Hello, on this soggy day in June. I dare not complain about the rain. It has made everything lush, green, with splashes of colorful flowers blooming everywhere. And in August, we will be saying,” Where has all the rain gone?” 😊

I’ve had a slack period in writing since my “Let’s Soar” blog. Funny how time seems to go more quickly as I grow older, just as my parents used to say.

Today, as I settled myself to write, there has been a rush of topics to write about, but this one thing has crossed my mind repeatedly for a considerable time now. I wrote the title in my notes years ago. Apparently, today is the day.

Riding on coattails is an idiom that means achieving success, popularity, or advancement due to an association with another person or their accomplishments, rather than through one’s own hard work or merits.

For today’s application, I am using it in reference to our salvation and spiritual growth ( association with another person or their accomplishments).

Forty-eight years ago, I was facing some major challenges in my life. I was the “ripe old age of twenty-two” 😊 We had bought our first house in Goose Creek, South Carolina, discovered we were having our second baby (a pregnancy with complications), and David’s time there was cut short by orders to board a ship that would soon deploy for a six-month cruise.

Life’s storms were plenty, but God was, as always, faithful to get us through everything we faced. And the tough things we had to face kept rolling in with the news that my husband’s ship would return to a new port in a different city and state. So, by the grace of God and my determination to be there when my husband returned, I put our house on the market, rented a house in Jacksonville, FL, and moved our two daughters (one 4 years old and the other six weeks old) and me.

It was a whirlwind of challenges to get moved with little ones and settled in two months, but when his ship pulled into port, it was all worth it. We took David home, and it looked as though we had lived there for a year. For Navy families, that is a long time. 😊

So here we are in Jacksonville, FL, with everything I could want except the main thing… connection with friends and church family.

These events occurred during a period of being disconnected from a church family. I had a deep desire to reconnect, and I made a special request to the Lord to meet one special friend. The Lord granted both! My new friend was found quickly, and she is also a Christian who desires to connect with a good church. I wrote about this meeting and the new church home in my narrative for my poem, “Friends”, in Blue Skies, Butterflies, and Battlegrounds.

So she and I agreed to seek a church home together. The second church we visited was the largest in Jacksonville, the largest city in Duval County. We had never seen anything like it! As I was pondering how we found that place, I think I looked in the yellow pages of the phone book for Baptist churches in the area. I know, that was fifty years ago, so many of you have no idea that the yellow pages were ever a “search engine”. Lol! The jingle was, “Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages”. There’s the search engine… our fingers.😊

There, my newfound friend and I  were with our four little ones in tow, plus diaper bags, purses, and Bibles (we must have been a sight), eager for the Word of God and connection with other believers. We had each other for accountability and for when the battle was raging on Sunday morning. The enemy was certain to show up and throw as many obstacles as he could. But we had each other and our Lord, so of course we won! It reminds me of the cord of three strands in Ecclesiastes 4:12: “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken”.

Since neither of our husbands was attending with us during that time, we joined a ladies-only Sunday School Class. I have precious memories of this God-given friend, this church, and the connection with this group of ladies as we grew in knowledge together.

Which leads me to “Riding on Coattails”. Bet you thought I had forgotten by now. I felt this background story was pertinent for telling of my first real look at this idiom as it applies to Christians.

Our Bible Study leader was the best. She was gentle, kind, wise, and open about her walk with the Lord. She was raised in a Christian family that was prominent members of their church and community. Because they were known as a Christian “family,” she believed, from a young age, that she was a Christian as well. She married a Christian man, had children, and served as a Sunday School Class Leader at the church they had always attended. They were “good” people who, as the traditional saying goes, “didn’t drink, smoke, cuss, or hang around those who did”. So surely they were Christians, and God would grant them their place in heaven.

Until the day…

She told of the revelation she received during a sermon her pastor delivered one Sunday morning, amongst all the people she had known most of her life.

The Holy Spirit revealed to her that she was not saved. Salvation is through Christ alone, not due to an association with another person or their “Christian family” reputation,  or through one’s own hard work or merits (riding on coattails). As the Holy Spirit moved in her heart, she knew she would have to go forward, accept Christ as her personal Savior, and make her public confession of this now without delay.

But how would she do that? What would everyone say and think about her, the “good” daughter from the Christian family? The good wife, married to a Christian man, is raising a family in church. Not only this, but teaching Sunday School Classes! That was a lot for her to break free from, but by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit with her, she took her first step and then the rest to move herself down that long aisle to the altar. Praise God, she was free from riding on the coattails of her family and received the robe of righteousness by the merits of Christ’s blood sacrifice. She became a member of the family of God, where we are all saved by Grace, not by our own goodness, hard work, or anyone else’s but Jesus’s merits.

And as for the concerns about what others would think, those who knew the Lord rejoiced with her. And for those who didn’t know the Lord, they could be awakened and stirred by the Holy Spirit through her humbleness before God and the whole church. Either way, I see this as a great testimony to reveal reality for our own lives. God does not want us to be deceived into assumptions about where we stand with Him.

As we humble ourselves before Him, He will do the searching of our hearts. He will reveal that the only coattails we enter into heaven by are the coattails of Jesus Christ. It will be only by the merits of Christ’s blood sacrifice for our salvation. That’s a testimony that will declare the love and goodness of God for all eternity. Know for certain where you stand with Him today.

I do hope that my sharing the testimony of Mrs. Lynn Swain, almost fifty years ago, will resonate with you as it has for me.

“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,  Says the Lord of hosts.” Zechariah 4:6b NKJV

And by the word of my testimony,

Reba