Coming Back New by Dan King

My spe­cial Guest Blog­ger on the Hori­zon today is Dan King of BibleDude.net, an online Bible study resource. Dan works with a young adults min­istry in Sara­sota, Florida. His goal is “to chal­lenge the way you think about the world around you as you look at it with God-goggles on. Com­fort­able Chris­tian­ity is a dan­ger­ous place to be, as the world around us is try­ing to chew up the Church and spit it out.”

Com­ing Back New

by Dan King

I must have asked myself if I was sure about this some­where around a mil­lion times. Am I actu­ally going to go through with this? Why do I need to do this any­way? Isn’t my sal­va­tion enough?

After my sal­va­tion expe­ri­ence about a year and a half ear­lier, I did notice some great changes in my life. How­ever there was always the sense that I could always go back to my old way of life if this Chris­tian­ity thing turned out to not be what I thought it was. After all, I was a liar with an immoral heart and a hyp­ocrite. I never did open myself up com­pletely to those close to me. I was a Chris­t­ian now, but won­dered why I still strug­gled with things. I even started serv­ing as a helper with the youth group, and often found myself talk­ing to young men telling them that they shouldn’t be doing the very things that I know that I strug­gled with in my own mind and heart.

I was told that the water bap­tism was about a bunch of dif­fer­ent things, and it all made sense. But most impor­tantly my Jesus told us to do it, and to me that was enough. How­ever, I still strug­gled with the idea of going through with it. Now I under­stand why. I didn’t want to let go of the past. I enjoyed my past. I had fun, and if I were to do this whole bap­tism thing, then I knew that it was done.

I don’t know about every­one else, but to me the act of water bap­tism was about lay­ing it all down. I had to take the old me and lay it all down before Christ and let Him know that all of the good ol’ “fun” stuff is not what I wanted out of life any­more. I wanted Him. I was dying to the world that day, and quite frankly, that scared me. I didn’t truly know what life would be like on “the other side” for me. That’s the next thing…

The “new” life. For me water bap­tism is also about a “res­ur­rec­tion,” just like my Jesus did. After He beat death and rose from the grave, I always imag­ine that he came back greater and stronger and even more con­fi­dent. I doubt that the Son of God lacked in these areas to begin with, but the other side of res­ur­rec­tion had to be pretty spe­cial. And, that’s where I was about to go. I didn’t know what to expect, but I did know that it had to be a spe­cial place.

Finally, it was all too pub­lic. Why did we have to do it at a pub­lic beach? In front of all of those peo­ple? Now I know why. I needed my life to make a state­ment to the world. I had to make the state­ment that I was leav­ing it, and com­ing back dif­fer­ent. Peo­ple had to see me go down, and come back up.

So the day came, and I walked out into that water and waited for my turn. I was excited, but still unsure. When my turn came, with a pas­tor on each side of me pray­ing, they laid me back into the water. There I was, com­pletely sub­mersed. I know that I was only down there for a sec­ond or two, but it also seemed like an eter­nity. As the water swirled over my face I remem­ber open­ing my eyes and look­ing up. I saw the sun shin­ing down through the water on me, and I remem­ber think­ing that God was out there some­where smil­ing over me.

When I came back up, I came back up as the “new” me. All I could do was to stretch my hands up to the sky and praise His Name. And as I looked up to the sky, I was sud­denly reminded of how cloudy it was out­side that day. Then I just smiled, and took my first step for­ward know­ing that God had smiled upon me that day, and that my life would never be the same again. Amen.

Orig­i­nally writ­ten for the weekly writ­ing con­test [Chris­t­ian Bap­tism] at www.faithwriters.com.

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