Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.
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I was saved by the Lord back in the mid-1970's while at my kitchen table on my 33rd birthday. I had been raised in a religious tradition, attended nothing but their parochial schools all my life and held to their most important traditions—at least sporadically when convenient. I had certainly never been taught, read or had much contact with the bible and had only been taught the rules of the denomination—the largest as it was then and still is today.
 
I must mention that my lovely wife Alice had gone with her sister to a charismatic prayer meeting at a nearby Catholic church a month earlier and came home with a bible. It was the first one ever in our household. She was all excited and talking to me about Jesus. I told her that I did not want to hear about it.
 
That day as I was having my coffee while Alice had gone out to get me a birthday cake I looked up and saw her bible sitting on the refrigerator. For whatever reason I went over and picked it up, sat back down and said, “If you are real Jesus, I want to know.” I just randomly flipped open the bible, looked down and saw a passage (Psalm 8:3-5) that was so personal, so real to me, that I immediately began to cry. Not something that I, a tough guy, would ever normally do. I heard a voice, so soft and sweet, one I would come to know and love so well over the decades, and He said to me, “Not only am I real, but I know exactly what is in your heart!”

By the way what had always troubled my heart was when I would look at the night sky and see the moon and the stars which had been there for untold eons before me and would be there long after I was gone. That forced me to realize how tiny and insignificant I actually was—rather than the successful New York business consultant that I considered myself to be at that time. It was a real pride buster. So it was an unmeasurable blessing when I continued reading and saw, “Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty!”
 
Tears poured out of me as the Lord spoke so many things to me, things that would change my life for all eternity starting right then and there—that kitchen was holy ground! Alice came back with her sister and as soon as she saw me she knew what had happened to me; Jesus happened to me! Now, all these years later as I read today's verse, it was as though I heard Him say just as He did that fateful day so long ago, 'You have had your life, now it is Mine.'
 
“And He was saying to them all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?'” (Luke 9:23-25)
 
GOD SEARCHES THE HEART