Baptized again... or for the first time?

Perhaps the first one didn’t take. Or the second.

Or maybe the place where it happened wasn’t right, or I didn’t respond with the correct words before holding my breath. Whatever it was twenty-something years ago, I went down into the water one man, and I came back up pretty much the exact same one. Maybe a little cleaner on the outside, but I sure didn’t feel much different inside.

I wanted to.

I told myself that everything was different. But to be honest, it wasn’t.

It had taken place in the baptistry of a church building just south of Nashville that a friend of mine was pastoring. I had been attending a wonderful Bible study he led for a few years and seeking God, but like always… at my own pace. I desperately wanted Him to change my life, but I thought it would happen supernaturally. Expecting a brick to hit me in the head, and me to be forever changed - that the Lord would do something unexpected that would knock some Godly sense into me.

During that season, there is no doubt that God was doing a work in my heart, or at least beginning to. He was drawing me nearer to Him. And I was walking toward the light. A few steps into it, I was baptized.

Saved. Born again. Made new — I know baptism means different things to different people, especially to different churches and denominations. But I didn’t necessarily feel saved, or re-born new.

“What happens now?”, I thought.

The next step was to go forth and live a Godly life. I couldn’t help but wonder… “But how? I’ve tried and it never seems to work.”

I would, in time, come to the conclusion that baptism was perhaps instead, an opportunity to be given a brick to hit myself in the head with whenever I was straying from the narrow path. It seemed that yes, God was going to change me, but He was going to use my hands and feet to do it. And it was going to be a very long and very gradual process.

And in that process over the next few years, He did begin to change me. While I fixed up our old farmhouse in the early 2000s, He patiently worked on me. Turning jealousies into trust. Faith into obedience… at least the beginning of it.

Later, I would come to conclude that perhaps Jesus was inside of me all the time, but I just didn’t know it — that we all have Him in us already. And maybe we just have to accept Him.

Outwardly, I would’ve said that I had found him. But on the inside, it felt like I was only experiencing part of Him. A portion. Perhaps I’d been partly converted — ‘somewhat’ saved. I was clearly better than I had been. Much, actually. But still a long way from being completely transformed, and a brand new creature in Christ.

The next two decades and the work He was doing inside, or walking alongside me, produced a great amount of peace in some very difficult times. And also some good fruit. But not the abundant fruit and life I was longing for. Not the kind I’d read about in the Bible, and was imagining in my heart.

To be transparent… that was my second baptism (not counting my Catholic sprinkling at birth — that’s a whole different story). In Dallas, a half dozen or more years before, I had been dunked in a swimming pool, along with a dozen other new believers.

In a box somewhere in storage, I still have the little blue towel they gave me to remember the first moment I was saved.

And though I do remember the towel, again I don’t really remember experiencing much of any change, or real fruit. The many sins I went down in the water to have washed clean were still there — drinking, sleeping around, living for myself — and just as active as before. Maybe more so.

Perhaps I needed a bigger towel?

Fast forward twenty five years to Greycliff, Montana in July of 2024, and by the time I was standing on that river bank, I knew very well what this moment meant — and not just symbolically. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was about to be made completely new. Washed in the blood of a Savior who took on, and paid for my many sins… and coming back up like a newborn. A new child in Christ.

Earlier in that day I had been at my pastor Matt’s house with a couple of other brothers in the church. Matt had shared with me a number of scriptures and made it very clear what I was being baptized into. Then Howard, the oldest in the room asked… “Do you understand that this might cost you everything?”

Let that sink in for a minute.

In the last twenty-five years, not a single soul — inside or outside the church — had ever said that my faith was going to, or even needed to, cost me anything. Zilch. And here he was, making sure I knew that this next step could, and would more than likely, put into jeopardy, everything I had spent lifetime building.

A smile came across my face as I looked back at him.

“Yessir, I do”.

I knew that I had finally found something worth dying for. Worth giving my old life up and living a brand new life for. And I was more than ready.

When Rebecca and Indy and I got to the river bank that afternoon, there were dozens of people. Friends already gathered, singing songs, praying, worshiping and waiting for the life-changing moment that was about to happen.

And then, as I waded out into the water of the Yellowstone, just before I went under… a wind started blowing that wasn’t there a moment before. It wasn’t exactly a mighty rushing wind like the one described at Pentecost, but everyone there could feel His presence in it.

And then it happened.

For the first time.

Standing nearby on the shore, I would find out later… brother Howard leaned over and whispered something into Rebecca’s ear.

“This will not disappoint,” he said with a gentle smile.

It’s been a couple of years since then and I can say with authority — it absolutely has not. Have there been some trials since that day? Are we still in the midst of some of them? Were brother Howard’s words more than a little prophetic?

Yes, to all the above

But are we disappointed. Not in the least.

This is what I signed up for. What my wife has recently asked for too. Strangely, life has just started getting good. Since that day it has been a thousand times richer. The relationships around us so much stronger. And the peace, the hope and the joy in our hearts doesn’t just show up now and then. It stays. Through any and all trials.

Who knew that dying to ourselves is when we get to really start living? That life doesn’t stop when you hand the reigns over to Him, it begins!

Have you been baptized, but have wondered if there’s something that you missed in the process? Do you feel like perhaps it didn’t take? Or maybe you’re like I was and are embarrassed to say that you’ve been dunked a couple of times, and still wonder inside if you’re ‘somewhat’ saved, or maybe even not-saved at all?

My guess is it’s probably not so much about the baptistry, or the river, or the place or the people you were with when you did it… it’s about you. Did you really, really know what it was you were about to do? Were you given the opportunity to not only understand what real repentance is, but the help and discipleship you needed to work through it? And afterwards, did you have a culture to be part of where your faith could flourish, and you could be surrounded by people who would walk beside you on the new, narrow path you’re on?

And maybe an even better question is… has your faith cost you anything? What I really mean, has it cost you everything? It cost Christ everything, and if He says, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” Wouldn’t that seem like this following Him was going to be more than a little costly?

If you’re like me, what you’ve got is probably not a baptism problem. It’s a repentance issue. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so I couldn’t really do what I needed to do. But above all that, He couldn’t do what He came here to do, until I fully understood it. And how desperately I needed Him.

Maybe it’s time to start over. To take this first step. Pray that first honest prayer, one more time. “Lord, I give you everything that I have, everything I am, and everything that I’m ever going to be. Show me how to drop my nets and follow You, and You alone”.

One thing that’s clear is that when you are ready — when you’re absolutely certain that you’re ready to follow Christ with everything you have, and you make the decision. And you repent. When you really, really, really repent of your sins — not just of what you’ve done, but of who you were, and what you are — and you have gotten to the bottom and the core of that old man, or woman… Well then, and only then… when you do go down underneath the water, it is going to change you. He is going to change you.

And your faith will also begin to cost you. In ways perhaps you’ve never experienced before. But if you’re also like me, it won’t be negative, or in a bad sense. It will be in an exciting way. The new challenges you begin facing will become confirmation of the new and better narrow path you’re now walking down. The tears that roll down your cheeks will no longer be of sorrow, but of joy. From the realization that somehow — even though He knows everything about you — He finds you worthy of His love and of His grace. And that you get to participate in helping others experience the same thing.

Did I mention the Holy Spirit? Well, that’s a can of worms we’ll have to start opening, another time, and another blog.

* note to the reader: This post is in no way to get into a debate or argument about the steps of conversion. Or about which church or denomination does it the right way and who does it wrong. I am not qualified to speak on any of those things. This story is only to share an abbreviated version of the path that led me to a true repentance and baptism that changed everything. It’s my experience. Perhaps yours has been totally different. Amen.

We’re all on a journey. This blog is meant to share mine.

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