Ticket to Ride
Planes, trains and automobiles can all carry a ticket to ride. The ticket gets you on the vehicle and off. It requires a payment. When you alight your ticket is voided, and you may never travel on that vehicle again. This does not matter.
John Piper continues the analogy with parallel reflections on an opera ticket:
Consider heaven as an Orchestra Hall, and the music of the symphony as the glory of God.
Everyone here knows that faith is the Divinely appointed pre-condition for entering the hall, and forever delighting in the music.
But some of you I fear, have gotten the notion that trusting Christ is like buying a ticket to the Orchestra once and for all, then you can slip the ticket away in your coat pocket as your guarantee of admission someday, even though the affections of your life are captured by the music of this world.
This is not the Biblical view of saving faith.
It is a delusion. #John Piper
Unlike man's tickets, God's 'faith ticket' cannot be slipped into a pocket and ignored, for then it is lost.
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do ... a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone ... as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:18, 24, 26)
Faith, like a muscle, grows by stretching. ~ A.W. Tozer
Today's Soul Snippet:
'Orthodoxy can be learned from others; living faith must be a personal experience.' ~ Buchsel