𝙢𝙮 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮

4. getting baptized

Around 15, after a while of struggling to overcome my fear of speaking in front of people, I decided I wanted to get baptized. I met with my pastor once to talk about it.

After that, some things happened in his life that kept him very busy and things in the world in general started changing and life was getting a bit more hectic. I didn't bring it up and (now he has already made it clear he felt awful about it and he's human, I have not a single hard feeling about this) but he forgot up until I was freshly sixteen.

All things happen on the Lord's time, though, and we started meeting once a week for one-on-one baptism classes. BOY did I learn a lot during those. I thought I understood the Scripture well, but of course it's so much bigger. We covered a lot of things, and he helped me practice giving my testimony so that when the time came to give it to the church, I'd mostly have it down. I got a better understanding of what baptism actually is.

First, though, after our one-on-one sessions I had to sit down with just him, my parents, and the two deacons and give my testimony to them. They would also be asking me some questions just to get a better understanding of my relationship with God. I was a nervous wreck but I got through. I come from a tiny church anyway, and these were people I had known for years and years of my life. Later my dad got a text from my pastor saying (kind of humorously) that I was 100% recommended to be added as a member of the church.

And two weeks later, we had a church service down by the lake. It rained and rained the whole time (we were under a pavilion) but while I gave my testimony to the church, shaking a lot and legit not being able to make eye contact with anybody, the sky cleared up. After I sat down there was a vote: add me as a member of the church, or not.

It was unanimously in favor, and I finally got baptized.

That is still one of the happiest days of my life. It gave me a new appreciation for the church family God has given me, because we may be small, but there is so much love. While I was getting out of my wet clothes in the bathroom I actually sat down and almost cried, it literally felt like I had just come home.

And that's pretty much it. 😊 I don't know what future God has planned for me but I'm not afraid of it like I used to be, and instead of horror, the promise of Christ's return has become a source of hope.

So things have definitely changed.

I'm not going to pretend I don't still have days where I get lazy, and I certainly still haven't gotten rid of entirely the things that were holding me back before. I still get angry over stupid stuff and I can still be stubborn when something goes differently than I had planned. That's one thing some people misunderstand about salvation: you don't ascend into some higher-level state of self where you no longer feel the weight of sin. Justification and sanctification are two different things. But I'll talk about that in my studies book 🙂

So there you have it! I hope this gave you some sort of encouragement or helped you better understand something. Any questions are welcome, and feel free to share your own testimonies ♡