One Hundred and Ten Percent!

"I'm going to go out tonight and give one hundred ten percent!"

Many athletes are no longer content to give one hundred percent effort, they will give more than that.  Of course, I am not sure why stop at hundred ten percent.  Why not two hundred percent effort?  Surely that would be better than a measly one hundred percent?

I suppose this one hundred and ten percent could come from a number of different sources.

Perhaps, athletes believe that they have never really give their all before and this time, it will be different.  Maybe, this just comes from a lot of athletes having really poor math skills.

Perhaps no teacher ever told them:  "But Johnny, if you have one apple pie, you can't eat more than one hundred percent of the pie, unless you eat the plate!"

I wonder if some athletes have reached the place where they believe that giving one hundred percent is just what everybody does and they know that they are above average.  They are giving a lot more than all the other players who are just giving one hundred percent.

In the Christian life, it is clear that one hundred percent effort will not gain us salvation.  One hundred ten percent effort wouldn't either, but that doesn't stop plenty of people from telling themselves that tomorrow will be different.  Tomorrow will be the day that one hundred ten percent comes through!

It is a little bit like the scene in the movie Flubber (or if you are older, The Absent Minded Professor), where a woefully unskilled Medfield College basketball team is being crushed by an oversized, much more skilled opponent.  There is no way that they can win, even if they give just a little more effort.  And then something changes.  Flubber enters the game and nothing is quite the same...

We are not enough in ourselves and never will be, but God is faithful and offers us a gift much better than flubber.  But it is a gift, nothing more or less.

Salvation cannot be earned.  It must be accepted as an amazing gift, from a Savior who gave His one hundred percent on our behalf.  Only as a gift can we receive it.  Without it, even one hundred ten percent effort will not avail us.