Norman

How did I come to accept Christ as my Savior?

I grew up in the church. Every Sunday, my mother would take my sister and myself to the small, rural church that sat across the road from our house. From the earliest age I knew all about God and Jesus. But that was all it was: I knew about Him, but failed to have that relationship with Him. I was book smart, but failed to fully have that relationship with him. Looking back, I guess part of me thought maybe I had a “free pass,” because after all, I went to church, wasn’t that enough?

I first experienced God in my life during the summer between my seventh and eighth grade years while attending a hiking camp sponsored by the United Methodist Church. The hiking camp took us along the Loyalsock Trail, north of Williamsport, along the ridges and hollows, over mountains and across streams, along waterfalls and through the Pennsylvania wilds. Our group of campers was guided by two men who showed us their love of God over those four days of hiking and camping.

During our hiking times, our group was spread out over the length of a mile. As long as we didn’t go ahead of the first group or fall behind the last (those groups had our leaders in them), we were free to hike the Loyalsock at our own pace. I wasn’t as fast as the leaders or as slow as those at the back of the pack, so I often found myself hiking alone somewhere in the middle.

However, on the third day of hiking, I found myself hiking with one of the girls of the group. I don’t remember her name, but I remember her asking me at one point, “Aren’t you afraid of getting lost hiking all alone?”

“Not really,” I had answered in a false bravado. I wasn’t about to tell her I had missed a turn on the trail when it came off an old fire lane the day before; I had gone about two hundred yards before I had realized my mistake.

That moment was really the first time in my life I realized how easy it could be to become lost. Not just lost on the trail, but lost in life.

The next morning, our fourth and last morning, when I got up, it was really foggy out and while the other still slept (it was the only morning we were allowed to sleep in) I got up to read. Taking my Bible, I walked over to spend some time alone at a nearby overlook that was about a hundred yards away from camp.

As I sat there watching the fog slowly lift I really felt God in my life for the first time; there in the silence and calmness, I first felt God in my life. I opened my Bible to a random passage and it opened to the book of Psalms. As I read Psalm 118, verse 24 jumped out immediately: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” But as I continued reading His word that morning the sun broke through the fog as I read verse 27a “The Lord is God; and He has made His light to shine upon us.”

In that moment I felt God saying to me, “I am here. I love you.” In that moment I came to understand that the God I read about, the God I studied about, since I could first read wasn’t just a God written down on paper, but a God who was alive and with me; He was a God who wanted to have a relationship with me and as I sat there I realized in that moment that I wanted to have a relationship with Him.

My prayer was short and simple (and I wrote it in the Bible I had with me at the time to be a constant reminder of God’s endless love for me. The prayer I lifted up to Him was this: “Lord, I don’t want to be lost. Help me. I accept Your Son’s sacrifice for my sins. Give me Your direction in life that I might do Your will in everything I do. Please Lord, I don’t want to be lost. Help me.”

I found that morning a Lord and Savior who has never abandoned me; He’s been there in the good and the bad times. In my fears and doubts, in the times when I seemed to have lost my way I know he is there for me. I can call out to Him and He will answer; I can pray for forgiveness and He will forgive; I can ask for direction and He will give better guidance than any GPS unit.

He is my Lord and Savior. He is my everything, for without him in my life, I would be nothing.