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In the middle of the night, I woke up (or thought I did) to do some last minute holiday shopping on my favorite auction website, ebay. 

Anyway, I typed in the URL and noticed immediately that the homepage looked different. Next to the ebay logo was an asterisk *. Parenthetically inserted below was a notice that the “e” stood for “eternity.” So I was now shopping on eternity bay. What could be for sale that has eternal value?
 
There was an auction category I had not seen before advertising the Most Precious Auction in the World and the button was marked “All Souls.” I clicked on the button and a massive searchable database appeared that listed each and every living person on the planet. All Souls were for up for auction!
 
I looked in the Christian category and saw a few names I recognized. I perused through the list and read sometimes wonderful and often shocking things about people I know. One “sister in the Lord” I once knew had run off with a married man some years earlier because “God told us to!” She remains unrepentant and the flashing red alert over her name warns, “Sold Out!”
 
Curious, I typed in my own name. A page with my smiling photo and a comprehensive listing of my gifts, abilities and weaknesses appeared. There was a potential rating listed on how much damage or good I was capable of doing to the kingdom of God and the kingdom of hell respectively.
 
The level of detail was unnerving. Listed was everything from my preferences as a man regarding a specific female body type and race, to my hobbies, to my parenting philosophy, even to the specific gage and brand name of guitar strings I preferred. It was a meticulously researched dossier that would tell anyone reading it literally anything they wanted to know about me. The good, the bad, and the ugly about my life was all laid out coldly and clinically for anyone to see. It was my soul laid bare.
 
What was especially disturbing was the live auction that was playing out. The “Click Here to Buy Now” function had been disabled as I had earlier noticed it was for all Christians. Still, someone was trying to find a price at which I could be bought.
 
I saw bid after bid come up:
 
offer him power
offer him wealth
offer him a mistress
offer him the life of his enemies
offer him greatness in Christian service
 
The auction for my soul continued. I suddenly understood that the bidding would not stop until my death and only then would I be off the auction block. I was shocked that, potentially, in a moment of weakness, I might be bought so cheaply or even at all. I realized that those bidding my soul would not stop until they found my price or until I died. Would I actually sell out my birthright for something temporal, a mere thing?
 
Then it occurred to me that, as I was already bought and paid for with a price by the shed blood of the Son of God, why would I even allow this auction to be taking pace? 

“How do I end this insane auction?” I asked aloud. “Neither my soul nor my birthright as a child of God are for sale!” That’s when I noticed the Pray-Pal button and I remembered that Jesus ever lives to make intercesson for me. I quickly pressed it and Windows appeared that opened in the Heavens right to the Throne of Grace displaying this feedback message:
 
Jude 1: 24-25, “Now to the one who is able to keep you from falling and to make you stand joyful and faultless in his glorious presence, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus the Messiah, our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time and for all eternity! Amen.”
 
While our choices matter greatly, it is finally only Jesus who can keep us from falling and make us to stand for all e-ternity!
 
(Don’t be a) profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.” Hebrews 12:16-17.
 
Bryan Hupperts © 2008
www.sheeptrax.com/xpress

 

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