Baptism in Thailand [pictures included]

Ever since I prayed with my YL leader Will Cox about starting a relationship with Jesus 6 years ago I thought about getting baptized.

When I started a relationship with Jesus I stood up at a Young Life camp called Rockbridge and was apart of the Say So, which comes from Psalm 107:2.

I stood in front of 90 kids from my 700 person high school and nearly 900-1000 others from VA and said I Dylan Douglas, from Goochland, have decided to start a relationship with Christ (meaning I was accepting His pursuit of me). I didn’t have much knowledge of what baptism meant or why people did it I just knew I started a relationship with Jesus.

After I asked Will about it and he told me when I felt like it to go and be baptized. I thought it was just a thing people did when they were a kid. I didn’t grow up knowing much about Jesus.

So for me enough was knowing that I was now a follower of this Jesus guy and he was love and hope. But hearing about others being baptized as kids or adults doing it made me question things a bit.

Since I started my pursuit of what baptism was I talked with other people in my life about. They would tell me I didn’t need to get baptized to have Jesus love me anymore, I didn’t need this for my salvation, and that it won’t make me better than someone else that had not been.

Which gave me some hope because I was seeing baptism at first as a work I needed to do to get to God. But one day the time will come, maybe soon or maybe latter in life.

I was told that baptism was a good thing. But for some reason in the back of my mind I never did it. I thought it was me going back on what I said that day when I accepted Jesus.

This past year I have talked with more people about getting baptized than ever before. I had some very long conversations about it with my month two, Botswana, world race hosts Taryn and Nate. Taryn told me that it’s a deceleration of faith to yourself, to the people around you, and it’s an outward sign of what’s happening inwardly to the living God I believe in and love. That when the time comes it’s some thing I should want to do, I would have an unending desire to do it when it was.

I spent a lot of time talking with David, host in Thailand month six, about it. He said a lot of the things Taryn said. He added that it’s one of the commandments, things Jesus asks us to do to be closer and nearer to him, and that followers of Jesus did in the New Testament. He also added baptism is symbolic. Much of what Will said he agreed with and said that it’s a commitment. Every day we choose to commit but the symbolism of a new birth in baptism of water is like being born again. We came from a place of life being made into this living this life.

Multiple times we see people commit to Jesus and immediately get baptized or its mentioned; Acts 22:16, Luke 3:16, Galatians 3:27, and Matthew 28:19-20 to just name a few.

I have been on this race to see the church in other parts of the world. I have been on this race to tell others about Jesus. I have been on this race to see Jesus more in my own life more than anything else.

So after a long and thought provoking day talking with David, I decided at 1 am to get baptized. I want to let Jesus into all of my life. Not just the things I love but the things he loves.

I go and tell my team, that was close to going to bed, and they came down to the pond at the orphanage we stayed at.

The pond was dirty, filled with tilapia, and shallow. I was clothed in the same clothes I wore all day. This is symbolic of the dirt we live in. That it may be messy but here is hope and spiritual food, they ate the fish in the pond, in every thing in life because of Jesus.

My team half awake but genuinely excited was there. And the calmness of the night was upon us.

I feel more alive. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel made new.

This is my favorite moment from my four months in Asia.