This Sunday, you are invited to be part of a very special celebration of baptism. Ten people will be baptized, and each one comes with their own story of faith, struggle, and God’s grace. Each has a testimony and each is excited to share this special day with you. It is almost impossible to witness a baptism service without reflecting on what baptism means in our own lives. Why do people put on baptismal robes and enter the water? What does it mean to publicly identify ourselves with Christ in this way?
My own baptism took place many years ago. I was 19 years old, the son of the pastor and, at the time, the youth pastor of my church. I had grown up surrounded by the truths of Christianity and had witnessed God’s supernatural hand at work in my parents’ home. Along the way, I had come to discover my own faith in God and to experience His grace personally. When I was 17, I was involved in a fatal car accident in which I could easily have died. Instead, I walked away. That experience changed my life. It opened my eyes to God’s invitation to something much greater than the life I had been living. Over the years, I had several opportunities to be baptized, but I kept putting it off. I wanted my baptism to be a special experience, something that felt right to me and happened at the right time.
It took me until I was 19 to realize that baptism wasn’t about me at all. I had to come to terms with how desperately I needed God at the center of my life. I needed to get out of the way and allow God to do His work in me. When I finally told my father that I wanted him to baptize me, he was shocked. He assumed that, as the pastor’s son and youth pastor, I must have already been baptized. But I hadn’t. Somehow, I had slipped through the cracks, supported by nothing more than my own pride and stubbornness.
I had been encouraging the teenagers in my Sunday School class to follow the Word of God and be baptized. Eventually, I could no longer ignore the hypocrisy of encouraging others to obey God while refusing to obey Him myself. So I told my father I was ready. That day, I was the first person to be baptized. And immediately afterward, I stayed in the water and helped him baptize several of the young people I had led to Christ. Today, every time I baptize a believer, I think back to my own baptism. I remember God’s incredible patience with me. I am thankful for His love and grateful that He did not give up on me, even when I stubbornly resisted His call.
What about you? Are you thankful for what God has done in your life to bring you to the waters of baptism? Have you already been baptized, and can you look back with gratitude at what God has done in your life?
Or perhaps you know that you still need to be baptized. Maybe you have been putting it off, waiting for the right time, or simply ignoring God’s call. If that is you, I want you to know that you are welcome at Trinity Church. If you would like to learn more about baptism, why we practice it, or how you can take this step of obedience, please contact Pastor Dan. We would love to walk with you.
“Trinity International Church is a safe, welcoming, community of Christ-followers who uphold a high view of Scripture, celebrate unity in diversity and participate fully in the abiding Christian life as described in the Bible. We are united by the principle that in the essentials there should be unity, in all else there should be charity.”
Pastor Dan
