So Thursday night we had an amazing time of worship…and I got baptized! It’s been something that’s been coming for a long time but I always put it off. I wanted to make it about me. I wanted to do it in a big crowd, with a lot of people watching. I always said I would get baptized at the beach or at the fountain at the mall. I wanted to do it the right way with the right people there (notice all the “I’s” in there). But that’s not what they did in the bible, and that’s not what baptism is about.. The minute they gave their lives to Christ they got baptized with water. It’s the first sign of obedience to Christ.
Mike Paschall (one of our coaches) has done two baptisms this year, and it’s been on my heart since the beginning of the Race that I would get baptized this year. Still, I put it off until “the time was right.”
God really spoke to our squad Thursday night about unity as a squad, and that this would mark a turning point for our squad. That what we experienced the first half of the Race is nothing compared to what we’d experience the second half, and this is a new beginning for us. I knew in my heart I was supposed to get baptized that night. Still, I spent a good part of the night fighting it. “But God, this isn’t how I pictured it. The right people aren’t here. I’ve been waiting to do this for five years, is this really the right time?” He kept confirming it to me over and over again to the point of where I felt like I would be disobedient if I didn’t do it that night. So I pulled Dave aside and said “I know we’ve talked about this for a while but I need you to baptize me tonight.” He got excited and smiled and “said the pools real cold!” I told him I didn’t care.
Well apparently there were snakes in the pool so 51 people crammed into the bathroom and Dave baptized me in the bathtub. At least the water was warmer!
I wrote this in my journal on Thursday. “Tonight was not about fancy shows or people “seeing me do the Christian thing.” It wasn’t about me trying to make it a big event and taking Jesus out of it. Tonight was about me and God. Nothing else.
This certainly isn’t how I expected my baptism to be. 51 people crowded into a bathroom, as I was dunked in a bathtub, at a missionary house in South Africa. But it was exactly how God planned it. And it was exactly how it need to be. The old has gone and the new has come!
