There I sat.  At a little table, in little chairs, with all of my little friends, in our First and Second Grade Sunday School class.  Having grown up in that church, we were all hearing this story for about the hundredth time.  Somehow though, it was like I was hearing it for the first time.  I heard my teacher talk about Noah being the chosen one of God to have the lives of him and his family spared from the flood that would wipe out the rest of the world.  It was because “he was faithful to God.  He had God in his heart”.  Everyone else was wicked, I learned.  Having seen The Wizard of Oz, I knew I didn’t want to be anything like the wicked.  I’d seen the Wicked Witch of the West, no thanks. 

I left Sunday School that day a little confused about how God could live in someone’s heart when I thought He lived in heaven, but I knew one thing, for sure.

I wanted to be riding Noah’s Ark.

That afternoon, I asked my parents what all of that was about and they lead me to ask God to come and live within my heart too. 

You’re probably thinking that six years old is way too young to be able to make a genuine decision to follow God.  For some, that may be true.  For me, it wasn’t.  I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I knew what I was doing that day.  And I know that, on that Sunday afternoon in our back yard, God did come to live in my heart. 

What I didn’t know that day was how much I would struggle with my salvation decision later.  What I didn’t realize that day was that I wouldn’t genuinely own that decision until much later in my life.

I just knew that I didn’t want to be wicked; I wanted to be riding Noah’s Ark.