From the water stop for baptism at the Hebardville Church in Waycross, Georgia, the journey took me to Savannah and then to Alamo where I graduated from Wheeler County High School. With graduation and college looming on the horizon, I was struggling with what I was going to do with my life. The "What will I be when I grow up?" question was really weighing heavy. But, there were other things that were undecided as well. Important things. Things like my relationship with Christ. Though baptized I knew my life of faith in Christ was more pretend than reality.
On that May evening a few weeks before graduation, the preacher spoke at a business meeting of the church and said, "If you see a need and realize you can do something about that need and do nothing, you may be neglecting the call of God on your life." It was a word I carried with me back to my bedroom. It was a word which drove me to my knees beside my bed. There I gave my life to Christ as I had never done and heard what I knew to be a call to preach. There in the Alamo parsonage in my bedroom a holy moment took place in my life which would shape the rest of my days.
The Old Testament guys made a shrine of rocks to mark the holy places. I should have done something. Maybe put an X on the floor or a sign on the door. But, as is the case with many of the holy places in our lives, there is no visible thing to mark the place. It is marked only in my memory. It seems to me that I could walk in that room and see that bed exactly where it was back when I was almost 18 and know the spot where I knelt and had the rest of my life re-directed by that encounter with the living presence of Jesus Christ.
On that May evening a few weeks before graduation, the preacher spoke at a business meeting of the church and said, "If you see a need and realize you can do something about that need and do nothing, you may be neglecting the call of God on your life." It was a word I carried with me back to my bedroom. It was a word which drove me to my knees beside my bed. There I gave my life to Christ as I had never done and heard what I knew to be a call to preach. There in the Alamo parsonage in my bedroom a holy moment took place in my life which would shape the rest of my days.
The Old Testament guys made a shrine of rocks to mark the holy places. I should have done something. Maybe put an X on the floor or a sign on the door. But, as is the case with many of the holy places in our lives, there is no visible thing to mark the place. It is marked only in my memory. It seems to me that I could walk in that room and see that bed exactly where it was back when I was almost 18 and know the spot where I knelt and had the rest of my life re-directed by that encounter with the living presence of Jesus Christ.
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