When I was eight-years-old I stood at my bedroom window looking out at all the death winter had brought: the trees, the grass, and the sky all lay dull and barren, gray and discolored.
It was a darkness that brought home the truth of what Hell is like: eternal pain, constant discomfort, infinite torture, and endless suffering. A place where the mundane I was observing through my window is everlasting.
I don’t want to be like that, I thought. Dead and dried up as I burn eternally in Hell. So I accepted Jesus’s payment for my sins and all that I had done wrong and His gift of eternal life.
Because I grew up in a very Christ-centered environment, the concept of baptism was commonplace to me. I did not see the importance of it. As I grew older, I learned the value and recognized that it was the next step in my walk with God, but something was still holding me back.
I recognized that I am a sinner who needs Christ to save me, but something I couldn’t put a finger on still felt off. I couldn’t tell whether my thoughts were lies from Satan or the Holy Spirit pointing out an area I needed to work on.
I felt like I was missing something, like I needed to fix or change whatever was wrong with me before committing. I didn’t know what felt off, so I drew a blank and did my best to shove it under a rug even though I actually carried it like an albatross around my neck.
As I progressed through high school, I fell in love with Christ as He drew my heart closer to His and I saw how He was present in my life and those around me. The more I learned about Him and walked with Him, the deeper my love for Him grew.
This simultaneously sparked a desire to identify with Him and bring Him glory, a fire that only grew, yet something was still holding me back from pursuing baptism.
The blank I had drawn and tried to ignore hit me in the face last spring, and God worked through various means to reveal that I had believed the lies Satan had been whispering in my ear: You are almost good enough. You are almost spiritual enough. You almost belong to this body of believers, but you don’t, and you never will.
THOSE. ARE. LIES! YOU ARE NOT AN ALMOST. You. Are. God’s Child. You belong to Him. He is who He says He is. You are who He says you are.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. God says to come as you are and He will fix you. He’s an I-don’t-care-how-far-you’ve-run-just-come-home kind of God. I want the world to know that I am on His team and I am fighting to do what is right in His eyes.