I am not exactly sure of my age at this life-changing and critical juncture. What I know for sure is that I was old enough to understand my mother and my own reality as a disobedient little boy of 3 or 4 years old.
Sitting by myself in the darkness in the red pickup truck in front of the Bible Institute where my Dad taught, I am sure they just left me there for an instant. That was enough for me to reflect and think as I sat alone in the dark in the front seat of the car.
I remember recognizing that I was disobedient (in thought and in action) and that this placed me on a wide and very easy-to-walk road that ended in a lake of fire. I was not excited to think of this as an eternal destiny full of despair, loneliness, emptiness, and much pain. Even a little boy can understand alternatives between good and evil, and at that moment, I made a conscious decision with my mouth and mind and repentance in my heart to truly seek the one true God, ask for forgiveness, and that His grace might shine upon me and wash me clean through His son Jesus Christ and the sacrifice He had done on my behalf.
This decision was, in actuality, the beginning of a new life – a new birth for me. Yes, I had been born once already, out of water into the physical world called Earth.
Now, I was deciding to be born again into a spiritual eternity of life provided by the promise of redemption through the free gift that paid my debt by Jesus more than 2000 years before!
When I was born in Dallas, I also caused a debt – a money debt from the hospital and the complications of my birth. This debt was mysteriously paid for and forgiven, by grace.
In my second birth, my debt was also paid for and forgiven. So, yes, I continued to live up to my name – Jonathan – a gift from God, paid for in full, free to walk toward my Father as I began to learn what it meant to choose the narrow trail through cliffs and narrow trails up steep mountains toward eternal life forever, leaving behind the wide and easy path that led to the lake of fire.
And now, born twice, begins the adventure and journey up this long mountainous cliff where if I stray too far away from my shepherd’s staff, danger and problems will arise.