It does not make sense to risk your life by taking chances. Teenagers sometimes feel they have to prove they are brave. Children, being young and not understanding what might happen, are sometimes hurt, crippled or killed. God and your parents love you and want you to live and not suffer unnecessarily. Driving a car faster, climbing a higher mountain, or swimming a swifter stream does not prove that a person is better than anyone else.
Our town was located between two rivers and a millrace, so we spent lots of time near and in the river. We boys learned to respect the water and to be very careful not to jump or dive where there was much chance of being hurt. We often fished and swam around a small island above the dam.
One time after it had rained heavily, two of us had gone in swimming up by the island. My friend started to swim toward the dam. After just a couple of strokes, he quickly changed direction and swam powerfully away from the dam. I thought he was just having fun. I did not understand that the strong pull of the current had made him fearful of being swept over the dam. Since I thought I was a strong swimmer, that fear never crossed my mind. But when I reached the dam where I had often stood on the concrete edge, I began to understand.
This time when I reached for the edge with my feet, the current from the water going over the dam was so powerful I was washed away in the churning water. Because of an underwater barrier, the action of the water does not allow anything falling in to get out easily, but the current returns anything (this time, me) up against the dam to be recycled once more in the billowing water. First my feet would come up, and then, sweeping the bubbles away, I would grab a breath of air before being recycled against the dam. After some minutes of this recycling I was sure I was going to die as I was tiring very fast and just about ready to just give up. Having thought that I had been a good swimmer, I wondered what the newspaper would say about it if I drowned.
Some of my friends were on the dam with fishing poles and were trying to set a hook in me to snag me out of the trap into which I had gotten myself.
I am happy to say that they did not have to fish me out like a very large salmon. About the time I was ready to pass out, exhausted, I gave up completely and sank down in the water. It was only then that I was washed clear of the fast, churning, foamy water. Relieved and thankful, I swam ashore and thought about my deliverance.
People often struggle with salvation in much the same way. They try everything they can think of that might help them become a better person. But they soon come to realize that it doesn’t last. They are no better off, and they cannot solve the problem. Yet, that is the first step - to admit that our struggling doesn’t work; we can’t do it.
The next step is to understand that the sin problem has already been solved. Christ solved it for us when He died on Calvary’s cross. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7).
How many of these steps have you taken?
ML-11/06/1994