ILL. A few years ago Paul Harvey wrote in Guidepost Magazine about his own baptism. He said that even though he had received almost every reward for his broadcasting powers & ability that he still felt empty inside.
Well, one summer he & his wife were vacationing in a place called Cave Creek, AZ. Sunday morning came & they decided to go to church. So they went to this little church, & there were only 12 other people present.
But there was a good spirit about that place, & for some reason he began thinking about John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
He said, "I liked that ‘everlasting life’ part, & I believed in Jesus, but I had never gone forward in a church service. I remembered one night praying in my hotel room & asking Jesus to come into my heart, but I felt that there was still something that was missing."
He said that the preacher got up & announced that his sermon was going to be about baptism. Paul Harvey said, "I yawned. But as he started talking about it I found myself interested. He talked about the symbolism behind it, & how it symbolized the complete surrender of one’s life to Jesus Christ, & how there was nothing really magic in the water. But there was this cleansing inside that took place when you yielded yourself to Jesus."
He went on to say, "Finally, when he came to the end of his sermon he said, ‘If any of you have not been baptized in this way, I invite you to come forward & join me here at the pulpit.’"
Paul Harvey said, "To my surprise, I found myself going forward. The preacher had said there was nothing magic in the water. Yet as I descended into the depths & rose again I knew something life changing had happened - a cleansing inside out. No longer did there seem to be two uncertain contradictory Paul Harveys, just one immensely happy one. I felt the
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