Monday, November 23, 2009

Got baptized yesterday at church

Yesterday was a pretty great day.  We (Katie, Alyssa, and I) went to church and all got baptized (via immersion).  A funny thing about the baptism was that I had been thinking about getting baptized myself for the past month or so.  Then my wife told me that my step-daughter mentioned to her that she wanted to be baptized, without me ever saying a word.  Pretty amazing for an 11 year old girl to want to do that on her own.  That was awesome!

We received an email from church last week that told us they'd be doing baptisms this past Saturday and Sunday for anyone that wanted to be baptized.  I thought that it would be a great time to do it.  I didn't plan very well for it, because it's a full water immersion baptism (you get in the large tub/pool with your clothes all on).  We took our shoes and socks off, but other than that we had all our normal clothes that we wore to church that day.  As God would have it, it was abnormally warm for a November day.  High was in the upper fifties.  Katie decided to do the baptism also, because she had never done the full body immersion baptism. 

Jesus, John the Baptist and the early church did it that way, so we thought that so should we.  God commands us to be baptized (not as a term for salvation), but as a testament to the world and as an outward sign of our commitment to Jesus.

I thank God for the opportunity to be able to be baptized as a family.  It's amazing to be baptized with your wife and step-daughter.  Thank you Lord for your gift of salvation and we praise you.

Taken from one of my favorite ministry websites (InTouch.org):
Baptism is a command of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not optional. It’s an obligation for every single believer. It is not only an obligation, but it's an awesome privilege. In baptism, we make a public confession of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—in His death, burial and resurrection, and the fact that we, too, are going to follow Him.
Why should we be baptized?
  1. Jesus commanded it.
  2. It's a public confession of becoming a follower of Jesus.
  3. It represents what happened to Jesus in terms of His death, burial & resurrection.
  4. It also represents what happened to us at salvation.
  5. It identifies us with the body of Christ.