Drenched

I have kept company with Jesus for almost 50 years.

As a young boy, I decided to see if what my Baptist parents had taught was true. At the close of the service, during the singing of a hymn, I made my way down to the preacher and told him I wanted to be saved and baptized. Everyone present was happy, and to celebrate, my father, mother, brother and I went to a new place called Burger King on Clinton Highway in Knoxville. We wanted to try their new hamburger called a Whopper. A couple of weeks later, I was baptized by immersion by the preacher at Ball Camp Baptist Church. I was saved and baptized!

After 50 years of being saved and baptized, I have come to some conclusions about what I did that day long ago.

I was saved from my sins. Although I am fully aware that I am capable of doing all sorts of sinful things as "sinful" is traditionally been defined, I have never felt that I was a once a sinner condemned to hell if I hadn't been saved and baptized.

When I was seven, I didn't have that much of an imagination to think about all those things I was supposed to be ashamed of, much less doing them. I just wanted to love God for loving me. I was saved from the useless activity, doctrine, and social climbing that many people think has to be done in order to please God. I was saved from the understanding of God that I had to earn God's love!! The gift of my salvation was my understanding that God loved me, now what?

Now what? I was baptized. Baptism was my profession to God and the world that day that I was going to live the way Jesus taught me to live: the way I was made by God to live.

I knew that God was all in. Now, I was all in!! All God ever wanted from me was David of Ball Camp.

When I emerged from the water, there was not a dry place anywhere on my body or in my soul, and I haven't been dry since! Still drenched in the Goodness of God!