WestCoast Challenge: Getting All Wet For Jesus

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I love baptisms. I love them because they are evidence that God is at work in the lives of people today. I love them because they are good news stories in a world full of sorrow and heartbreak. I love them because they announce that the dead really can live again. I love them because they announce the death of an destructive way of life and a commitment to abundant life with Jesus. I love them because they proclaim that people are still willing to live in obedience to Jesus. I love them because they mean that our mission to see Jesus glorified in this region is not in vain. I love them because those being baptized are beginning an adventure with Jesus that will never end. I love them because this is the kind of obedience that God will use to transform families and communities. And I am weary of bad news. Baptism stories grant us as God’s people hope that sin and evil will not have the final word in the grand story of which we are a part.

The good news is that all across the WBA God is at work saving people from their empty lives by granting them life through faith in Jesus. I know this because I keep hearing different baptism stories from our churches. These baptism stories are not just coming from one church or from one area but from all over. I hear them from Vancouver Island, and from the Valley, and the City and from the North Shore. Young and not so young alike are hearing the gospel and responding. One church baptized 12, another 1, and another 4, another 17, and another 2. And more are to be baptized in the months ahead.

Your church may not have experienced the joy of seeing someone follow Christ in baptism for some time. Don’t despair over that but rather continue to share your story with Jesus with others knowing that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Jesus taught us that the gospel is like seed that a farmer sows and while he sleeps the seed he planted grows even though he does not know how. The lesson is clear. Our job is to sow that seed by sharing the gospel and to do it in faith knowing that God will cause it to grow at just the right moment. So we share, pray, and love others and God causes His word to germinate, take root, and bear fruit in the lives in which it was shared. And when this happens, that person experiences the joy of knowing Jesus and is baptized.

And that is another thing I love about baptisms, the joy of one is multiplied many times over. This joy of one is multiplied because whenever one decides to follow Jesus all of heaven rejoices and so do we.

So keep on sharing the good news about Jesus so that the lakes, rivers, ocean, swimming pools, and baptisteries all across this region might echo with the praise and joy of Jesus.