At the age of 12 I walked a church isle, took the preacher by the hand, said yes to all the questions, and got baptized. They said I got saved. About two years later in the privacy of my bedroom, as I said my nightly prayers before going to sleep, I began to realize that I had no real connection with God. I argued within myself that I was “saved” because I had gotten baptized and I was living a good, clean life. In a short time I was overwhelmed to tears, sobbing into my pillow, convinced that I had no connection with God. In that place of being utterly without strength or without having any righteous standing before God, I had the realization that Jesus Christ died for me to take my sins away. With that realization, peace flooded my soul. I realized truly that Jesus was my Savior.
After peace came into me, seeing Jesus, I had another realization. It came to me that there was a river of the water of life in God. You can stand ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep, or it was a river that could not be passed over with your feet touching the ground. It was a river too deep to wade. It was waters to swim in. It was a call to commit my life completely to the Lord. As the choice was presented to me in my inner mind and heart, I cried out to God, “Lord, let me dive in and swim on your grace!” My life was committed to the Lord to be carried where the river would carry me. From that experience, my life was changed.
I realized that Jesus was my Savior and Lord by the sole virtue of what he did for me – not by anything I had or could do for him. All I wanted to talk about was Jesus and the things of God. There have been a couple of times that I got away from God in my life, but when I came to myself, he welcomed me back in fellowship, and that has remained to this day. My main delight of thought and conversation is Jesus Christ and the Word of God. There is eternal life in a total commitment of your life to the Lord. Some are committed ankle deep, still connected to the earth, the natural. Some are committed knee deep, a little more active in the things of God, but still standing on the earth, the natural. Some are committed waist deep, very active, but still trusting in what they can do and how good they can be. It is when we disconnect from the earth, the natural, and we dive in swimming only on what Jesus has done for us as our complete salvation, that we fully enter eternal life. It is a choice we make, and it is words that we speak, to do business with God and commit our life to him. There is life in the river of God. Ezekiel 47:1-12
