Tonight I got baptized… and I know what some are you are probably thinking: “Didn’t Morgan get baptized when she was 14?” Continue reading to hear what the Lord has done in my life and how He has given me such a desire to walk in obedience to Him.

Acts 2:38

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ…”

Before you read on, know this: This is in no way to glorify or bring attention to myself. I am writing this in order to bring clarity where there may be confusion, and most importantly, to bring glory to the God of my salvation.

A Little Bit About How The Lord Saved Me

I type this post now with so much joy in my heart reflecting on how the Lord saved me and adopted me as His child nearly 4 years ago, and I am overwhelmed by the truth that He had sovereignly planned to make me His even before the foundation of the world.

When I was a kid, I knew who Jesus was and what he had done. I knew that to go to Heaven, I had to be saved. But I didn’t understand what it truly meant to repent, and even if I had understood, I was not broken over or ashamed of my sin. This is true of every nonbeliever. There is no remorse, no sorrow over sin, and no desire to deny the flesh: a true child of wrath and slave to sin.

I grew up in and out of Church, learning Bible knowledge, but never truly having a heart change. In the sixth grade, I began going to the youth group at FBC P’ville and continued to do what I had always done: Play the good Christian kid who never got in trouble and who did everything she was expected to do. Again, I knew a lot about the Bible, and I said I loved Jesus, but my life was ravaged with sin and I had no conviction over it. I found my identity in the fact that people liked me, rather than finding it in Christ. I was by no means a Christian.

When I was 14, I got baptized. There were a few reasons why, but none of them had anything to do with my obedience to Christ. Again, I was NOT a Christian. I wanted my friends, family, and people in the church to like me. I was embarrassed that my other friends had been baptized but I had not. I wanted attention, I wanted to “fit in”, and I wanted the approval of man. I was not being baptized as an expression of my faith in Christ. I had none. So I said I was a Christian, got dunked, and then continued living a life ravaged with sin and destruction that I was comfortable in, walking as an enemy of the Creator and Sustainer of all things.

Fast forward about 3 years, and the Lord saved me. Sitting in a Friday night worship service after a week of summer camp, the Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and called me out of the darkness I was slave to. The Lord gave me an understanding of true repentance, of turning away from my sin, opened my eyes to His Word, and placed people in my life who showed me what it means to walk in obedience to the Lord. On July 7, 2017, I became a Christian. My life since then has been far from absent of sin, but I now walk in a freedom that I had never yet experienced.

After my conversion, I never really thought about being baptized because I had been dunked at 14 years old (I continue to use the term “dunked” because I do not believe that it was a true baptism the first time, since baptism is only for a repentant believer of Jesus Christ). For the last few months, I have been thinking through the importance of baptism and the Bible’s command for believers to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I had not yet been obedient to the Lord to participate in believer’s baptism and that it was time to do that. So, tonight I was baptized.

What I Do Not Believe About Baptism

• I DO NOT believe that baptism is the way of salvation. It is by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone that I was saved.
  • Ephesians 2:8-9
  • John 14:6
• I DO NOT believe that a true believer needs to be baptized more than once.
• I DO NOT believe that someone should be baptized until they have repented and believed in Jesus and been brought out of the darkness and into the light.
  • Acts 19:4
• I DO NOT believe that I once was saved, lost my salvation, and have now somehow gained it back.
• I DO NOT believe that the Holy Spirit is received at Baptism. It IS received at conversion.

What I DO Believe About Baptism

• I BELIEVE that the baptism of the believer is a command of Scripture.
  • Matthew 28:19
  • Acts 2:38
  • Acts 2:41
• I BELIEVE that baptism is symbolic of our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ.
  • Romans 6:3-4
  • Acts 2:38
• I BELIEVE that as a believer, I now have the joyful privilege and the responsibility to obey Jesus’s command to be baptized.

This is NOT a “do-over.” This is obedient action to the Word of God, the opportunity to make a public profession of the Gospel of my Savior, and the celebration of an eternal soul called out of death and into eternal life with Christ to now walk in step with Him.

• 

• 

•