A Symbol of Death and Rebirth

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Genesis 1:2-3

About now, some might be wondering if this is just another Christian blog trying to indoctrinate people into a religious belief system. That is not my intent. I’m just talking about what happened to me. I’m also not trying to prove a religious belief nor disprove one. I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong. There’s no fight for me to win. I would like to think that maybe someone might find something in the things I write that will somehow help them along on their journey. I’m hoping that maybe somewhere along the line there’ll be a symbol of the love that Jesus wants me to have one for another and that symbol might help someone escape the bonds of religious bigotry, prejudice and hatred that have so permeated fundamentalism without the fundamentalist even being aware that it’s there.

I’d like to see someone experience a symbolic death and rebirth.

The deacon handed me a blue robe and said, “you can change over there” pointing to a curtained booth. I guess he could tell by my expression that I was a little confused and he said, “This is a Baptist church son. We baptize by immersion here.”

Suddenly I had visions of Hollywood. Old movies with old preachers dunking people under the water in rivers and creeks ponds. Immersion. The word sounds so mechanical. It seems sometimes with fundamental services that the symbol of baptism is just that…mechanical.

That’s how it seemed to me that day. It was just something that I found out God wanted me to do, so I did it. I would learn over the years that it wasn’t such an easy thing for many believers. I would also learn  the symbolism behind water baptism for Baptists as well as other groups.

The symbol it represented as being a likeness to Christ’s death, burial and resurrection and my position as being buried with Him and risen in Him. A symbol of the spiritual circumcision of each newly reborn believer.

There’s also John’s baptism which was a symbol of the Jews repentance toward God.

Some folks believe that baptism is a symbol of the pouring out of God’s Spirit on the believer while still other hold it as a sacrament of salvation.

I have no argument with anyone. For me it was just something I thought God wanted me to do. Anything I learned about it later on only made me religious. Only made me want to prove something to those who disagreed with “the truth”.

So there I was standing in a pool of chest high water behind the stage of the church with a man whom I’d never met and I was supposed to trust him to thrust me under the water and then raise me back up again. I did. Which is surprising since I really didn’t trust anybody to do anything they said they would. As we stood there in the pool, water dripping down my face, I could hear people shouting “amen” and the preacher was saying something which I cannot remember. Suddenly it seemed like I was part of something bigger than me. I felt kind of small and yet content and happy.

As I stood in my curtained cubicle toweling dry and changing back into my clothes I was still trying to catch up with the events of the day and how I got here. I drove home alone and for the first time in my life I felt good about myself for doing something right. At least something I felt was right. I felt a commitment to keep doing it too. I wanted to go to church. I wanted to be part of something more than me. I didn’t think about reading the bible or learning scripture, or anything one might consider religious. It seemed like I had found something that I had been missing my whole life.

I didn’t know it yet, but my life was about to become something completely different than it had ever been. However, that is another story.

This is an independent, fundamental, sin hating, devil fighting, missions minded, soul winning, King James Bible believing, old-fashioned, Baptist Church

 

I was sitting in a church and it wasn’t for a wedding. Lost pretty much describes how I felt. Each person I had met on the way in had given me a warm handshake, a greeting, and a smile, but still…it was church. I sat down in one of the hard wooden pews and tried not to look around too much.

Why was I here? Oh yeah, for my daughter, okay.

Try not to laugh, but I didn’t know there was a Sunday School before church for adults. There I sat in a building with a bunch of Christians trying to seem like I was supposed to be there. I looked around a little and saw people with bibles everywhere. Bible-thumpers. Oh God.

Somebody started teaching a bible study and kept telling folks to turn from one scripture to another. By the time I came close to finding one he would be on a different one. I had no clue where 1 John or Malachi or even Genesis were in the hard, brown, pew-bible I was holding in my fingers and I was getting a little embarrassed at my feeble attempts to find them.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and a soft voice told me, “It’s okay, just listen.” I felt a little calmer than before. Suddenly the bible study was over and children appeared from a stairwell filing up and over to the small stage. A young woman directed them to their places and then they began to recite a bible verse.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

I kept my eyes on my beautiful little girl as she stood so calmly before all the people and so seriously recited the words…and my heart began to break, my eyes filled with tears, from somewhere came a Kleenex. Then it was over and I watched my girl go back down the stairs.

The verse hit me so hard that I wanted to run and shout, but I sat still, with my head down so that no one could see my tears. No one could see the joy mixed with the shame of so many years spent causing heartache. All gone now. I could begin again. I could be someone different and I felt somehow stronger and yet weaker.

Then there was piano music and people shaking hands and I thought it was time to go, but soon learned it had only just begun. Now it was time for church and there was a guest preacher, whose name I do not remember. I do remember his message because I thought sure that someone had told him my life-story and that I was in the building.

When it was almost all over the preacher asked folks to bow their heads and then began to ask people to raise their hands if they needed prayer, or if they knew for sure they’d go to heaven when they died or if they had trusted Christ.

I raised my hand for prayer and heard him say he’d seen my hand and he prayed.

I’d remembered that radio message and I knew I had trusted Jesus and I knew that things had been happening in my life that I couldn’t explain. So I didn’t raise my hand for that, but then he said something I didn’t know. I did not know that a person should be baptized after trusting Christ. The radio message had not mentioned that so when he asked if anyone needed to be baptized I figured that was me and I raised my hand and heard an “I see that hand. Thank you.”

So then he asked the folks who had raised their hands to come to the front. I slid out of my spot and walked forward. I’d been to my daughter’s baptism in the Lutheran church when she was a baby, no problem I could handle that…

I didn’t know about Baptist churches.

But that is another story.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s off to church I go!

 

When last we spoke I’d just won my first battle against an enemy I’d never known was mine. I always thought he was more interested in people who were really evil. I hadn’t considered that it was people who believed in God that were the real reason the devil was kept so busy.

He was so busy trying to screw with them  that he didn’t have much time for folks who were already on his side.

Time for me to fess up here. I hadn’t been the best example of a good, upstanding citizen before my experience with believing in God. I’d been pretty rotten to tell the truth and it was really all I knew.

I am to this day an alcoholic though I have not drank any alcohol since 1995. I suppose I should share that with you. It’s easy to judge people by the things they do or have done in the past. It’s much harder to take a moment and try walking in their shoes, examining their lives and maybe seeing that things are different for them.

For me, it was the same. I was raised in a family in which both of my parents drank too much. Mom quit in 1982, but dad drank till his dying day though for a short time in the 90s he quit and was really happy. He was a different man in that short time. So much easier to be around and get along with than when he was drinking, but sadly those days were short lived.

I started drinking in high school and it wasn’t long till I began developing a problem. You see, I didn’t see a problem with it since everyone that was part of my life drank booze and usually drank too much. In fact, I often said in the years which followed that I didn’t really trust people who didn’t drink. It was just strange to me that someone wouldn’t drink alcohol.

That day on the mountain when I believed God started changing things for me. I started seeing that I needed to stop drinking. I needed to start doing right by my family. It was strange, but sometimes when I would start to do something that I shouldn’t I would hear what people call a conscience telling me it was wrong. See, the thing is, I’d never had much of conscience before. Now I had this sort of quiet voice inside that would just let me know I wasn’t doing right. I didn’t even know why it wasn’t right.

I was driving to my brother-in-law’s house to work on my van one day shortly after my “conversion” and decided to get a case of beer because working on cars and drinking beer just go together. As I pulled into the beer joint I felt the strongest urge yet to  not do this. I just felt I couldn’t do this anymore. So I said to myself that, “this is the last time. After today I’m gonna stop drinking.”

That drinking binge lasted well into the early morning and resulted in my second DUI. As you probably know, DUIs bring a lot of legal problems and other problems. My life was about to get really hard.

The next day I opened the cooler in my van and there was still cold beer from the night before inside. I pulled it out and walked to my neighbor’s house and asked him to take it which he did. I never drank again after that day.

That summer a church bus had been going through the neighborhood taking children to a little Baptist church in a small town not far away. My oldest daughter had been riding that bus which was great because it gave me some time on Sunday morning to not have to take care of her. That’s how I felt about it. Told you I wasn’t nice. But I did want to fix it.

One Saturday the church people came by and told me that my daughter was going to be doing something on stage with other kids the following Sunday. They invited me to come see and so I said I would. I thought that maybe this would be something that would help me show my wife and kids that I cared about them. There was also some pride involved knowing my little five year old girl was doing something in front of others.

Keep in mind that I hadn’t actually told anyone about my day on the mountain believing in God. Why would I? Who would care and why would it be anyone else’s business? I wasn’t afraid or anything, I just never really thought it important.

I woke up Sunday morning and got around and headed off to church. It was a small church hidden off in a small corner of town, but it was pretty as a picture. I parked the car and walked slowly to the door. I’d never been to church before. I didn’t like church because of people I’d known growing up and because of some scandals that had been on television. I didn’t want anything to do with church, but I wanted to be part of my families life and right then there was a little blonde girl waiting for her daddy to come to church. For probably the first time in her young life…I did not let her down.

But that is another story.

Now The Devil Hates Me

 

Does the Devil exist? If so, what’s his freaking problem? lol. Not really funny, but sometimes ya just gotta laugh.

You’ve probably heard it said that we all have our demons. Supposedly these are those things in our lives that we allow to hold us back from being all that we could be. Sometimes those demons can also be the things that drive us to greatness.

I suppose that we could allow the cherubs and angels some room here to be our guardian spirits. The bible says the Devil, the Anointed Cherub drew away a third of the angels in heaven to follow after him. So that leaves two-thirds to guard the rest of us. That sounds like good news.

Well, Angels and Demons weren’t the point of this post so I should move along.

Before my experience hearing about and believing in what God had done for me and everyone else through His son Jesus I really didn’t have much of a problem with the Devil.

I didn’t really think much about him and I suppose that’s probably what he wanted. To walk around behind me watching my life fall apart and laughing, but within a few minutes after believing the good news about Jesus I received my first real experience with the Enemy who had been behind so much of the troubles in my life.

His first reaction to me believing in God’s grace? Doubt. Almost immediately it was like an inaudible voice whispering in my ear. “You didn’t really believe that”, it said. “You don’t really believe that God would do something like that for a loser like you, do you?”

Just then the van I was driving reached the top of Jack’s Mountain outside Belleville, Pa. and I saw something there that changed forever my thoughts about this world. A large white cross mounted to an alter. I‘d seen it many times before as I drove that road almost daily, but now it drew me in like a magnet to steel. I stopped the van, got out and just looked at that cross. I’d never really noticed it much. It was just passing scenery, but today all if a sudden it was different. It symbolized something for me.

I had tasted a spiritual battle between someone who had been invisible, but a part of my life for so long and Someone who had been searching and waiting for me to come to Him. It was incredible. The goosebumps, the hairs standing up on my skin, the moment when the Darkness fled from me as I looked upon that symbol of salvation. A symbol of all that could be good and all that which the Dark had done to try and stop the Light from coming into the hearts of men. Into my heart.

At that moment I knew the Devil was real, more real that I would have thought possible all those years listening to heavy-metal 80s hair bands proclaiming their obedience to this dark creature that wanted to make me doubt. He wasn’t just a marketing gimmick.

I also realized that he probably wasn’t happy with me. I didn’t really care because something had happened to me that day. Something I didn’t understand and didn’t know what to do about, but something which would soon begin altering my world without me even trying.

Of course the Devil wasn’t done, still isn’t.

But that is another story.

It had to start somewhere

Ever feel like your life is spinning out of control? Ever wish that someone or something else would just take over? Ever want to have your life be changed in such a way as you could be someone completely different than who you’ve always been? Ever grow tired of all the crap? Yeah, that’s kind of how it started.
Ever feel like if only you could go back to another time and start again you could do it right this time?
Me too.
Ever feel like you’d hurt so many people that no one was left to hurt? Everyone you know hates you and you deserve the hatred?
Me too.
Ever feel like nothing you try to do works out? Everything just adds to the problems?
Me too.
That’s how it started. When I finally started to understand that everything I was doing was the reason for my troubles. The trouble was that I just couldn’t stop doing the things which I had always done. I couldn’t stop hurting myself and everyone around me. I couldn’t stop alienating friends. Something needed to change. I knew that much. I just didn’t know how to change it.
That’s where it started. That’s where it always starts. I was looking for something and I found it.
One day I was listening to a radio program about family life. You know, things like raising kids, loving your wife, treating people right, that sort of thing. I didn’t have much knowledge about that sort of thing. Well anyway, the guy on the radio introduced a special speaker. This guy started off by talking about people whose lives were a wreck and how they’d gotten there. I was pretty interested since I could identify.
Next he started talking about God. Now, I was no big fan of God and I hadn’t had much good experience with people who were. So, he starts saying about how everybody screws up and does bad stuff. How nobody could honestly say that they’d never done anything they shouldn’t have done. He said, this meant that nobody could “be right” with God. Since they weren’t right with God, they were gonna have messed up lives.
He spoke about heaven and hell too. Of course that wasn’t really a problem for me since I was pretty sure that if all that existed I wasn’t gonna end up with a harp and some wings.
So, he says that God wasn’t really happy about that situation since He created people for His good pleasure. He wanted people around. He wanted people cause even though we were bad He still loves us. Problem was that God couldn’t just let people get away with being bad. That wouldn’t be right. Somebody had to be punished, so God just figured that since no one else could do it, He could. He decided to take the hit for us.
So God became a man, called Himself Jesus and went around showing people how to live right, how to love others and how to stand up for what was right. Because he did that there were people who wanted to kill him. Why? Because they didn’t want to live right I guess. So anyway, they had Jesus killed but it was all part of God’s plan to make it so people who didn’t  deserve to be with Him could be with Him.
I’d never heard that before. God had made it right. How cool is that? Then the guy said probably about the best thing I’ve ever heard. All I needed to do in order to be right with God was trust what He had done. Just believe it.
I did. Everything started to change after that. It seemed almost as there was someone inside me telling what I shouldn’t do and helping me to not do it. Sometimes I even listened. I wasn’t going to a church or giving anybody any money or even reading a bible, but my life was changing….then it happened…I went to church…and that is another story.