A Fifty-nine Year Old Memory

It has been fifty-nine years since the Lord showed me a verse of Scripture that has been for me a lifetime Word.  It came to me on the night when I gave my life to Jesus.  Of course, that night was not the first time, but the night that is remembered as the night it stuck.  I bumped into that word again in a morning reading of Scripture.  To be honest it slipped up on me.  I was reading the 118th Psalm without thinking about this verse showing up 14 verses into the chapter.  "The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation."   

As I started reading and realizing where I was in the Scripture, I felt my heart being warmed by a precious memory of the beginning moments with Christ.  A second thought which came ever so quickly was that the verse was not only true for me then, but it has remained true for a life time.  The Lord has enabled me to be about a ministry for Him that I could never have accomplished in my own strength.  He has been for me like a song which has constantly been coming forth from the deep places of my heart.  He has not only become my salvation, He has been my salvation, and He will continue to be my salvation.   

When John Wesley wrote in his journal about his life changing moment on Aldersgate Street, he wrote, '"...an assurance was given go me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."  Fifty-nine years ago in my bedroom at the Alamo Methodist parsonage that same assurance came to me.  It did not stop that night.  There have been so many times when I confessed my need for God's forgiveness and each time there was the same assurance that my sins were forgiven.  The Apostle Paul wrote an assuring word when he wrote, "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."  (Romans 5:20). Thanks be to God for grace abounding!