To Be “Good Enough” to Be Saved

I give lots of “you need to lose weight” talks every day.  After one of these talks, after the patient left the room my nurse who helps me order labs and imaging and helps me write prescriptions and helps me educate my patients as well starts talking to me as I’m finishing up writing my note.  Maruja was the name of the nurse who was with me this particular day (I have different nurses every day , if I get one at all).  She starts talking about how she wishes she was content with what she ate “like I am” so that she could be “thin.”  I talked to her about the book I’d read, “Made to Crave.”  How the root of most of our problems with food is we eat to fill our emotions and pain and emptiness and not just for nourishment.  That’s why we eat what taste good.  That’s why we have such a great and bad problem in the USA.  Our food tastes good even when you’re not hungry.  I talked to Maruja about going to God to be filled and that self control is a fruit of the spirit.  Something that is a product of letting God and the Holy Spirit have more and more reign over our lives.  Maruja then said that she was raised Catholic and had only been baptized as an infant.  I asked her why she didn’t give her life to Christ now publically in baptism, since from talking to her I could tell commitment wasn’t the issue.  She was already trying to live for Christ, she’s just human.  She said she was waiting until she was ‘a little better,’ a ‘little’ more faithful at attending church, praying and reading her bible.  Sounded familiar.  That’s how and what I thought when I was 11-15 years old.  Until I finally gave my life to Christ publically in baptism at age 16.  Yes I was living for him before then, but here’s the 100% true retrospective statement.  I was trying to be “good” and live for Christ from my own strength prior to my baptism.  After my baptism, looking back I can see the initiation of the fruits of the spirit in my life: self control, love, peace, etc.  Especially self control/discipline.  Goodness is a product of a relationship with Christ, not what earns us the relationship.  Please pray for Maruja and her faith.