The most important day in my life

I tend to be a right here, right now sort of guy. It has gotten me in trouble sometimes with making decisions on what I say, do, buy, invest my energy in, etc. But when it comes to one becoming a Christian it’s always been a “no-brainer” to me. When one understands what Jesus has done for them and what they have done to Jesus by their sins why would one wait another moment to obey the gospel. We even have a Biblical illusion to the jailer being baptized “that same hour” that he understood the gospel. So, why wait! In fact one of my favorite five songs growing up was (Oh, Why Not Tonight). Hold that thought for a moment if you can.

One of our prayers at Spring Meadows has been that we would have the opportunity to reach lost people with the good news of Jesus. “How’s that working for you?” Glad you asked. Wonderfully. I suppose if we were baptizing 10 people a day we’d think we ought to be reaching 15 - at least I hope we would. So, that said, we aren’t reaching as many people as we wish we were but we are gaining some traction and reaching more and more all the time. This year we have baptized a lot of adults and have some super neat stories to go with it all.

Frankly, we’ve met and fallen in love with some very special seekers of God. The stories are so wonderful but I’m not sure it is appropriate to tell them here without first getting permission of the people to whom those stories belong. All in all about 15 so far this year, but that’s just a number, it is the souls, the people who count.

One of the things that has been interesting is that a good number of those we have helped follow the Lord the last few years have wanted to be baptized when the whole church was together. One of the ladies said: “I figure if they are my new family I want them to be a part of it.” One of the guys said: “I want my son to be a part of this and he won’t be in town till Sunday.” An exciting residual of this has been that our people have gotten to see and be a part of the baptisms. So afterward we let anyone who is there “talk” to the new Christian about their faith and how to grow it and to also express their loving welcome to them. One young lady said: “This is the most important decision of my life, I want my mom and dad (who lived out of state) to see this.”

Now, I always talk to them about waiting and what I believe are the risks but in the end they will do it when they are ready - and that is how it should be - right? I suppose there isn’t anything new about this. I remember growing up often times young people would wait till a gospel meeting to be baptized. I never heard that encouraged but we know people did it. The last few years I’ve heard of kids waiting till camp to be baptized. Again, we don’t encourage this, but we do encourage them to be baptized. What are we to do? Tell them we won’t do it if they don’t do it when we want them to - right now?

This is most important moment of your life and you can’t get a group together to see it? I think it only natural and meaningful that you get the people you love the most to be a part of the most important part of your life.

I’d like to hear your thought through thoughts.

We try to make it special...and we do. Praise God.