Beginning Again

As I mentioned in my first post, my mom didn't believe that you can choose another person's faith for them. She allowed me to choose for myself. I chose Jesus at a young age, but I was never baptized. At my church, I only ever saw babies get baptized. I didn't really understand what baptism was, although I'm sure I had it explained to me, so I just thought it was something for babies. I was embarrassed by the idea of getting baptized at an older age.

As I went through my life and my various levels of involvement with church and Jesus, it crossed my mind many times about whether to get baptized. I felt like Jesus loved me whether I was baptized or not, and I didn't understand how baptism would make a difference to my faith. I didn't understand that God made a commitment to us, but baptism is our commitment to Him. I didn't understand the concept of dying to sin and allowing our sins to be washed away.

I saw baptism as a symbolic gesture that had no real impact.

I didn't understand.

When I was living in Nashville, I started attended Belmont Church. Nestled in the heart of Music Row, we had a pretty good worship band (go figure). It was a two-hour service in which the first hour was just music. My heart soared!

I loved singing! When I first started attending, I noticed how people would lift their hands in worship while they sang. This was something I had never experienced in a church. And the music was alive! This was something else I had never experienced in church! The hymns we sang in the churches I had attended in my youth had a somber, lifeless quality to them.'

Part of what had led me away from church in the first place was that it didn't make sense to me. Weren't we supposed to be celebrating Jesus? If so, why did the songs sound like we were mourning? Doesn't God love us the way we are? If so, then why did we need to dress and look a certain way and put on so many airs when we were in His house? It didn't make sense to me at all.

But, when I got to Belmont, I got to dress comfortably and worship loudly! No one told me I couldn't cross my legs in church... or laugh out loud in church. (My grandmother had told me both of these things in the small church I attended as a child!) In fact, it was a bit overwhelming, I looked around at all these people with their arms in the air, and I couldn't do it. I felt like a fraud if I tried and that, if I did, everyone would see me and know I was a fraud.

I eventually got over that. I realized that if the entire room has their arms lifted in worship, no one is going to notice mine. When I stopped focusing on myself and just put my whole heart into the singing, I found myself naturally lifting my arms in worship... reaching out to Jesus. There was freedom when I could finally let go and allow myself to be carried to Him on the music. Now, I could be the only person in the room lifting my arms, and I wouldn't care because the music is about Him and that's all that matters!

It was at Belmont that I finally began to understand what baptism was all about. I got to see several adult baptisms in my time there, and my heart began to yearn. Through the sermons on those baptism days, I realized the necessity of baptism. Baptism was about repentance and surrender. Yes, it was symbolic. And, no, getting baptized wouldn't make God love me anymore. His love is infinite for all His children, believer and non-believer alike. However, the baptism was for me.

The baptism was a covenant I made with God, letting Him know that I wanted to die to my old self, my sinful self, and accept His Holy Spirit within me to make me anew in Him. If you're a non-believer, this will sound like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. And, it is definitely one of those things that you have to experience to truly understand, but I'll try to make some sense of it.

All major milestones in our lives come with some sort of ritual, whether they are expressed in a traditional manner or an unconventional one, we tend to celebrate those milestone moments (weddings, birthdays, graduations, etc.) with something. I think our human nature needs those rituals in order to make those milestones feel more real and to create a mark in time that becomes a monument to the actual thing we're celebrating.

As our creator, God understands our need for such things. I think baptism is partially about that. I say partially about that because, it feeds a need that our human nature has to mark the passing of a milestone.

However, it's also more than that. In order to follow Jesus, we're supposed to die to our old selves (the selves that ruled by the desires and rules of the world) and to be made new in Jesus (adopting God's perspective). The baptism is literally a symbol of that. We go into the water as sinners, and we come up as a new creation. And, while that is largely symbolic, it is also 100% true.

It doesn't mean that we will suddenly be perfect and never make a mistake or stumble, but it does mean that in that act of surrender, of allowing ourselves to be plunged under the water, we are accepting the offer of Jesus. We are saying "yes" to Him.

Let's take a moment to talk about sin here. Too often, that word is diminished to mean "bad." If we sin, we've done a bad thing. If we are sinners, we are bad people. Sin is not about good or bad. I think it's important to understand that.

The original meaning for sin means to "miss the mark." So what does that mean? God has a plan for all of us, and He has a plan for each of us. He also gave us free will. God created us as an act of love and to have a relationship with us. You can't have a relationship with a puppet. Love is not in a puppet's DNA. God gave us free will so that we could share in a loving relationship with Him. However, He does have a plan for us, and living our lives according to that plan means that we have to surrender our own plans. Missing the mark means that we are living outside of His plans for us. It means being disobedient to His will for us, even if the area of disobedience isn't something "bad."

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were given a choice. They could eat of anything in the garden except one tree. I never used to understand this. I always thought if you put a whole bunch of toys in a room, and then you tell the children in the room that they can play with everything except the red ball, what's the one thing they are going to want to play with? Yep, the red ball!

What it took me most of my life to learn was that if you don't put the red ball in the room, how do you teach the children obedience? If God hadn't put the tree in the garden, we would not have been given the free will to choose. And Adam and Eve were actually pretty happy leaving that tree alone. They had a relationship with God, they knew Him, and they trusted Him. If God said that it was not good to eat from that tree, that was all they needed to hear... until the Tempter came along and suggested that maybe they shouldn't trust God after all.

When they succumbed to that temptation, they disobeyed God. They stepped outside of God's plan for them, and chose their own will. And that was the moment that sin was ushered into the world. The tree they ate from was The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In other words, they chose the ability to judge good and evil for themselves rather than trusting God's judgement. That choice is what ushered sin into the world. And we are addicted to it. We don't want God to tell us how to live our lives; we want to decide for ourselves how to live our lives. And it is because of that choice that we all tend to break things into classifications such as "good" and "bad." But that's not what sin is about. Sin is about "beneficial" and "not beneficial."

Sin is about not actually being very good at judging what is good and what is not. God has an eternal perspective. When He judges, He can see from the beginning to the end of time, so He knows how every choice will ripple out into the world and into time, and how it will impact every single person who has ever lived or ever will live (like a butterfly flapping it's wings). He also sees into the heart of every living person past, present and future. But our perspective is so limited that all we can see is this very moment and our own perspective, and we don't usually see either one of those very clearly either. We are terrible judges. God told us not to eat from that tree because He could see how it would rot us. And it did. But He couldn't withhold the tree from us, because then we would have just been His puppets, with no free will.

Baptism is about surrendering the tree back to God. It's about saying to God (and all who witness our baptism) that we are going to trust His judgement instead of our own. We are telling Him and our community that God's will over our lives supersedes our own will. The gift God gave us was Jesus. Jesus died the death He did in order to take the sin of the world into Himself and to save us from ourselves.

The cost of sin is death. When Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God expelled them from the Garden so that they would not also eat of the Tree of Eternal Life. This might seem like a harsh punishment, but it was wisdom on God's part. If we also had eternal life, we would never believe that we need His wisdom and His love and His protection, when in fact, our skewed, broken perspective meant that we needed it all that much more. We would spend an eternity rotting away in our skin judging everyone and everything without actually knowing anyone or anything. God understood that eternal life needs to come with the ability to love everyone despite whether they are "good" or "bad." And, I mean truly love, not just tolerate.

Living in sin means trusting our own judgement over God's. It means that sometimes we do things that are not beneficial for us (or others), even when they are not "bad" things. It means living outside of God's plan and will for our lives.

When we are baptized, we accept God's will for us. We are surrendering our own will, our own plan, and our own judgement. It doesn't mean that God will ask us to give up our hopes and dreams and plans, but it does mean we are willing to accept His over our own if that's what He asks. Jesus surrendered His life for us on the cross. We surrender our lives to Him in baptism. It's like a signed contract. He signed His part in blood, and we sign our part in water.

Baptism, however, is only the first step. We surrender our lives, our will, our plans to Him every day and every moment after that as well. The baptism is the act that signals our willingness. Discipleship is the method by which we learn how to live and walk in that surrender.

On the day I was baptized, December 17, 1995, I only had a child's understanding of these things. I knew that it was important. I knew it would change my life, but I still believed it was mostly symbolism.

My mother was there that day in the church. Though she wanted me to make the choice myself, she was clearly pleased at the choice I made. I think that's how God feels too, when we choose Him. He gave us free will so we would willingly come to Him, and He is pleased when we choose Him.

I will never forget that day. I had taken some classes to prepare for it and to help me understand what baptism was all about, but it can't truly prepare you for the experience of it. I cherish that day and that moment.

At Belmont, the baptisms were done during the music, and the baptismal fount was behind a wall that would open up just before the baptism. As I stepped into the water with the pastor behind the wall, I could hear the muffled sound of singing on the other side. I was a bit nervous, though I had seen several baptisms, had been prepped, and knew just what to expect. But it was different to actually be standing in the water... cool enough to make you shiver just a bit, but not actually cold.

Suddenly, the wall slid open and the whole church starting cheering and the singing increased in volume. I knew all those people out there were celebrating this moment for me, and I was surprised by the emotion that I felt. Then, the pastor started praying next to my ear. I focused on his words and echoing his prayer in my heart, and the sound of the church fell away again. They were still singing just as loudly as before, but, for me, they seemed distant, as if they were in a different building.

Suddenly, the pastor plunged me under the water, and everything went silent. I know the church was still singing because I had been in the church during other baptisms, and we didn't stop singing. But, there in the water, in that moment, everything dropped away. All sound, all perception, everything. Everything, except that moment. Everything was still. I was still. And though I know it only lasted a moment, that moment lasted a lifetime. That moment was filled with eternity.

Then just as suddenly, I was up and out of the water, and the church erupted with what can only be described as jubilee. The singing was even louder, the cheering even louder, and, for the first time, I looked out at the congregation.

My eyes went directly to my mom. Even though I only had a vague sense of where to look from the perspective of the baptismal fount, my eyes went right to her as if I had practiced it. We locked eyes (and hearts), and I found myself laughing and crying, and she was too. Something monumental had shifted in me. I knew my life would never be the same.

To my great sadness, my mother passed away three weeks later. It was completely unexpected. She had been staying with me for Christmas and went home just two weeks after my baptism. As we sat in the airport saying our goodbyes and waiting for Mom to board her flight (back in the days when  you could actually escort someone to their gate), she patted me on the leg and said, "I can go home now. I know you're going to be okay." She was talking about the baptism and about other things in my life that we had figured out while she was there, and neither one of us realized how prophetic her words would turn out to be when she died the following week of a brain aneurysm. She went peacefully. And, I really do think her words were prophetic. I believe that one of the plans God had for her was to bring me to Him. (We all have people in our lives that God has chosen for us to bring to Him.) She had fulfilled His plans for her (and I have to believe there were a lot of other things she had done to also fulfill His plans), and so He brought her home.

As a new believer, my Mom's death, and the other things I faced that year, were hard on me. I hadn't figured out how to turn to God in times of trouble. I hadn't developed a community of believers that would hold me up through the hard times. I had signaled my willingness to surrender when I was baptized, but I hadn't actually figured out how to surrender, and I hadn't made the step into discipleship.

Though my faith was shaken that year, and I did step away from my faith for a long time, that baptism stayed with me. Even when I was so angry with God over my losses (without looking for His purposes and His good in it) that I could barely acknowledge him, that baptism was still there. It meant something, and it meant something to me, deep down inside. Because something did change in my life that day.

Long after I had stopped praying and stopped trying to find Jesus, He was still trying to draw me in. I was in Spain with a group of friends 10 years later. We went to an art museum, and I found myself in front of painting after painting of Jesus on the cross. I was drawn to them and couldn't verbalize why. But as the Psalm goes, "deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls." Even though I had turned from God, He was still calling to me. He hadn't let go of me. Something had changed deep inside of me that day I was baptized, and it never let go of me. He never lets go.

Little did I know that within six months, I would be diagnosed with breast cancer and that it would somehow lead me home. Little did I know that I would be lifting my head in prayer—the first conscious prayer I had prayed in a decade—to thank Him for the blessings he poured into my life as a direct result of the breast cancer. Little did I know that my Father in Heaven would show me how much He loved me and how much I mattered and how much He wanted me to return to Him through something that the world would see as very "bad" indeed: breast cancer. Thank God for my breast cancer, for with it, He saved my life.