Over the Waters

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Genesis 1:2

I was exhausted. It was a Saturday afternoon, and we had a little bit of time before we had to leave for church service. So, I lay down on the couch and pulled a blanket over myself.

“Wow, I’m so tired,” I thought, as my eyelids closed.

“Like when your water broke?”

My eyelids flew back open at the words dropped into my head from God.

It was the same feeling of exhaustion I had felt right before my water broke when I was pregnant with my son, Aiden. In fact, I’d been lying on the same couch wanting to fall asleep, but intrusive thoughts telling me to get up and make dinner kept me from complete rest as I hovered on the edge of slumber.

I ended up giving in to them, and it was when I was prepping food in our pressure cooker a short time later that my water broke. I shoved the unfinished pot of food into the refrigerator, opting for fast food instead on our way to the hospital. When we finally returned with a new baby in tow, we ended up throwing out that uncooked meal. The moral of the story is, I should have just rested.

Now God had brought me full circle for a different kind of water breaking. That afternoon at service I was going to be baptized and as those words from God dropped into my head on the couch, I knew instantly He was trying to teach me an important lesson in true preparation.

Five and a half years ago, I thought I was prepared for Aiden’s arrival. I researched the items on his baby registry, secured a highly respected pediatrician in the area upon his birth, and I’d designed a Narnia nursery that I proudly showed off to my guests at his baby shower. Looking back, it was foolish of me to think that I was preparing for Aiden’s birth. Unbeknownst to me, a spiritual battle was going to begin the moment he was born.

I eventually got up from the couch (without any sleep) and we packed up to head over to Missy and Butch’s, our friends who had started an Acts 2 church at their house earlier in the year, which had now become our church home.

I sat in a metal folding chair as Missy stood at a wooden podium at the front of her living room to read the word she had received from God for that day. Missy had not only become a good friend in the past year and a half, but she had become my spiritual mother and now pastor, even though she didn’t like titles and didn’t refer to herself as one.

“It’s all about love. The greatest must be the servant,” she would say.

“I truly like to think of our little Acts 2 church as a place of making disciples,” said Missy, standing behind the podium. “And in doing that, we have to make space for Jesus to shape us together in God's love. A disciple is someone who follows Jesus as master.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ final words to His followers before He ascended to heaven were, “Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” So, baptism is essential to being a disciple of Jesus. Baptism therefore, isn't some optional add-on feature for those who happen to be extra serious about their Christian faith. Baptism is basic to our very identity as Christians. It's the most fundamental and vital step you can take in your journey of following Jesus.

Baptism is a picture of rescue. At every baptism, we witness the glory of God's power to rescue people from sin, judgment, and death, and to give them new life, making them His very own people. Baptism is a picture that reminds us of the rescuing power of God that we see throughout the Bible.

For example, in the book of Genesis, God brought Noah and his family safely in the ark through the flood waters of judgment and into a new life.

In Exodus, God led the people of Israel through the miraculously parted waters of the Red Sea out of a life of slavery to the Egyptians and into a new life as His very own people.

And again, in the book of Joshua, God parted the Jordan River and led His people through the water out of the desolations of the desert and into a new life in the promised land.

We also read how God rescued a disobedient prophet named Jonah from drowning in the waters of a stormy sea by preserving him inside a whale and eventually setting him onto dry land with a new lease in life and a renewed vision to tell others of God's mercy.

Do you realize all these Old Testament stories point to baptism? These stories form the backdrop for the actions of John the Baptist, who at the outset of the New Testament was baptizing Jews in the waters of the Jordan River as a sign of repentance, of turning away from sin unto God to prepare their hearts for the coming Messiah, Jesus, who would be their ultimate rescuer. Jesus himself would be baptized by John, not because he needed to repent of sin, like you and I do, but as an example of obedience for us to follow, and more than that, as a pointer to the fact that Jesus would ultimately make it possible for us to be rescued from sin and death through his crucifixion and resurrection. Rescue through the waters into new life by a power not our own, God's power.

Now, some of you may think, “Hey, I don't need to be rescued. I can sort out my own problems and issues just fine, thank you very much.” But when it comes right down to it, can you really?”

I could definitely relate to Missy’s challenge. Since my adolescence, I had tried to rescue everyone in my life, including myself. I put other people’s needs before my own and was obedient to others’ definition of God and godly ways, and in the process became a god, a savior to myself and others. But of course, I did a terrible job at it, and I was tired from almost twenty-five years of the charade.

Which is why I knew the exhaustion I was experiencing that day on the couch was deeper than any exhaustion that came from a typical Saturday schedule. I knew it, and of course God knew it too. I hadn’t experienced true rest in a long time. Well before Aiden’s arrival.

“Baptism points to the fact that God's work of masterpiece restoration has begun in your life,” continued Missy. “But what I want to especially emphasize today is that baptism is a declaration of identity. Baptism is about who you are. Through baptism, your life becomes bound up with the life of Jesus Christ. As a baptized disciple of Jesus, you are not defined by your past. You are not defined by what other people think or say about you. You are not defined by your job. You are not defined by your wealth or social status. You are not defined by your achievements. You are not defined by your family. Rather, your identity is defined by who God says you are!

“As a baptized disciple of Jesus, who does God say that I am?” For starters, God says that I am a participant in his big story. Baptism is a sign that your life has been swept up into the grand epic of creation, fall, rescue, and restoration that unfolds throughout the Bible's pages from Genesis to Revelation. When you learn to see yourself as a participant in God's big story, your life starts to make sense in a way it never had before. As God helps you to discover the important part, He has given you to play in His big story, you come to know the joy of living for a purpose that is infinitely bigger than yourself, and your life becomes infused with incredible meaning.”

After Missy finished speaking, everyone went out into her backyard to anoint and pray over the pool while I hung back in the house. When they were ready, I made my way outside and stood looking at the sky for a few moments, conversing with God. I told Him how I recognized I had put certain people in front of Him throughout my life and I was returning things to their proper order. He was now first.

“Come in, Jess,” Missy called to me from inside the pool.

I walked up the ladder and lowered myself down into the cold water and then took my place in the middle of the pool in between Missy and our friend Stacey.

“What brought you into the water?” Missy asked.

“As a child, baptism had been a decision that was made for me, and now I want to make that decision for myself.”

In Catholicism, my parents had me baptized as an infant, just like all Catholic parents are instructed to do. For the longest time, I thought it was a “valid” baptism, but I no longer believed that anymore. I now believed it had to be a personal decision.

“What are you leaving in the water?” Missy asked.

“Disobedience to the one true God,” I replied.

I had been very disobedient to God in my twenties, and when Aiden was born, I began reaping what I had sown because I hadn’t allowed God to prepare me for His will for my life, much less the lifestyle change to motherhood. I knew this day in the water was my moment to let God start being God again in my life.

Missy and Stacey placed their arms around my back, preparing to lower me backwards into the water.

“Down with Jesus,” Missy said, right before the water covered my entire head and body.

“And up with Jesus,” she continued, as they pulled me back up out of the water.

I stood up, and Missy told me to look up at the sky.

She got close to my ear and almost in a whisper, said, “God says you are my beloved daughter, in you I am well pleased.”

I gave her a hug and left the pool.

As I stood with a towel wrapped around me, Stacey said, “Mark this day. This is the day you made a covenant with God, and God made a covenant with you.”

“It’s going to get harder,” said Missy.

A few nights later, I was going through a memory box under the bed in our guestroom, and I found an old photograph from my infant baptism that I had no idea was there.

In the picture, my parents and Godparents are standing around a large bowl as I’m raised above it, held by my dad. A priest stands opposite them as he dabs my head with a white cloth.

As I looked at the photo, I thought of how God saw everything that was coming down the road for me from that moment until now.

“Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain…Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139: 4-6,16, NIV)

Yet, I tried to control events in my life because I didn’t trust Him—the creator of the cosmos, the one who goes before us—and as a result, it left me more broken and exhausted than I had to be.

I didn’t know what was coming down the road for me after this rebirth, but I knew now that true preparation was in the spiritual, not the natural. He would take care of everything else if I were obedient and sought His will above all things. Not that it would necessarily be easy, as Missy said, but I would be cared for by my Father.

“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33, NIV)

All along, He was the only one who could pull me out of the water. I just finally had to stretch out my hand.