The wonder and excitement of reading God’s word was overpowering to me. I would often wait for the children and Sharon to go to bed and then I would sit and read, sometimes until the sun came up. Many times, I would sit reading and start shaking or crying out of joy. Other times electricity would tingle throughout my body.

This was an incredible time. I could sense the Lord of the entire universe speaking directly to me, not only in what I was reading but also through what He was saying to me in my mind. I was falling in love.

One evening as I was reading and praying, the Lord brought to mind an occurrence the year before when I had been jogging down on the beach and helped to restore a woman’s life that had drowned by praying and giving her chest compressions. After being found in the water, this woman was dragged up onto the beach. There was no heartbeat, and she was as blue as the ocean. People were just standing looking at the woman lying in the sand. I knelt and felt for a pulse. There was none. I placed my ear on her wet and cold chest to hear a heartbeat. There was none. I began chest compressions and in the deepest part of me was asking for God’s help for this woman.

She began to regain color and her heart started beating. The ambulance arrived several minutes later and took the woman away to the hospital. The local policeman, who stood by watching the whole scene, took my name, and with tears in his eyes said, “If it weren’t for you she’d be dead. You saved her life! Thank God you came by! I didn’t know what to do. I thought it was too late!”

At the time, I felt thrilled to be a part of this as I continued my jog. Now the Lord was bringing it back to mind. Remembering the thrill and feeling of worth and thinking about this woman and wondering about her. The Lord spoke to my heart, that He had showed me the thrill of being a part of saving this woman who would have another twenty years or so of life and asked me if I could imagine the thrill of participating in saving someone’s life for eternity.

Brian Warner. Johanna’s Eleven (Kindle Locations 400-416).