I was concerned.  But I had no idea that there were so many other things that he planned on saving me FROM and so many other things that he planned on saving me TO. Every time we allow Jesus to save us FROM something, he saves us TO something better, more glorious, more pleasurable, more valuable and eternal.  It’s a glorious EXCHANGE he offers us over and over during the course of our lives.

It’s the manner in which we pursue our desires that always seems to get us into trouble, isn’t it?  We desire so deeply…either to move into pleasure or away from pain. So, we make illegitimate exchanges in pursuit of these desires.  Struggling with sadness?  How many of us exchange that sadness for a little relief through alcohol?  Suffering from some physical pain?  We can exchange the pain by numbing out with narcotics.  Anxiety?  No problem.  Trade it in by smoking some marijuana – it’s legal now in most places, you know.  Stressed out?  We can barter it away for some solace with a quart of Haagen-Daz.  We make these kinds of exchanges every day by using physical solutions to solve our spiritual problems.  These are just a few examples of things Jesus wants to save us FROM.  He has a better exchange for us if we’ll buy in.

I think C.S. Lewis had these kinds of exchanges in mind when he wrote …

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

– The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

Imagine.  Jesus asking us to exchange our mud pies (fun as they may be) for a weekend at a coastal resort, playing in the surf with him…and we turn him down!  He offers us “infinite joy” in exchange for the mud pies of drink and sex and ambition because he has something so much better for us.  He wants to give us something those things can’t and were never designed to deliver in the first place.  Jesus wanted to save me from my mud pies – alcoholism and addictions to pills, porn and sex.  But even more, he wanted to save me from all the things that were behind those addictions that were driving them – fear, shame, resentment, anxiety, worry, pride, disappointment, sadness, regret, despair  – all of these powerful spiritual forces that held me in bondage, made life miserable and kept me from fulfilling my true purpose in life.  He wanted to save me FROM those things and TO something better and more valuable: real joy, peace, and a purpose in my life that has brought me to where I am today with a powerful story to change the lives of others.  He wanted me to exchange those temporal, suicidal pleasures for things eternal and glorious that would make me the man he always has wanted me to be.

Every time Jesus saves us FROM something, he saves us TO something better.

Every time Jesus saves us from something, he saves us to something better.  He makes a way for us to exchange shame for worthiness.  He gives us the ability to exchange the ugliness of pride for a humility that ushers in his grace.  He deeply desires for us to trade our sorrows and despair for real joy.  If we’ll come to him with our fear, he’ll exchange it for supernatural courage and faith – walking on water stuff.  Alcohol, pills, porn or sex just can’t do that in any lasting manner.  Sorry.

That day that I got saved, I thought I was exchanging my sins for eternal life – what an amazing gift!  But I ended up receiving access to so much more!  I thought I could get saved and then would live a life of exchanging my sadness, worries, fears and regrets for the momentary pleasures of money, alcohol, sex, porn, pills or other things like the rest of the world does.  I really did think that meeting my desires in those ways was what life was all about.  I meet scores of men and women that think the same.  We may not say it with our words that way, but our actions speak that belief, loud and clear.

Suffering sucks.  Being in spiritual or emotional pain sometimes seems unbearable and we are willing to do almost anything to get relief.  But what I’m learning is that, just when it feels like trusting Jesus and sitting through the pain of my unmet desires will surely prolong or increase my misery…it doesn’t.  And I’m always delightfully surprised. Instead, it ends in joy.  It ends in worship.  It ends in gratitude.  It leaves me with a larger life and a fuller heart.  It’s a miraculous exchange and it pays off every single time.  It’s as if God is playing a glorious trick on me.  He pulls a fast one and tricks me into exchanging my mud pies for a vacation at the beach…and so much more.

These are the exchanges Jesus asks us to make…teaches us to make.  Wiser exchanges that save us FROM the pain of this world and save us TO something new and glorious, if we will only allow him.  We just need to be willing….willing to let him do what he died to do from the very beginning and exchange the things of the world for the greatest gift of all: the gift of himself.