Yes, I’m alive. Really. No, I haven’t been abducted by aliens. No, I haven’t been experiencing any personal tragedy that left me too brokenhearted to show my face in public (although I haven’t been out of the house for a week.) Yes, I realize that two weeks ago today I promised a “special post” and have yet to make good on my promise. What happened, you want to know? Life happened. Various things, including sickness and not knowing how to word this post, happened. You see, I have this marvelous talent for making a liar out of myself. Every time I say something like what I said two weeks ago, something happens to make what I said would happen not happen. (Got all that?) Therefore, I usually try to avoid making promises and absolute statements (you know, the old “Never say never” and “If you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans”). However, thinking that this wouldn’t be a big deal, I foolishly made the statement to “come back tomorrow for a special post!” so you would be all interested and excited about what I could possibly have to say.
Now to finally get to the reason I started all of this: two weeks ago, on February 15th, it was 15 years since I had accepted Christ as my Savior! I can hardly believe it. I’ve been a Christian longer than I’ve been almost anything else, other than alive.
I remember the event well: It was after supper one evening, and I was alone in the kitchen with my older brother, Jason, who was washing the dishes. Somehow the topic of salvation came up in our conversation and he encouraged me to ask Jesus to be my Savior. However, I had a fear that was holding me back; at some point I had mistakenly started believing that when I accepted Jesus as my Savior I would immediately die and go to Heaven. To a little girl of four, the idea of leaving her family and Cabbage Patch Kid dolls and blankie and going to a strange place, even if it was to be with God, was not an attractive idea. I must have expressed this fear to my brother, because I remember him talking some sense into me. He said, “Diana. Mommy and Daddy are saved, and they’re not dead. Josh and I are saved, and we’re not dead.” His words relieved me of my fear, and I decided to ask Jesus to be my Savior. The whole family was called and we all gathered in my parents’ bedroom and knelt down by the bed. My dad helped me with what to say, and I prayed and thanked the Lord Jesus for dying on the cross to pay for my sins and I asked Him to forgive me for my sins and to come into my heart and save me.
It’s hard for me to know what to say at this point..how do you summarize 15 years of a personal relationship with the God of the universe??? Let me simply say that I have been wonderfully, amazingly, incomprehensibly blessed by my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and that I am soooo thankful that His work in us is always continuing. Last night I read in my evening devotional book Springs in the Valley (by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman – I HIGHLY recommend it) a story about a man who was begging God to relieve him of the painful trial he was going through. As he prayed, however, he saw a vision of a chunk of marble being chiseled and ground into a statue. He realized that he was like that marble; God knew what He wanted the man to be like, and in order to achieve the desired result, He had to do some shaping that was painful for the man. The man knew he wanted to be what God wanted him to be, so he yielded to God’s painful work and prayed, “Lord, keep on chiseling and grinding.” That is my prayer as well. I don’t ever want God to give up on me or to allow me to not reach the full potential of my usefulness for Him. I want Him to keep on chiseling and grinding away at me until He sees the image in my chunk of marble that He has in mind – the image of His Son.
If you are reading this and have no clue what I mean by salvation and accepting Christ as my Savior, please feel free to comment with your questions – I would love to tell you more about it! You can also look at my About page and at this post for more information about that!
And now to finally publish this long overdue post! Thanks for reading! 😉
Very good Diana!