Immersed: Out of the Shallows Into the Deepಮಾದರಿ

I was first introduced to Jesus as a shy little girl. My family never went to church or talked about God in our home. Little did I know that God would change the life of that little girl when I met Mrs. Buckner, the sweet old lady who lived in the house next to our run-down trailer.

We connected over comics on her porch one day. And that began a relationship that changed the entire trajectory of my life and started me on my faith journey.

She invited me to Sunday School, and I soaked in everything about Jesus that I could. My whole family began attending and accepted Jesus. She made such a profound impact on my life. She taught me countless things, but the greatest lesson she taught me was how to love Jesus.

Since that time, I had mostly always attended church and served in different capacities, but my relationship with Him had stayed surface level.

A shift happened when I turned 40. Like many women do when they hit those milestone ages, I began to reflect on my life and the events that had shaped me into the person I was...my childhood, into adulthood, becoming a wife and mom, and then plunging into a pit of grief when I lost both my 4-year-old son, Morgan, and my mom to cancer within 3 months of each other.

These events, while devastating, helped mold me into the woman I am today. I came to the profound realization of God's presence in my life and how I never would have survived those trials without Him. It was then that I decided that I no longer wanted a surface relationship with God. I was determined to move beyond the shallows and be fully immersed in deep waters with Him! As Colossians 2:7 tells us, the more we are rooted in Christ, the deeper our faith and walk with Him will grow.

Immersed is defined as an action word meaning to plunge, absorb, engross, soak up, and not so ironically, devote fully. It’s more than just maintaining a surface-level relationship with Him. It's more than a checkbox of religious duties or motions. It's determining that you want to live a life fully immersed in and completely devoted to Him. No matter what comes your way.

Living immersed in God requires action, and over the next 4 days, we will dive into what some of those actions entail.