Because of our sinfulness, we have heaped up an infinite amount of guilt on the divine scale. Evil thought after evil thought, sinful action after sinful action, we pile guilt on that scale until it is horribly tilted in the wrong direction.
Read MoreLord willing, I will be graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Pastoral ministry in a little over a month. Currently, though, a Greek exegetical paper on Romans 1:16-17 and a slew of other projects and assignments are standing between me and that piece of paper.
Read MoreWhich means, in all of Stephen Hawking’s brilliance – in all of his understanding of black holes and quantum physics and the inner workings of the vast universe – he never discovered anything, never knew anything, that God did not already know.
Read MoreThere are 220 pages worth of deep, enriching, vibrant prayers from Puritan saints of old and I encourage you to pick it up and start praying them for yourself! They have already been a source of encouragement and refreshment for me personally
Read MoreI’ve been thinking a lot about the Christian walk lately and I’ve noticed that most of us would like to think of it as an ever-ascending line to Heaven; when, in reality, it’s more like a staggered roller-coaster ride through the ebbs and flows of nominal Christian life.
Read MoreAre you attempting to find satisfaction through sex, spending untold amounts of time surfing the web or swiping right? Or maybe your idolatry takes more subtle forms and you would rather debate the finer points of theological issues than meditate on God and His Word; you would rather philosophize about God than experience intimacy with God.
Read MoreToday, I want to begin a series called Theology Thursdays in which one Thursday a month I lay out a doctrine of the Bible and explain it in simple terms. It is my hope that through these simplistic explanations of Bible doctrine, you will be encouraged to deeper study of God’s Word. We begin today with the doctrine of election
Read MoreCalvin starts out by stating that the goal of every Christian’s life should be to, “breathe nothing but the very gospel.”* He isn’t arguing for some kind of perfectionism, in which Christians can attain a level of “un-sinnability” during this present life, but he nevertheless states that this kind of Gospel-saturated life should be the goal of every believer.
Read MoreThis method has proved incredibly helpful in preparing my heart to meet with God in prayer for two reasons. First, it focuses my mind on God before anything else. I tend to rush into asking God for things I want, but this meditation causes me to think about things like God’s attributes and His great love for me. Second, it puts me in my rightful place as a sinful human being that relies on God for my every thought and breath.
Read MoreBut, if we’re honest, does it really always feel like that? In my life, it most certainly doesn’t feel like that all the time. I go through seasons when I am overwhelmingly aware of God’s activity in my life. But there are also times when God seems distant and His working in my life is far from my mind.
Read MoreI don’t know about you, but lately I have struggled in my prayer life. When I pray, it seems as if I am talking to thin air – that my requests go into the void and return to me empty. It’s like I am calling out into a great chasm only to be greeted by the sound of my own echo.
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Maybe it happened when you were a baby. Maybe it happened when you were an adult. Maybe you were in college, or freshly into your first year of retirement. Or you were a gangly, awkward middle schooler who only vaguely understood the magnitude of what you were doing.
No matter how it happened, or when it happened, if you are a Christian living in obedience to the Word of God, you have been baptized. There has been a moment in your life when you, either through sprinkling or immersion, received the ordinance of Christian baptism.
And if you’re anything like me, the memory of that occasion rarely crosses your mind. If you were baptized as a baby, you probably don’t even have memories of your baptism. Even if you were baptized as an adult, the event happened, stuck with you for a week or two, and then faded to the recesses of your memory like most events do. Sure, you think about it a time or two – especially when your church has a baptism service – but it doesn’t cross your mind during your typical week.
But today, I want to challenge that regular pattern for believers. I want to encourage you to remember your baptism and to remember it often.
I know that probably sounds strange – I don’t think you hear many pastors preaching from the pulpit for their congregations to remember their baptisms. But, consciously remembering your baptism to encourage yourself in the Christian life was something the Westminster Divines called “improving your baptism.” And it’s something that the church is all but silent on today.
But contrary to that attitude, writer Bryan Holstrom says, “God did not provide His people with a covenant sign that was intended to be of significance for them for only one brief moment of their lives and then forgotten about.” But that’s how most of us view it, isn’t it? My baptism was significant to me for about a week after it happened – then it was only a memory and an old video on my iPhone.
But that isn’t how God meant it to be! Remembering your baptism is a vital part of the Christian life and there are two big areas that I think it can help in.
Here they are: (1) remembering your baptism can aid in your fight against sin and (2) remembering your baptism can help heal the heart of a doubting, anxious Christian.
First, remembering your baptism aids in your fight against sin. In Holstrom’s book on baptism, he talks about how when Martin Luther faced temptation, he would often tell himself, “I am a baptized man!”* For Luther, when he remembered his baptism and his identification with Christ through it, it made him think twice before engaging in sin.
Think about that for a second. When you are consciously pondering your union with Christ through baptism, it makes it a little harder to click on that website or yell at your spouse.
So, remembering your baptism can help you resist temptation.
Not only that, remembering your baptism can reassure you of your standing with Christ. I am attempting Tim Challies’ 2018 reading challenge this year and the first category on the list is a biography. So I am reading Tables in the Wilderness by Preston Yancey – a kind of autobiographical memoir. In it, he tells of a professor he had in college that would often encourage them to remember their baptisms – especially if they had fallen into patterns of sin.
He says, “If you are in the shadow of God, if God is silent, if God seems to be absent, remember your baptism, in which it was confirmed that you were indeed of God’s own and held safely.”
Wow. What an encouragement! If you are doubting your salvation, or in a pattern of sin, remember your baptism! Yancey again says (paraphrasing his professor) that, “remembering our baptism is remembering that there was a moment in which we affirmed, without question, that the good work of the Holy Spirit had begun in our lives.”
Consciously thinking back to that moment in time - that concrete, real, feelable moment - in which you identified with Christ and received His ordinance of baptism can help in times of darkness when God feels far away. It reassures us that His seal is upon us and we are united to Him in His death and resurrection.
So, remembering our baptism aids in temptation and gives us a source of assurance rooted in the person of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. I hope that today you take a few moments to ponder your baptism and meditate on the many practical applications it has in your everyday life!
Have you ever heard a pastor tell you to “remember your baptism”? Do you ever consciously think about your baptism to aid in resisting temptation or to encourage yourself? Do you think about it for any other reasons? Let me know in the comments below! Or hit me up on Facebook or Twitter! And don’t forget to subscribe below, you’ll get more content like this delivered right to your inbox!
Sources: Infant Baptism and the Silence of the New Testament by Bryan Holstrom, Tables in the Wilderness by Preston Yancey
*Holstrom is citing the author Strange in this section
How often do you find yourself in situations like this? You had an ideal in mind, but life just got in the way somehow. Maybe you had a vacation planned that fell through at the last minute. Maybe you spent weeks preparing a church event that ended up being a total disaster.
Read MoreWith Christmas behind us and New Year’s fast approaching, we are entering the dreaded “no-holiday zone” of January. Full of Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas ham, we stumble into the new year lethargic and somewhat depressed.
Read MoreAre you fighting to overcome pornography addiction, but find yourself failing continually? Do you fall prey to the hidden sin of pride on a regular basis? Is hate towards a particular brother and sister in Christ pent up in your heart, even though you don’t want it there? Is there some sin that you have asked God to take away from you time and time again? Are you met with silence each time? It’s because God isn’t ready for you to overcome that sin yet. He wants you to struggle.
Read MoreI want to address a particular group of people today: students of the Bible.
Read MoreI think that many of us, myself included, haven’t stopped to think deeply about why exactly we are required to treat all other people, no matter who they are or how they treat us, the way we want to be treated. At least, we haven’t thought much further than, “Jesus tells us to.”
Read MoreIt saddens me to be writing another post about a shooting. It seems like just a few days ago that I addressed the Las Vegas shooting. Now, a local church in Texas is grieving after 26 people – 4 percent of the population of the small town of Sutherland Springs – were killed after a man with a rifle opened fire on the little congregation
Read MoreThis week marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On October 31st, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenburg and thus began what history now looks back on as the Protestant Reformation. It was because of men like Luther that the Gospel was recovered from underneath years of tradition and opinion.
Read MoreWhile I vigorously defend the sufficiency of Scripture to provide believers with everything they need and to bring the unbeliever to salvation, I betray my heart’s fickleness with my daily struggles and doubts.
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