A reflection on my baptism tonight
Tonight I am getting back to the basics: “If you love me, you will obey my teachings.” Jesus, I want to obey you, not because it’s what I have to do if I want something from you, but because I want to show you how much I love you! I love you because you loved me first. That’s as simple as it gets, and I need no other explanation. I love you because you loved me first. And from there, I can do anything when I’m powered by your love. So tonight I am being baptized. I’ve been baptized before, as a young child. I remember the words out of my mouth: “I’m being baptized because…I want Christ to be my personal savior.” I remember the adrenaline and the heart pounding as I muttered those words before a congregation of people. The thing is, I didn’t really know what I was talking about, or why I was doing it. Because I didn’t really get belief then. My heart was always plagued with fear that Christ wasn’t going to save me, and if I died I wouldn’t get to go to heaven. Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t really get belief until this past year in college. Now I understand that belief is not just mental assent, but it transforms the way you live. And believing something in your head is a lot different than believing in your heart. Believing something in your head can’t even legitimately be called belief. Because if you really believe something, you live by it, and your thoughts, words, and actions are shaped by it. The way that I have lived the majority of my life, especially high school, has not truly reflected a belief in Jesus Christ as my savior and Lord.
The last few years of my life have been filled with revelation of truth about who God is, and the way he works. In January 2006, God showed me that I don’t have to earn his love, but that it will break through any barrier and cross any distance to get to me; in October 2007, I learned that crucial difference between telling yourself that you believe something and knowing that you really believe it; and in February 2008, God awakened me to the reality of my life’s purpose: that it’s not all about what I can do for him, changing the world out of obligation, neither is it about living a good Christian life out of duty or even religion, but simply living to know Jesus better. To love him and be loved by him. To never stop being truly transformed into his likeness on the inside. To be content simply dwelling in his presence, and yet constantly yearning for more of him. This is the most exhilarating, electrifying, meaningful adventure a human being can ever embark on—even more meaningful than finding a soulmate on this earth to love. Because I found out that God is the lover of my soul, and I am a lover of his heart. Earthly romance is here and gone, but that precious divine love relationship between me and Jesus will last for eternity.
So, I’m not getting baptized tonight for the sake of trying to earn Jesus’ personal salvation. I am being baptized tonight because I believe that he has already performed his saving work in my life, and I don’t have to try to earn anything, or be someone I’m not. Furthermore, I am acknowledging that I don’t have to strive out of my own strength to save the world, but by simply living my life to become more intimate with Jesus, I will bear more fruit than I ever could without him. This act of baptism is the beginning of my long-distance cross-country run of obedience, but this time it’s not out of duty or trying to earn anything, but out of a desire to show him how much I love him—out of this divinely placed passion to be in his presence and to be completely found in beholding his awesome beauty and worshiping him with everything that I am. And that is something that I truly believe.
