From the archives of Evelyn Roberts
My road map of life started with my birth into the home of an alcoholic. My father drank, and he abused my mother. Finally, when I was four and my sister was two, my mother divorced him. A year or so later she remarried. God had a hand in that marriage and His road map for my life began to take shape.
My mother was not a churchgoer, even though she belonged to a church. My stepfather didn’t go to church either, but he had a Methodist mother who really knew Jesus. So I did have some exposure to the Gospel.
But even after my parents were saved, I didn’t give my heart to the Lord until I was a 12-year-old girl, sitting in a church service. A young woman got up to play the violin and sing and the song went something like this: “Jesus went a little further, All the way to Calvary, and he did it for me.”
I could just see that one Man, Jesus, trudging up Golgotha’s hill and carrying the Cross for me — just for me — and it broke me to pieces. I’ve always said that if you ever get a glimpse of Jesus, you’ll want Him. And I wanted Jesus so badly that night that I couldn’t wait until the preacher was through preaching. I received my salvation that night, and I was baptized in the Holy Spirit.
You can know about Jesus and go to church with your family all of your life, yet never really know Him. I think about the many people who go to church and hear about Jesus, but don’t really take Him as their Savior. When you receive Jesus as your personal Savior, at that point, your life can turn around. Second Corinthians 5:17 says it this way: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”