141. What is Water Baptism?

Recently, one of you wrote in letting me know you got water baptized! Woohoo!! I’m so excited for you! Then, some questions came up about water baptism, so I thought this would be a great time to talk about it! 

 
This was an area of my life where I was so confused. To a lot of churches, water baptism has become a ritual…something that they do, but the people who are getting baptized have no idea why. That was the story of my life. The first time I was baptized was when I was 8 years old. My grandma belonged to a church that I went to with her on occasion. At this church, which was not a Christian church, everyone at the age of 8 was to go through indoctrination classes and get baptized at the end of the classes. I will be completely honest, I had no idea what they were teaching me and any time I asked questions, I got in trouble…so, I just went along with what they were saying and at 8 years old, I was baptized. I didn’t know why I was getting baptized; I just knew that I was supposed to according to the people at this church. I wasn’t even a Christian at the time! 

Fast forward to my senior year of high school and I come to know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I guess I didn’t tell my friends this, because with the denomination that we were going to, they believed that you had to be baptized in order to be saved. Well, I was baptized when I was 8, so that counts, right? Well, in college, I was a part of a Christian organization. I was actually a leader in this organization on campus and I kept hearing over and over again that in order to get saved I was supposed to be baptized. I began to question my salvation, because even though I was baptized when I was 8, that was before I made Jesus my Lord and Savior. I began to ask the director of the Christian organization about whether or not he thought I should be baptized, and his response was to kick me off of the leadership team, because I wasn’t “saved!” Yikes! 

Shortly after all of this, I met my husband, we got married, moved to TN and started going to the church that we go to today. This was the first time that baptism was actually taught to me in a way that made sense! I learned that you didn’t need to get baptized in order to get saved, but it is very important, because it is the first commandment Jesus gave us. We’ll talk more about this in a bit. Shortly after going to our then new church, we got involved in youth ministry. The more I learned about baptism, the more I knew I should get baptized again, but my pride was holding me back. I began to think, well, if I get baptized now, people will think I wasn’t saved before. I can’t do that. That was purely pride talking! It wasn’t until I was on one of our mission trips to Jamaica that I decided that I was going to get baptized, and I was going to declare to the world what Jesus did on the inside of me, so in the Caribbean Sea in Montego Bay, Jamaica, I was baptized, and I am so grateful a

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