Monday Meditations: Rededication

As a former altar worker, I’m normally on high alert when that time of the service comes, even when I’m in my seat. It’s a serious time (not that other times in the service aren’t important) and I am normally praying that God touches someone’s heart.
I’m also searching my own heart to see if the altar call applies to me.

The past two Sundays, the call for rededication has caught my attention, despite the fact that I’ve heard it made hundreds of times. I believe it’s often overlooked. I must admit that sometimes I’ve viewed it as either the Part B of the invitation to salvation or an attempt to get more people to respond to the altar call.

But recently, I actually stopped to think about the purpose of rededication. It’s normally worded like this: “If you have backslidden, come and rededicate your life to the Lord.” And most of us are like, “Nope that doesn’t apply to me.”

But does it?

Rededication is for people who’ve committed some huge sin, right? Or for people who haven’t been to church for a while. We may have been hanging on by the skin of our teeth, committing some of the lesser sins and coming to church every other Sunday, but we’re not so bad that we need to rededicate ourselves. That’s for the real sinners.

Truth is we should probably rededicate ourselves more often than we do. Rededication is a reaffirming of our salvation. When we received salvation, we confessed that Jesus was our Lord and Savior. But when we try and rule our own lives, we move away from Him. We should rededicate each time we "slide back" into our human nature and stop seeing Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

(I want to say a side night about Jesus being our Lord. Many people confess that He’s their Savior because they see Him only as some supernatural Santa to rescue us from our problems and give us stuff. Yes, His saving work in our lives did rescue us from the penalty of sin and death. But we can’t overlook the fact that He needs to be our Lord. Meaning, He rules over us. Once we are saved, we relinquish our right to be in charge of our lives. Jesus is our Lord.)

Am I saying go down to the altar each time the rededication invitation is made? No, you’d drive your pastors crazy. But each time the invitation is being made, search your heart. See if there are any areas that you’ve moved away from God, maybe taken too much responsibility for your life. And right at your seat, pray and rededicate yourself to God.