Living Waters Fellowship

Josh and Marie Daggett

I used to not think so.

I grew up in a Christian home, I had great parents, I had a great home life, and I went to church every time the doors were open. By all outward appearances I was a good upstanding Christian kid that was well on his way to nice, comfortable life somewhere in the suburbs.

As I hit my teenage years, three things began to take their place on the throne of my heart; those three things were: Sports, Popularity and Girls, probably in that exact order. I began to sell my soul to these three things, I was consumed with being the best athlete, the most popular kid and a guy that was attractive to the opposite sex. All of my days were spent in a relentless pursuit of these three things and yet, I found that I was still strangely unsatisfied with life. You see, I had grown up very religious, I knew all the Bible stories and had heard all the sermons one could ever hear, yet I wanted nothing to do with God. God, to me, was some kind of disease that made me uncomfortable, nervous, angry and ashamed. God seemed totally out of sync with what I wanted in life, so I avoided Him at all costs.

When I reached high school, things appeared to be going great; I was a successful athlete, I was pretty popular, and I seemed to be hitting it off with the girls. But that was just the thing, everything APPEARED to be going great, but inwardly, I could feel God pricking my conscience telling me that everything I was doing was all wrong and that I was headed down the path of destruction. Well I wasn’t about to let God get in the way of the plans I had for my life, so I attempted all the more to avoid anything associated with God, Jesus and the Bible and continued to pursue a sinful lifestyle that answered to no-one except myself.

The summer before my senior year of high school, after just returning from a basketball camp, I was forced to go on a missions’ trip to New York City by my Dad. I protested the trip strongly and hated the idea that I was being forced into this stupid trip by my over-the-top, strict, mean parents. As the plane dropped below the clouds and I saw New York City, I decided right there that I would go and see the sights and sounds of the city, but I would not participate at all in the missions trip, which is exactly what I did. For the first 2½ days of the trip, I didn’t participate. I didn’t sing, I didn’t smile, and I didn’t talk to anyone about “Jesus”. On the 3rd night, they announced that they were going to be hosting a concert of prayer from 6-10 p.m. I, of course, thought it was ridiculous, and stowed myself away in the laundry room of the World Trade Center Marriott (which was destroyed during the September 11th attacks in 2001)

Around 8 p.m. that night, for some reason unknown to me at the time, I felt a strange desire to go down and see what was going on at this “concert of prayer”, so I headed down to the conference room. As I walked into the room, there was a young man from Texas up on stage talking. I stood and listened to him talk about the fact that, though he had come from a broken home, and had a rough childhood; he had found Jesus to be all that he needed as his Lord and Savior. As I listened, tears began to stream down my cheeks because I realized that though I had grown up in a Christian home and had a good upbringing, and been very religious growing up, I was completely lost and sinful, in need of the salvation that Jesus provided.

Scripture verses that I had known since I was little boy began to flood into my mind: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23)…The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)…But God commended His love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8)…If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9,10).” I fell to my knees, weeping, and said to God, “God, I’ve wasted 17 years of my life running from You and doing my own thing. I’m a wicked sinner in your sight, and if you would please forgive me for all the sin that is in my life I will be ever grateful. I accept you Jesus, as my Savior.” It was at that point that God saved me on July 6th, 1999 in New York City.

The scriptures say, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, old things have passed away, behold all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17)” That verse describes what happens to an individual that trust Jesus as their Savior, and it most certainly describes what happened to me after I got saved. When I got back home, I had new desires to know and serve God. I was a new man both inside and out thanks to the saving power of God through His Son Jesus Christ! Things aren’t perfect now that I know the Lord, I still have problems, I still have struggles, but I handle those problems differently because of the hope that I have in Jesus. I thank God for showing me that there is a huge difference between being highly religious and having a personal relationship with the savior Jesus Christ!