It was early spring of 1970, I was 28 years old, managing a grain elevator in Manitoba and it seemed that everything in my work and in my personal life was going wrong.  There seemed to be a dark cloud over my head and I could see no good way to get out from under it.  I took a drive around the country side to mull things over and try to shake the dark cloud, but it just got darker and heavier.

I went back home, picked up my Bible and it fell open to Revelation 3:16 where I read that I was so distasteful to God that He would spew me out of His mouth.  This was too much.  I knelt down, asked for forgiveness, asked for help with my problems and promised God that I would do whatever He would ask of me for the rest of my life.

The only difference I was aware of after this prayer was that I had made a decision to face my problems and work my way through them rather than running away from them.  If anyone had asked me if I was born again, I would have answered no.  I had a pretty jaundiced view of people who claimed to be born again.  It seemed to me that they did not do anything different from other people, other than to boast that they were born again.

Little by little, I became aware that I was looking at life in a different way than I ever had before, and that brief prayer had been the turning point.  It seemed too, that now God was finding little ways to remind me of that promise I had made.  I realized that this was what the Bible called being born again, and it was real.

Chris & I were married August 1 of that year.  Almost 15 months later Michelle was born.  There is a clear picture in my mind of us driving home with a little laundry basket on the seat between us, a baby blanket as a pad on the bottom and our little girl bundled up and sleeping in her little nest.

Fast forward to 2012 and that little girl has a husband and four children of her own.  And I am a 70 year old grandpa.  I have done a lot of stumbling and bumbling around along the way, but God has been faithful and has often had to remind me of the promise I made 42 years ago.