| During my senior year at Iowa State University, several of us on our NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) championship wrestling team began preparing for the 1972 Summer Olympics. I had already won championships in my weight division in 1971 and 1972, and now the goal of gold medalist during those summer games was uppermost in my mind.
Along with others on our team, I trained many hours for several months. At last, the day of competition arrived. Over the next five days I successfully defeated several opponents on my way to the gold. What a thrill when on that final day I pinned my opponent to the mat and was declared the winner! It was a great moment in my life when I stood on the podium before thousands of spectators that day in Munich to have the gold medal hung about my neck.
As great a moment as it was to win a gold medal in the Olympics, it was not the greatest moment in my life. Without a doubt, the GREATEST MOMENT in my life was when I came to place my faith in Jesus Christ as my own personal Lord and Savior.
I had grown up hearing about Christ, for I was raised in a home where my parents gave Christ first place in our family. There were six children in our family. Every Sunday the whole family, along with our grandmother, was piled into the family car and driven twenty-one miles to church.
While I greatly respected my parents and was greatly impressed with how Christ has been reflected in their lives, I was trusting in other things to someday take me to heaven. Two things, in particular, used to go through my mind and made me believe God would accept me. First, I believed God would smile on me because I was not as bad as some of my friends. And then, I thought God would surely accept me on the basis of my parents' being such good Christians and people whom many others looked with admiration.
But it was while I attended a summer camp near my home, as a boy of thirteen, that I came to realize that nothing I could do would make me acceptable in God's sight. God's Word declares that in His sight "all our righteousness are as filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). I recognized that I was a sinner, for "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). It was then that I came to know God's special love for me and that I was included when it declared in God's Word that "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that who ever believes in Him should not died, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
"Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him" (John 3:36).
That summer I trusted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. He gave me everlasting life, forgiveness of sin.
What is the GREATEST MOMENT in the life of a person? It is not winning a gold medal in the Olympics, but rather in trusting Christ as your own personal Savior, for now and eternity. I urge you, if you have not already done so, to place your faith in Christ today. It will be the GREATEST MOMENT in your life, too.
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