A person moved to love God through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, moves from death to life, from a void of eternal purpose to a mission without end. The most humbling part of your walk with Jesus is usually in the very beginning. We must be at a point where we understand our utter helplessness before a Holy God. We are rebels without excuse and cannot help ourselves through the gates of Heaven.
Years ago, my best friends lost their son Austin to drowning. Their five year old was found the day after a church picnic at a local pond. Recently, I went back to that pond for a baptism service for my brother’s church. My sister in law was getting baptized. After the joyous occasion, I kept thinking of the voices on the far side of the pond behind the giant island/slide in the middle. It was the thought of Austin that caused me to take a paddle boat to the other side.
It was getting darker, and I could hear the remaining kids’ voices on the other side of the waterfall, out of the site and mostly sounds of others. It was a voice inside that kept telling me to check the other side of the pond. So I paddled around the waterfall. I rounded the corner and noticed a girl about 30 feet from shore with her hands in the air. Her friend was swimming away from her full stride. She yelled “I can’t come back, If I try to help you we’ll both drown.” I have never paddled more quickly. Within a few seconds I eased up beside of her and told her to grab the boat. After a minute of catching her breath, she said “I think I’m OK now.” I told her to just wait and I would take her around. I suppose it was pride that made her let go and try again, but one arm’s length from letting go she turned quickly back and grabbed the boat. She was too weak. She held on until she got into shallow water. She waded out and up the hill to find family.
There were two helpless women in the pond that day, a girl who was turning to Christ and a girl who was about to succumb to drowning. My sister in Law had turned from atheism to embrace Christ, to die and live with Him in new life. The girl grabbed onto my paddle boat for dear life and found it. In coming to Christ, there are few better pictures than that of a drowning person in the middle of a large body of water. There is nothing to save the person, no handle to grab or ladder to stand on. There is only time, ticking away the marching of death. We are tempted to get a handle on our situation and then tell God we’ve got it now. We don’t and never will possess anything worthy of God blaming his Son for our own transgressions.
“When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners” (Romans 5:6, NLT).