“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

                                                        -Matthew 28:19

Water baptism can be described as an outward declaration of an inward transformation. It represents not only the death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ (Romans 6:3, 4), but the fact that we have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts and now walk in newness of life with our Lord (Galatians 2:20). While the Scriptures clearly emphasize the importance of every Christian being baptized in water, many have been falsely taught that, if you haven’t been baptized yet, you are not truly saved at all. This is an attack against the very core of the Gospel (i.e. salvation by grace through faith), which I’d like to address in this post by examining the essence of what the Gospel truly is. After all, as Paul wrote, “…it is the power of God unto salvation.” (Romans 1:16)

In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul defined the Gospel as the death, burial and resurrection of Christ (v. 1-4). 1 Corinthians 1:17  makes it even clearer that, though it’s certainly important, baptism and the Gospel are two different things and should not be confused. If it is true that salvation is impossible apart from baptism, then it must also be true that the Gospel is not enough to save you and that the shed blood of Christ does not hold full redeeming power. Think about that. By suggesting that only those who have been baptized are saved, you are doing more than just saying faith is not enough; you are saying that what Christ did on the cross is not enough and that we must perfect our own redemption! Isn’t the fact that we can’t do that the whole reason Jesus died on the cross?

Nevertheless, I believe it’s important for us to remember that there is a very good reason for all those other verses that seem to tie salvation and water baptism together: they should always accompany each another! Asking whether you can be a Christian without being baptized is like asking whether or not you can live for Christ and disregard the beatitudes or the 10 Commandments. To neglect baptism is to neglect the commandment of the Lord and, when you neglect the Word of God, there will always be serious consequences. You might be forgiven of your sins at an altar of repentance, but rest assured that you are placing yourself right back under the wrath of God by disobeying the Lord - especially when you do so after being shown the truth (Hebrews 10:26, 28-29). The point of my writing this is not at all to diminish the importance of being baptized, but to show that faith, not baptism, is what saves a person from sin and an eternity in hell (see here for an explanation of saving faith). You should be baptized as soon as possible after receiving salvation, but you can be sure that, if you die on your way to the church, you will still go to heaven, as will your friend who was reconciled to God while lying on his or her deathbed. It’s not about what we can do, but about what He has already done for us!

I usually don’t do posts like this, but I received a couple comments this morning on one of my devotions with an urgent prayer request attached. I’d like to get as many people as possible praying for this family so, after you’ve finished reading the below message, please take a moment to seek the Lord on their behalf.

Hi Dakota,

Some of our friends got in a car crash yesterday, and I would like to ask you to pray for them. What happened was, a car spun out in front of them, and they hit it head on. There were 5 of there 8 children in the car along with there Mom and Dad. Everyone in the car had a serious injury, The mom had two broken ankles, the dad broke his wrist, I forgot what happen to the older daughter but some thing happened to her, one of the other children had a broken femur (she entered surgery last night), the youngest daughter had internal bleeding, and the youngest child lost most of his teeth. That's about all I've heard thus far. Keep them in your prayers,

Grant Fedewa

______________________________________________

I just heard that the mom also has a collapsed lung.

Grant

Stay tuned here for any updates.

 

How does your average prayer begin? With complaints, concerns, or requests? The Scriptures remind us that every prayer should begin with heartfelt praise to our heavenly Father (Matthew 6:9), and yet too often we find it easier to just give the Lord a list of things we want Him to do for us instead. We take His blessings for granted, despite the fact that we’ve already been given more than we could ever deserve.

“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”

             -Psalm 100:4

As my photo illustrates, we serve a God Who is actively preserving all Creation. Nothing that was, is, or ever will be, could exist without His sustaining power and provision! Even the angels of heaven, who have never experienced redeeming grace like us, still find reason to eternally praise Him simply because of Who He is as God (Revelation 4:8). How is it, then, that our praise is usually dependent on whether or not we get everything on our spiritual “wish-list”, and then battle thoughts of doubt and discouragement when something doesn’t go our way? Truthfully, praising the Lord only when we get what we want is no praise at all; it’s selfishness.

Just like Job, I believe each of us must come to the realization that God is God no matter what (Job 1:21). Sometimes praising Him despite our circumstances isn’t an easy thing to do, but that’s why it’s called a sacrifice (Hebrews 13:15). Even though every situation we face may not always be praiseworthy, our God is and we must learn to worship Him in the good times and bad.

“Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all….”

              -2 Chronicles 31:1

In our society of lukewarm churches and half-hearted Christians, it doesn’t take much to impress the people around you. Simply decide to serve God with your whole heart and live a life of obedience to His Word, and you’ll soon find yourself labeled as a religious nut by the world and praised by fellow believers for your “amazing” commitment to Christ. The problem with this, however, is that we tend to suggest such people are doing more than is really necessary when God has called each and every one of us to do the exact same thing. It’s not that the truly devoted are earning extra credit for being good Christians; most of the time they are simply fulfilling the basic obligations of our faith.

“So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”

     -Luke 17:10

As humans we are members of a fallen race, but, as Christians are also members of a chosen and redeemed people (Romans 3:23-25). We’ve been given life instead of death, grace instead of wrath, and hope rather than despair. It seems apparent that the only One deserving of glory for our redemption is the Redeemer Himself, and yet so many times we act as if we should get at least some credit for who we are today. The Scriptures, on the other hand, are quick to remind us that whatever we do for the Lord is only our reasonable service in light of what He has done for us (Romans 12:1), and that we must all guard against becoming “wise in our own conceits” (v. 16). If serving the Lord wholeheartedly makes one a radical, then each of us should pursue a truly radical walk with God and not just pat others on the back for fulfilling the calling we’ve learned to ignore!

The reason we view certain Christians as radicals, at least most of the time, is because they have chosen to follow a path rarely traveled in our society. In reality, what we consider radical commitment is usually just the bare minimum God expects from His people, and anything else should be viewed as unacceptable. In a world where the average Christian spends less than 5 minutes each day in prayer, exceeding expectations just isn’t enough.*

*http://www.victorylifechurch.org/pdf/Prayer%20-%20Call%20to%20be%20above%20average.pdf

A few days ago as I was walking through our yard, I spotted what seemed to be an old, yellow yard ornament lying some distance away. I didn’t give it much thought at first since my Grandma has an abundance of such things lying around the yard, but just as I was getting ready to go back inside several minutes later, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to go ahead and check it out. As someone who spends a good amount of time outdoors, I was confident I should’ve noticed something like that before then.

Surprisingly enough, as I got closer and closer to the suspicious object, I began to slowly realize that it was not some broken yard ornament at all; it was actually my Grandma’s crocuses beginning to bloom after a long and hard winter, boldly declaring that spring was on its way. I reasoned that there was no reason at all for me to be surprised because, in reality, it had been fairly warm over the past few days and it hadn’t snowed in quite a while. “Why shouldn’t they be blooming?” I told myself

Anyway, a couple mornings later I was very surprised to wake up to 4” of snow on the ground. Having been told by the friendly crocuses that winter was over, I felt betrayed and vowed never to trust the first flowers of spring, groundhogs, or any such wives’ tales again. After the snow was at least partially melted, I went back outside to see what had become of that old, broken down yard ornament and this is what I saw:

Spring, they told me, was still on its way. Snow and freezing temperatures couldn’t change that and they were proving it. The fact that they’d spent the last 24 hours covered in snow didn’t matter; they were made to bloom, nothing was going to stop them, and that was that.

Don’t you see? As God’s children, we are called to be a living testament to our Creator. Whether or not we shine for Him cannot depend on whether the circumstances are convenient for us to do so; we must be faithful no matter what. Really, there’s nothing at all special about someone who serves God only when everything is going their way. It’s only when our lives begin to fall apart that we have the opportunity to make our faith real and, like flowers abloom in the snow, people are going to notice when we do.

In case you haven’t already noticed, I’ve once again been busy implementing new features to my blog. Rather than having my sidebar cluttered with all sorts of things you may or may not use like I did before, a number of widgets are now expandable and can be utilized or simply ignored. In addition, I’ve also added a new Contact Me button and a Top Commenters section that actually gives you and your blog publicity for commenting on my posts regularly.

So far, everything seems to be working properly with the exception of one of our older computers that doesn’t want to display my sidebar correctly. I can’t seem to pinpoint any coding errors and expect it’s probably not something the average user will experience, but I still wanted to get some feedback from my readers just to make sure. Can you see all the new features I mentioned as well as my archives, tag cloud, etc.? If not, I’d really like to know so I can continue my debugging efforts but, since I’ve not had any luck thus far, don’t want to keep wasting time if nothing is seriously wrong. Just comment and let me know what happens!

“Amaziah was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem.
And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a perfect heart.”

                                                  -2 Chronicles 25:1, 2

We are told in Ephesians 2:10 that it is God’s will for all of His children to follow after good works. We are saved by grace through faith apart from our works (v. 8), but are instructed to express our gratitude for that salvation through service to both God and others. Despite this truth, today’s verse is a sobering reminder that it is very possible for a person to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

“So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?...”

                                                     -John 21:15

I believe that, in order to fully comprehend the significance of what Jesus is saying here, we must first look at Peter’s background: this is the same Simon Peter who walked on water with the Lord during a raging storm (Matthew 14:29). This is the same Peter who zealously cut off the right ear of the High Priest’s servant for trying to take Jesus captive (John 18:10). He was the one who spoke up and expressed His resolve to stay with God even when everybody else was walking away (John 6:68), and couldn’t understand why the Son of God should wash his calloused and dirty feet (John 13:6). Of course he made his fair share of mistakes along the way but, at least most of the time, was the one everybody else needed to be more like. Yet in spite out his outward devotion, Christ presented the question, “Do you really love Me?” He didn’t ask whether he’d been faithful to go through the motions of Christianity, but instead wanted to know whether or not it was truly in his heart. When it comes down to it, a filthy heart will eventually corrupt our actions anyway (Luke 6:45), so it’s best to make sure we have everything right on the inside before concerning ourselves with the rest.

Perhaps you, like Peter, seem to be on par with everybody else when it comes to the external aspect of your faith. You raise your hands during church, never miss a youth group meeting, and read Christian devotionals on the internet during your spare time. And yet despite the fact that you’re doing everything you know you should be doing on the outside, it still feels like something’s missing in your life and you wonder what it is. Could it be that the Lord is asking you the very same question He asked Peter?