Tonight I get to watch one of my Brothers in Christ get baptized. For the non-believers out there, Baptism in the Christian faith is when the Pastor holds your head underwater to drown the sin right out of you. The more you have sinned, the longer he holds you under. I remember my baptism, it was my first near death experience. It took three paramedics performing CPR along with the Pastor whacking me in the head with a Bible while yelling, “Be healed in the Name of JEEEEEZus!” to finally save me. It was all worth it though, because the baptism is where a Christian gets his super powers. I was given the ability to clear out a room with a single…nevermind.
None of that is true. Being baptized basically is saying publicly that you have asked Jesus into your heart and that you are going to live your life for him. In these times when school girls are being suspended for hugs, what’s wrong with a little PDA for the Lord? I remember my first attempt at this. It was right after it started to dawn on me, that maybe the Bible wasn’t a bunch of hoooey. What can I say, I was appropriately named. The given name on my birth certificate is Fat Thomas, just like the Doubting dude in the bible (he wasn’t called “Fat” though because I think he did the South Beach Diet). Anyway, it started to hit me that if the Bible really was true, what did that mean for how I was living my life?
So I sent all of my heathen buddies an email that basically said that I was mightier than thou were and invited them over to the Bonfire I was hosting that night where we were going to burn all of our nudie magazines, AC/DC records, and any books written by J.D. Salinger. Okay, that’s not true either, but I basically sent my Friends and Family an email describing what was happening in my life, and that I was choosing to live for God from there on out. Now…keep in mind… my buddies had known me to be anything but a Godboy and my Family knew me as the one that enjoyed getting them to argue about the difference in their denominations (topic for another post). One of my friend’s wife called my wife to ask if I had joined a cult…and she was serious. My poor wife didn’t know how to answer because she wasn’t a believer yet and was still trying overcome the fact that if she did become a believer, she automatically would turn into Benny Hinn.
So if it isn’t the act of Baptism that saves us, what is it? Grace. Amazing, beautiful, grace. If you don’t know the origins of the song, it was written by John Newton. Mr. Newton was a slave trader. On one of his trips his ship carrying literally a boatload of slaves, he hit some storms. Not some puny, “Oh gosh the ship is is a -rocking” kind of storms but a real, “Oh God, if you can just get me out of this, I’ll turn my life around and live for you. Honestly…please…please…please. Okay, what if I write a really cool song? Pretty please.” John Newton seems he was a lot like me and you. I know when I find myself in the storms of life is the times when I get down on my knees and plead with God. Anyway, God answered Newton’s prayers, and Newton kept his promise. Remember, he was a slave trader at the time. We don’t have slave traders these days, so to help you relate, if Newton lived in our time, he probably would have done mortgages. Through the GRACE of God, Newton went from sailing his slave boat right to hades, to writing one of the most beautiful songs of all times.
If there was a pendulum of sinners, I’d probably fall somewhere between Newton and Paul. I have done a LOT of very stupid and very sinful things (most of which are actually glamorized in today’s world), but I think Paul still may have had me beat. If you don’t know who Paul is, he is the guy who wrote most of the second half of the Bible and he was a real bad dude. He literally hunted down Christians before he was saved by…what else…the Grace of God. So if God with his Amazing Grace can save a Christian hunter, a slave trader, and a Fat Blogger who still battles with sin on a daily basis, he can save you if you ask him to (maybe tell him you’ll write a cool song too).
It is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9
