Baptism...

I believe the Bible teaches that baptism should follow a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. I do not believe baptism saves you, but I do believe it is our first act of obedience once we become a Christian. The Bible speaks of baptism often. Jesus gave us an example of baptism. Luke 3:21-22 says, ²¹ When all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized. As He was praying, heaven opened, ²² and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in a physical appearance like a dove. And a voice came from heaven:    You are My beloved Son. I take delight in You! (HCSB) 

Acts 8:36-39, " ³⁶ As they were traveling down the road, they came to some water. The eunuch said, “Look, there’s water! What would keep me from being baptized?” ³⁷ And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart you may.” And he replied, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” ³⁸ Then he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. ³⁹ When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer. But he went on his way rejoicing." (HCSB)

In April 2010, my 5 year old son came to me one morning. There is a cross in our house that has a red jewel in the center. He asked me why it was red. I said, I don't know. Maybe it is to represent Jesus' blood. We then began to talk about Jesus coming to earth as a baby, living a perfect life, dying on the cross, and rising again. I told him, one day, Jesus will call you to be a Christian and you have to choose if you are going to follow Him or not. We talked about sin and how because of sin, we are separated from God. We talked about what sin is and how it hurts God that we do the wrong thing. To my amazement, Philip got it. Then he looked at me and said, "Mom, Jesus is tugging on my heart." So many things went through my head. We prayed together, and Philip asked Jesus into his heart. 

Now Philip is a timid child when it comes to public. James and I decided we would teach him about baptism and tell him that he needed to tell the church he was a Christian and get baptized. We left the timing up to him. In January, we had a lay renewal weekend at our church. The Sunday morning of the renewal weekend, Philip went before the church and told them he had asked Jesus into his heart and he wanted to be baptized. 

We scheduled a day to baptize him. However, the baptistry heater went out. So, we postponed it until we could get it fixed. They put a new heater in this week, and we scheduled baptism for today. A very special thing for us was that James got to baptize him. Since James is our music minister, we baptized Philip first. Jim got in the baptistry and talked about baptism, then James and Jim tried to get Philip to come in. The water was VERY hot and Philip did not want to get in it. James picked him up and put him in next to him. Poor kiddo cried. James kept him facing him and quickly went through the, "Philip have you asked Jesus in your heart?" Philip said, "Yes." James quickly said, "Upon your profession of Faith in Jesus, I baptize you, my brother, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." Then James moved him to the other side and quickly dunked him and lifted him out. The water wasn't hot enough to burn Philip, but it was hot. I felt so badly for him. Still such a special time.

We were very blessed to have not only our church family there, but my Mom, Dad, Jacob, Jarod, and our great friend the Craymer's. We had a great afternoon visiting our friends and I LOVE that our kids pick up and play like they see each other every day.