How Do We Know When We’ve Been Rescued by God?

In 2016 I drove for a funeral at The Church of the Incarnation (Episcopal) in Dallas, Texas. Prominent banners announced upcoming sermons with provocative questions. One of them was, “How do we know when we’ve been rescued by God?” Now, in 2018, I feel ready to explore my response.

During the couple of years I drove funeral cars between interim pastorates, I was often thankful for what seemed to be divine protection, especially when driving the coach/hearse with their large size and limited visibility. Changing lanes, especially on the expressway, was particularly challenging. More often than I care to admit, I’d catch a glimpse or hear the horn of a car in the next lane just as I was starting to move over. I heaved a sigh prayer of, “Thank you God for protecting me from myself.” Even in our personal cars on ordinary streets, I’m sure anyone who drives has had that experience.

But the question of knowing we’ve been rescued by God goes far deeper. The revivalist tradition of Christianity puts a lot of emphasis on an experience of conversion in which they turn from a destructive life of sin to a new life of faith, hope, joy, righteousness in Jesus. People with dramatic stories of such conversions are enlisted to tell their accounts to encourage the listeners to make a similar turn from dark to light. Many Gospel songs celebrate these rescues.

My maternal grandfather had just such a story, having run away to sea from Sweden at 16 years old, apparently as the stereotypic young, hard living, hard drinking, hard fighting sailor. Jesus found him through the Salvation Army, and Let the Lower Lights Be Burning became his personal hymn with it refrain, “Some poor fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save.” Of course, even in revivalist communities, very few folk have had such vivid conversion experiences and may bemoan their lack of a worthy testimony.

My experience is more like Benedict’s teaching of “conversion of life.” When I pay attention, I am aware of something every day that needs conversion. Just this week I have felt anxious about relational and financial issues relative to caring for my wife with her Alzheimer’s and her 91 year old father who lives in Minnesota and needs to make a transition in his care. This is juxtaposed with the competing voices screaming in contradictory directions about the crisis of children separated from their immigrant parents. As I have done my lectio divina on the Gospel for Sunday (June 25), every day I am stunned by Jesus’ question in Mark 4:40, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” The plea of my centering prayer is for God to rescue me from the anxiety brewing with my faltering faith.

I can’t claim to have been liberated, but I keep sprinkling Psalm 31:5 on my troubled waters. “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” I cannot rescue myself, but as I ride these waves, I recognize God is keeping me from capsizing, and calming my panicked inclination to rock my own boat more than the storm itself.

So even as I acknowledge I have been rescued by God from my anxieties about things I am aware of, I am inclined to think God has rescued me from far more of which I am oblivious. When I was in an associate ministry position in New Jersey, in one sermon the senior pastor commented on Psalm 19:12, “Clear me from hidden faults.” On the way out of worship one of the congregation’s leaders said to the pastor, “I don’t think I have any hidden faults. I am very aware of plenty of my faults.” To which the pastor replied, “The problem with hidden faults is that they are hidden.” So for me, though I readily confess my failings as part of a healthy conversion of life, I also know plenty is obscured from my consciousness.

Sometimes in the retrospect of even years, I became aware of a danger that had eluded my notice and have later given thanks that I had been rescued from a hidden hazard. On a couple of occasions I had interviewed for ministry positions that I thought I would like and felt some disappointment when I wasn’t selected. Only later to learn that dissension in those congregations lead to painful challenge for the one who did take the position, who I believed was better equipped to handle it than I would have been. Though I have no way to document this, but I am confident God has rescued me far more often than I know.

So coming up with a formula to answer how we know we have been rescued by God is beside the point as I explore how I know I have been rescued by God. Focusing on the traps along my path only breeds anxiety and becomes its own captivity. I don’t need to go looking for them, but when I am aware of having escaped, to listen to Jesus ask me, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” as assurance not criticism. Then with gratitude I can relinquish my anxieties into the hands of the faithful God who has redeemed me. I write this today, not as a lesson I have mastered and am passing on to others, but as the word God is sending to rescue me today.