About 2 years ago a 19 year old student from one of my college classes came to see me in my office. He closed the door and began to talk about his grades. He was worried about continuing to make the classes since his father’s serious medical was worsening. He begins to cry and I could see that he was genuinely worried about his Dad. I reached into my pocket and handed him a stone pocket cross and suggested that it might give him strength to deal with these issues. He knew what it was and what it represented. He accepted it gladly and thanked me. We all got through the semester and I heard no more from this student until this past week when I literally almost ran into him in the hallway at school.
I asked him how he was and he immediately lifted his shirt and showed me a huge red scar running from his Adam’s apple down to his stomach! He had an aortic aneurysm about 10 months ago and had to have emergency surgery. He said it all started a couple of weeks earlier when he wasn’t feeling well and he went in for some tests to see what might be wrong. He still had the cross I gave him and he somehow sensed that he should keep it in his pocket and even in his hand each day as he went through the tests. He went right home after the tests but he received a phone call that same day from his doctor telling him to stay put and as inactive as possible. They would be sending an ambulance to bring him in for surgery.
Now this was incredible. The heart aneurysm in his body had expanded (like a balloon) to over 5 inches in diameter! There was every medical reason why he should have died from this. But he did not. He credits the power represented by that cross for his miraculous event as he hung onto that cross while waiting for the ambulance. I was speechless as he spoke. But I was very, very happy I gave him that cross when I did. At the time I wasn’t sure it was the correct thing to do. But obviously it was. It made a big difference to him and his family. I guess that’s what it means to listen to the Holy Spirit’s urging.
How To be Saved The Bible gives specific reference as to what we must do to receive eternal life. St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, chapter 10, verses 9-10:
“That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”
Being saved is not a very complicated process. God looks at what is in the heart of a person to see if they truly believe and mean what they are proclaiming. And by making this statement of faith we become justified (righteous) before God and our sins are forgiven. We simply have to honestly believe in our hearts and say out loud with our mouths, that Jesus Christ is our risen Lord and Savior. The end result is a personal relationship with Jesus and salvation for all eternity.