Baptised! A little background first

Yesterday was a special day for our family because my husband and I were both baptised! We had both been baptised before but both as unbelievers. My husband was raised Roman Catholic, and was baptised as a child without faith, therefore his baptism was invalid and he wanted to be baptised again, but this time as a believer. I was not raised in a Christian home, though my dad was raised Methodist, and my mom was raised Roman Catholic.

To give you a little background as to why I wanted to be rebaptised, I was baptised for all of the wrong reasons, with the main one being that I was an unbeliever.

In 1984 I had "prayed the sinner's prayer" with a lady I worked with at the time whose husband was a pastor, and was born again, or so I thought. The truth is I made a false profession back then. There was little evidence of my being a believer. I lacked the new nature, I had no love for the Lord, nor a love for His Word. I did the same things as a professing believer that I did as a non believer.

In 1985, my first husband and I seperated, and divorced the next year. I was working for attorneys at the time, and one of them recommended a Baptist church to me. I was baptised there in 1986. The only reason I was baptised then was to join the church. I could not become a member unless I was baptised. I didn't even go to church for the right reasons. I went so I could be in the singles group, and have fun. I did have a lot of fun, but as a lost sinner, dead in my trespasses and sins.

I remarried in October of 1989, and we started going to a Methodist church, joined there, and remained there for about two years. During that time I was working for a bank, and a coworker of mine was going to an Assemblies of God. It seemed real lively to me when we visited, and she talked to me about all those dead churches out there that had no life. At that time, neither my husband nor I cared much about doctrine, and we still didn't know we were lost. We were there for ten years, and it was while at that church I started watching TBN, and between TBN and the Assemblies of God, I became charismatic in my theology, though I was still lost. I had a god of my own making, a god who was there to serve me, rather than I being on this earth to glorify Him, and to enjoy Him forever. During our time at the Assemblies of God, the church changed pastors, and it went from bad to worse. We left there and began going to a Calvary Chapel. We were there for five years, and circumstances led me to leave there a year before my husband did.

Three years ago, the Lord began working in my heart through my younger daughter's illness, and it wasn't long afterwards that I could do nothing else but surrender my life to the Lord. He showed me there was nothing good in me, and that I needed a Savior. Not only did I become born again while I was still at Calvary Chapel, but I came to the realization, through the study of Scripture, that I was a Calvinist. I no longer had a god of my own making, I was finally serving the true and Living God.

Looking back, it amazes me to see God's hand my life throughout the years, even those years when I didn't know Him. I could write page after page of how He has orchestrated things in my life and led me to Him. Instead of writing page after page about it, let me share this one thing.

I've posted before about the health scare we had with our youngest daughter here, and at the time both of our daughters were playing softball. One of the coaches asked if he could add her name to the prayer list at his church, we told him yes and she was added. Fast forward from March, 2003 to March 2005. I left the church we had been going to before my husband did. I visited a Reformed Baptist church in March, 2005 that an online friend had found for me. I began attending there, and the pastor traveled, and when he did, he had another pastor come to our church to preach. As soon as I saw this other pastor I knew immediately I had seen him somewhere but couldn't remember where. For about 8 months I wondered where I knew him from. When my husband began attending, and this pastor was there, my husband also recognized him. In fact, when this pastor saw my husband, his eyes lit up like he recognized him too. After a little while, as we began talking about it, it dawned on us that we knew him from softball.

In August, 2006 my husband and I joined the Reformed Baptist church we were attending, and because we didn't have a valid baptism, we chose to be baptised again. Because our church does not have a baptismal pool, we use the church of the pastor who preaches when our pastor is out of town. After we were baptised, and the service was over, we saw the guy from March, 2003 who had asked us if his church could pray for our daughter! So this church had been praying for our daughter for four years, and here He brought us to this church to be baptised in. I stand in awe at how the Lord orchestrates our lives, and how He has planned every little detail, and each and every thing in our lives. That is such a comforting thought!

This is such a long post, I will either post later this afternoon about the baptism itself, or will wait until tomorrow since this was longer than I intended it to be.