WHY IS BAPTISM SO POWERFUL, AND SO CONTROVERSIAL?
04th Nov 2015
Many years ago we baptised a lady who God had healed and delivered, she was born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. She had received much prayer leading to inner and emotional healing in many areas of her life. Then the Lord told her she needed to be baptised, to which she mentally assented, but as the time drew near a battle began. Fear and terror assailed her, old memories tormented, and it would have been easy to sidestep the whole issue. However, we knew the instruction to be baptised had not come from human pressure but from the Lord.
She obeyed, was baptised, and during the time under the water had a replay of many traumatic episodes that had caused her great pain. She came up out of the water new, clean and free with a certain knowledge that none of these things could touch her again - she was a new creation! Today she is a strong, whole believer, leading others to freedom.
Baptism is not simply a symbolic action - it is a spiritual, real demonstration that - “I no longer live indebted to anything or anyone from my past, nothing has the right to accuse or torment me, I belong to another.”
I have learned that in the Jewish culture there are many occasions when baptism takes place. For example, before a wedding the bride and groom separately will submit to baptism with a chosen witness, leaving the past behind and breaking any soul ties. They enter marriage clean and free.
Missionaries testify that converts who believe and are immediately baptised stand more firmly and grow more quickly than those who don’t receive baptism, or who are told to wait until their faith matures.
Those of other religions and cults who oppose the Christian faith know that once a person has been baptised they have lost them and will be unable to persuade them back. The enemy understands the significance of baptism more than we do - hence the struggle.
There is great power in baptism. A friend of ours who was a compulsive swearer was completely set free - swearing gone forever. Another with a severe skin condition, being baptised in rather warm water thought the peeling of his skin was caused by the heat, but discovered he had been totally healed.
I struggled to be baptised having been ‘done’ as a baby, now was a mature believer, until Jesus quietly whispered to me, “Do it out of love and obedience for Me.”
Acts 2:38 says, “Repent and be baptised every one of you....” Is this a command that you have yet to obey?
by Joyce Sibthorpe
