As a young girl I attended the cliche Sunday school and church service. And every couple of months i would sit my
squirming young seven year old body into a stiff purple church pew, to listen
to my pastor talk about some subject that I wasn’t that interested in. (I was
seven, so excuse my horrible church edicate.) At the beginning of the service,
my pastor would make announcements about baby dedications, family barbecues and
light things like that. Every Sunday he would always include a very short announcement
about baptism class.
I
never wanted to go because who would ever want to take another class outside of
the seven hours of school per day, to listen about being dunked in water and
have people applaud. I was missing the point. As years passed I saw my close
friends take the class and get baptized on the same Sundays, and out of my
pride I said to myself “I will NOT get baptized while my friends are getting
baptized!’ and ‘I will make my faith my own before i get baptized!”, you might
think “wow! so mature for not getting baptized because everyone else was!” BUT
that wasn’t really the case… I didn’t get baptized because i was lazy and i
wanted to be set apart from all of my friends (in a hipster, turning my nose up
at trends kind of way)
For
years I struggled with wanting to get baptized, and with my laziness and pride,
and all through eighth grade I wrestled with the thoughts of “I know there is a
God, I know he exists, everyone is talking about him like he is a friend, and
their relationships with him, there must be something wrong with me because i
never felt God’s presence in that way, or at all.” (If you are in this spot, I
would like you to know that God is ACTIVELY pursuing you!) During that eighth
grade summer, i went on my first overseas missions trip to Haiti, and without
explaining the whole entire trip to you (which would take DAYS) I will briefly
say that, even though my heart wasn’t in it for God, I saw him working and saw
the joy and love that he brought to the people in Haiti. Once i got back, my
heart wasn’t instantly transformed into the “Jesus loves me! I love you!” mode,
but I just became more aware of his presence in my life.
Life
continued on and I was facing the big looming High School question. And soon
enough I was enrolled into Faith Bible High School, and I absolutely despised
it! I didn’t want to go to school, I came home from school crying, and i
genuinely did NOT want to go there. at all. period. And that is how my pride,
and laziness came to bite me in the butt again.
I
was lazy and didn’t want to go to school, and I was prideful to the fact that I
was not going to let God work in me because ‘I had it all together, I accepted
Jesus into my heart, I prayed the prayer and I don’t need this environment
because i have it ALL together.’ You probably know as well as I do that i
definitely did not have it all together. Everyday I would walk into class and
see my friends talking about how Jesus was working in their life, and over
time, our God softened my heart to see how much my heavenly Father was pursuing
me.
Back
to the baptism subject. Every winter my school has an at home missions trip
called “Impact”, where we volunteer at near by organizations to ‘Impact’
(heyo!) our community. During this missions trip, I saw God working through my
peers and one guy was talking about how he had a conversation with God and
basically said “ I’m done wrestling with you… I am giving up my life… I
surrender to you.” About a day later, we had devotion time and I did the ‘I
have no clue what to read so I’m just going to open up and point!’ So I did,
and every single verse I read was about surrendering your life to God… Giving
up my pride, and my laziness, and my coolness, and completely surrendering it
to Him, and trusting that he has the best in store for me.
That
night I decided ‘It's time.’ I decided that I was done having so called
*‘Buyers remorse’ with my faith. I surrendered.
So
when we look at baptism and see this class that is looming over your head,
that's not what baptism means. When we look at baptism and see it as a thing
that you have to do to be an “official Christian”, then we need to change our
perspective. In order to clear this up, let’s look at what the bible says about
baptism.
Acts
2:41 says “Those
who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to
their number that day.” When I look at this verse, I don’t see anything about
taking a class. (not saying that classes are wrong, but lets look at
their heart behind their baptism.) Everyone that was baptized in this
verse gave their life to Christ, right then and right there. They put there all
in, like how Matthew 5:37 says “All you need to say is simply 'Yes' or 'No';
anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”
In my life I didn’t surrender my
life to God, I lived a life of knowing him, but not fully Loving him, and I
didn’t until I was baptised. When I was baptized It was a heart thing.
God was calling me to get baptised, so I answered his call to my life, the call
to leave my old ways of life behind and completely change to be a child of God
with the Holy spirit living inside of me.
When the Bible says “Jesus answered,
"Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they
are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:5) we often get confused because the
Bible also says “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and
this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--”(Ephesians 2:8).
So knowing this what in the world is
baptism? If I can only enter the kingdom of heaven through baptism, but I am
not saved by my own works, and how hard I work to get into heaven, then isn’t
the Bible contradicting itself? To put it plainly, nope. The Bible doesn’t
contradict itself. In the early church being ‘Saved’ and ‘Baptized’ almost
happened simultaneously. Because of God saving us, we surrender to God and are
baptized.
“But what if i live a life for God,
knowing that I have surrendered and am saved, but haven’t been baptized?” well
then dear friend, this is where I introduce a new little buddy. His name is
“Baptized in the spirit”. Being baptized in the spirit is another way being
“saved”, which is also another way of turning to God. You can’t be saved by the
act of being immersed to water, but it is a symbol of your commitment to God.
So when the next baptism opportunity
pops up, and you want to get baptized, think about this. If you haven’t
surrendered to God, then are you ready to radically change who you live for and
how you live your life? If you have already surrendered to Christ, is God
calling you to do this? Is your heart focused on God’s will? And lastly, PRAY!
Pray like no other because God wants to have this conversation with you, and
you never know how he is going to answer!
-Lauren
Trapp
*Buyer's remorse is an emotional response on the
part of a buyer in a sales transaction, which may involve feelings of regret,
fear, depression or anxiety.
(http://definitions.uslegal.com/b/buyers-remorse/)
