Dale Robbins was employed by the government of Nova Scotia for 28 years. For the last ten years of his career, he served the Province as the Director of Administration with the Office of the Speaker. Two years ago, on the day he celebrated his retirement from government service, he received news from his doctor that he had inoperable cancer. In September of this year, he suffered a stroke and is slowly recovering from its effects. How precious is the assurance of which he has written!
Peace Though Facing Eternity
I was born in 1942, the fifth of six children, to parents living in rural Nova Scotia. When I was about six or seven years of age, my mother related a personal experience about God, a lesson I never forgot. Having grown up in another country, she told me she had attended Sunday School with an aunt when she was young. She related that her Sunday School teacher taught the class that God loved each one of them and had sent His Son from heaven to die on a cross that He might pay for their sins so that they could be reconciled back to God. Now, several years later, she said that while sweeping the kitchen floor a few days earlier, she had accepted what Jesus had done for her and that her sins were now forgiven.
As the years passed I heard more of God and how sinners could be sure of a place in heaven if they trusted in Jesus. I began to yearn for this security and peace of mind. However, I struggled within myself thinking that because I had been living a “good, moral life,” God should be pleased with my life and accept me into heaven as I was.
Over time I began to realize that I could not negotiate with God on my own terms. God had already established by His Word that there was only one way to get to heaven and that was through His Son Who had already paid for my entrance to heaven when He bore my debt at Calvary.
At the age of twenty-two, I realized that there was nothing I could do to merit salvation, that the required payment had already been made on my behalf by the Lord Jesus, and that I had only to accept a finished work. I gave up trying to merit salvation on my own and accepted what had been done for me by Another. From that time onward, God has been a real Person in my life, One Who has brought me continuous joy, peace, and satisfaction. Best of all, I have His assurance that when this life is over I will go to be with my Lord and Savior, to share in all the joys of heaven throughout the countless ages of eternity.