I don’t remember anything about the day of my baptism, just to be honest with you. I know that may seem like a strange thing for a pastor to say, but it is true. My parents baptized me as a baby at the First Methodist Church in Seguin, Texas. All of my family was there, and I’m sure there exist some pictures and yellow-edged paperwork to prove that moment, but I have no recollection of it. I do remember my parents and pastor teaching my confirmation class (in some denominations, this is a time when young people are educated about the Bible and salvation and then allowed to be baptized or join the church as an official member). In fact, there were over fifty of us in that class at Friendswood United Methodist Church in Houston. But again, I wasn’t baptised that day because I had already been officially baptized as a baby. But the pastor asked me if I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior, repented of my sin, sought to live by God’s Word (to the best of my ability), and would be a supportive member of the Christian Church. Of which I replied (to all of them), “Yes, I do and will.”
Now, this is not an article to debate the scriptural or theological validation or renunciation of infant baptism vs. believer baptism. There is not enough time for that within this devotional, and that is not my purpose. While I don’t really remember my baptism in an official sense, I remember learning about Jesus and having my faith grow as a young man (of which it is still growing). And I do remember the moment I fully recognized that Christ was indeed real and alive. It was a moment in which I encountered the resurrected Jesus for the first time in my life. I was on a local mission trip in Pasadena, Texas, while in High School. We were out building wheelchair ramps and doing yard work, plus small repair and construction projects. Just a bunch of High School students of various ages with a variety of power tools, producing a cacophony of noise. Every evening, we would have worship after dinner at the church that was hosting us (First United Methodist Church of Pasadena), and the mission director would give a sermon. The topic that night was something like, “God has a special purpose for you.” And while I didn’t truly feel the call to ministry that night (that would happen about three years later), I did struggle with what my purpose was as a Christian. What did it truly mean to be a follower of Jesus, and how could someone like me be used to serve the Kingdom? This is heavy stuff for High School Students from the suburbs of Houston, but there I sat in the sanctuary of a church pondering this question. I stayed there long after the service had ended, and I remember the mission director sitting down with me and talking me through my struggle. The director told me that God always provided clarity and assurance when tasking us with ministry, and to trust in his timing. Which sounded an awful lot like, “Be still and know that I am God…” (Psalm 46:10).
It was late in the evening as I made my way back to the room where I was staying, sleeping on a cot in a church Sunday School classroom. There were several other guys in the room with me, three of whom I knew very well because we attended High School together (Nathan Beasley, Thomas Abusi, and Daniel Franks). I noticed the light was still on in the room, and when I walked in, everybody was sitting up and engaged in lively conversation. There was one of the group members who was loudly denouncing the whole concept of God and Jesus; he said the only reason he was on this mission trip was that his parents forced him to be on it. This one-sided conversation seemed to go on for a while until Nathan looked at me and asked, “What do you think?” All of a sudden, I began to lay out a succinct and wellfounded argument for God’s existence and the purpose of Christ. At the time, I didn’t fully understand where my words came from and found myself unable to stop sharing my testimony and the Gospel. The words just arrived in my head and spilled out through my mouth. After a back-and-forth, the one who had been loudly rejecting Christ turned over and went to bed. But for the next two hours, long into the night, Thomas, Nathan, Daniel, and I engaged in deep conversation about Jesus. By 2 a.m., we all found ourselves praying together for Christ to enter our hearts and guide us in our lives, and we all had tears in our eyes.
