Baptism and Submission to God the Holy Spirit

So lately I have tried to be more responsive to the Spirit of God in his promptings in my life. This is as opposed to being dismissive outright or just not engaging in thought on the topic. In my life (as is common to many) I have struggled with assurance of salvation. I prayed the prayer “just in case” but generally knew of course that didn’t save me. I settled the issue of assurance mostly during college, when I had heard someone say that if the struggle results in wanting to commit to God, then it’s probably conviction of God; if it’s merely of guilt and despair, it’s probably of Satan. That resonated with me. I also made a profession of faith when I was very young, and it’s hard for me to remember a whole lot about it. I further realized that, whether that conversion was real or not (if it wasn’t, it is hard for me to point to one specific place that I was), I am converted: I am trusting in Jesus Christ, his finished work on the cross, that he is God the Son, lived a perfect life, died for my sins and was raised the third day. I further want to follow him and have seen evidence of the Spirit’s work in my own life. I may have prayed the prayer a hundred times, but none of those prayers have ever saved me; none ever could.

In any case, I had occasionally wondered if I was saved at the time I had my baptism as a child. If you made me guess, to this day, I’d probably say 60-40 that I was. However, I wasn’t sure. In times past, I had really not entertained it much, and just dismissed it out of mind. However, this time, I knew that God wanted me to reach out to a member of the pastoral staff at my church.

So I crafted an email to one of the pastors and explained my situation. We determined we would meet up at church to talk about it briefly. I told God my responses to the three possible outcomes: 1. If he told me I should undergo baptism, I would gladly submit. 2. If he told me not to worry about it, then I wasn’t going to worry about it. 3. If he told me it was up to me, I would pray about it for a week and get back to him. I honestly expected him to go the route of (3), or maybe (2). So I was surprised when he said, “Let’s do it!” For a moment, I worried about what people would think. Then I realized that it doesn’t matter; what matters is that I follow God and do what I told him I would do, in response to how I believed he was working things out.

So this past Sunday (Easter!) I was baptized. There’s a chance (see above) that I was just “getting wet,” but let me explain the idea. If this was my baptism, then I was being obedient to the Lord. I obviously have no regrets about that. If this wasn’t—that is, if I was saved when I was baptized as a child—then my testimony is one of being willing to follow God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as they lead, and being willing to submit to the authority of my local body of believers (the church). It may even resonate with others in the church. I obviously have no regrets about that!

In any case, it is by no means my mission to make someone doubt whether they are saved or have been properly baptized. That would be to miss my point. My point is that whatever the Lord is asking you to do, don’t ignore it. Let the Holy Spirit have his work in you, so that you will be the kind of person he wants you to be: conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

What God Brings to Mind

I’m trying to write something small each day, six days a week (I’ll take Sunday off). Or at least, this will be the attempt. I don’t know how long it will last, but many sources say it does some good to write something each day, even if it’s not research related or even particularly academic (I’m currently working on my PhD, as most of those who know me know by now!). I was reading Philippians today, and I was struck by two verses in particular (out of many!):

1:3 “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,” (KJV)

and

3:15 “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.”

This past Sunday night, our church gathered for our prayer and worship night. It involved singing a few good songs, and equally, if not more strongly, emphasized was our prayer portion of the night. There were seven stations, and you could move to any station you wish and pray for the requests or topics there (missionaries, peoples of the world, the church, confession of sins, thanksgiving to God, etc.). It was a good time of focused, personal prayer (and yet we were all together). I prayed for our staff, our missionaries, people in limited-access countries, and praised God.

Yet the one thing I realized I did not do is pray for my wife and child. My own family. It was only today, in reading Philippians, that God revealed something else to me[1]: I don’t pray for my family. Oh, if one of them is sick, I will. But I don’t pray for my wife’s spiritual growth, or my son’s salvation, etc. At least not much at all. And yet there I was, praying for some people who were perfect strangers. Indeed, I should have prayed for those strangers—and I’m glad I did! But tonight I made a specific point to pray for them, and repented of that lack of prayer.

So what is it that God is bringing to your mind right now? Don’t look for excuses or dismiss it out of hand. What does he want you to change, in your thinking? It’s not about doing the kinds of things that you think ought to be done. Instead, it’s about being the kind of person that Christ would have you to be.

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[1] The context of this passage is that we are to have the mindset that we have not already arrived, but we still have room to grow. If we have attitudes, then, that suggest otherwise, or areas that need improving, God will bring that to our minds.

What do We Make of this Mesopotamian Tablet?

Today's post is by Guest Author Zak Schmoll

Recently, there has been quite a bit of interest around Noah’s Ark, and that interest has only increased over the past few weeks. A 4000-year-old Mesopotamian tablet has been discovered with a similar flood story. Apparently, animals proceeded in a boat two by two, and this giant boat was supposed to be able to survive a catastrophic flood.

However, there is an interesting difference. The vessel described on the tablet is round. We are obviously used to the measurements prescribed in Genesis that create a giant box.

Of course, this has brought the skeptics out to play. The main reason for this is because the tablet is 4000 years old, which would obviously put the date around 2000 BC. It is traditionally believed that the Old Testament was written between 1400 BC and 400 BC, so when Genesis was written earlier in that time period, this tablet had already been in existence for perhaps 600 years.

The skeptics contend that this implies that the biblical record of Noah’s Ark was simply a later copy of an earlier legend. Obviously, this type of flood story was prevalent in Mesopotamia, so doesn’t it make sense that whichever one was written down first is most likely the base that was copied from?

I am not so worried about these concerns, and I actually think that this tablet helps affirm the reliability of the Biblical account.

I am excited when I see evidence that shows that the Hebrew Bible is not the only document that makes claims about a catastrophic flood. Sure, they all could have made up similar stories, or there could have been sharing among different tribal groups. However, that first concern is certainly not likely. If you and I each tried to create a fantastical story in our heads, what are the odds that we would each decide something as bizarre as animals being brought onto a giant boat in pairs? The facts are strikingly similar and incredibly unlikely based on random chance. I will not say it is impossible, but I would not place a bet on it.

The second one is obviously what is at stake here. Is it possible that there was sharing going on? Is it possible that the Hebrew people saw something that they liked in the Mesopotamian religion and decided to envelop it into their own belief system? That would certainly explain why key facts overlap that are far too similar to be a product of random chance.

However, I don’t know if this claim is satisfactory either. The first five books of the Bible are the basis of Hebrew Scripture, and as you read through them, you cannot help but notice that there is a lot of time spent discussing why the Jewish people are set apart. When Abraham was promised a great nation, you get the sense that this would not be an ordinary nation.

With all of this emphasis on being set apart, why then would you include something overtly stolen from another area religion? If you were creating a religion that spent so much time talking about how much different you are than the people around you, why would you start taking pieces of their stories? Everyone would recognize the similarities. Couldn’t you make your own and be much more differentiated if you just made up your own stories? What circumstance would drive you to not make up a story? What would you be forced to copy?

You would be forced to overlap in areas where the facts are true. If everyone at the time knew that there had been a flood, it certainly makes sense that if you are going to write any document about the history of the world, you would need to include what was known to have happened.

If you believe in Biblical inerrancy as I do, then you should not be surprised to see the world reflecting the reality outlined in the Bible. The fact that other cultures recognize that there was a global flood should be obvious.

However, even if you want to deny that and are skeptical of the Bible all together, you have a book that seems to desire to set apart with a group of people by establishing largely a religious difference. Judaism sets apart the Jewish people. However, you have this book sharing very similar claims with area religions that really could have been be avoided if the claims had no reason for belief. When Moses wrote Genesis, if nobody believed in the truth of any type of global flood, then why would he borrow from the religion he was trying to separate from? Even if that was some type of subjective belief without any type of legitimate evidence, he probably could have avoided it even if the majority accepted it. Perhaps he included it because everyone knew it was an objective fact, and it needed to be reconciled with the belief system he was creating.

Don’t be nervous about this if you are Christian. Multiple sources of evidence strengthen the case for the flood, and if there was a flood, that is a point in favor of the accuracy of the Bible and in favor of the Mesopotamian tablet. The next step would be to evaluate the relative claims of Mesopotamian religion at the time and the Bible and see which one holds up better to scrutiny. That way, we could see if the tablet or the Bible is more reliable. Either way, this is not a defeater for Christian belief in the Scriptures.

Zak Schmoll is a Christian blogger at “A Chapter Per Day” http://achapterperday.wordpress.com. He is writing about one chapter of the Bible every day from beginning to end, and he has almost made it halfway!

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