“Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen,” 1 Timothy 1:17.
From the very first session of the scuba diving class I took, our instructor emphasized that you never dive alone. In fact, he paired all of us into buddy teams. For the entire semester we always entered the pool with our buddy and carried on our training with our friend at our side.
After becoming a certified diver I made lots of trips from the Texas coast into the Gulf of Mexico. Since I knew no one else on the boat except the captain, my buddy was always a stranger. This system worked fine except for one dive.
As we motored out from Port Aransas, Texas, into the Gulf, the captain paired me up with a young man probably around 20 to 22 years of age. I was an old man—35 or so. After securing the boat to an oil platform, all the divers went overboard. It was a good dive with visibility ranging from 25 to 35 feet. At the end of the dive my buddy and I did the thumbs up which meant, “Let’s return to the surface.” He took off for the surface and I attempted to, but something was holding me down. I watched him disappear and felt a surge of panic. I looked around and, sure enough, fishing line had entangled my leg and my fin. I looked back up for my buddy who was nowhere to be seen.
I had already conquered the panic, because I knew that was a killer. Fortunately my dive instructor repeatedly reminded us to always wear a dive knife. I removed my knife from its sheath and cut away the fishing line. Then I simply returned to the surface, found our boat and climbed aboard. I never said a thing to my buddy who had abandoned me.
One thing is for sure; this incident taught me that my invisible companion is always there. I must never confuse his invisibility with nonexistence. The spirit realm is more real than the material—it’s permanent, whereas, the material is temporary. God is with you because he says he is. “The Lord will hold you by your right hand saying, ‘Fear not, I am with you,’” Isaiah 41:13.
