IN PURSUIT OF GOD—KAREN’S BAPTISM

Studying the Bible is one of my favorite things in life to do because I absolutely enjoy watching how the Holy Spirit changes my heart and the hearts of those who study the Bible with me, like my friend Karen.

I love that I get a front row seat, looking on as the Holy Spirit has been moving in Karen’s heart.  I have the honor of being one of several women who are teaching her the Good News that Jesus offers.  What a privilege it is to see her grasp how deep and intimately God loves her, and as a result, she is transforming right before my eyes. 

As Karen and I have studied the Bible together, the Holy Spirit has also deepened my relationship with God, changing both of our lives forever.  I am not just talking about changing our behaviors where we stop cussing, having sex outside of marriage, getting drunk, taking drugs, or even blowing up at others, etc.  I get to watch God change us on the heart-level, convicting us of how our specific sin—our pride, self-reliance, deceit, self-righteousness, idolatry, selfishness, and the like—had put Jesus on the cross.  I had the privilege of witnessing the Holy Spirit giving my friend a heart of true brokenness and humility to say, “What shall I do to make Jesus Lord and to repair my broken relationship with God?”  This is the same way that the “godly Jews from every country in the world [who] were staying in Jerusalem” (Acts 2:5-NIRV) on the day of Pentecost more than 2000 years ago, had responded:

Acts 2:36-37 (NLT)

36 “So let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!” 

37 Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”

God had helped those Israelites back then to understand what it meant for Jesus to be their atoning sacrifice for their sin just as he helps those of us, who have made Jesus our Lord, to understand this fact.  God graciously exposes that Jesus was crucified to make amends for my sin—the pollution that oozes out of my heart: my pride, my deceit, my self-righteousness, my selfishness, my idolatry (which tends to be my work, my husband, myself, or anything else that I chose over Jesus), my lack of love and compassion, and oh the list goes on.

Mark 7:20-23 (MSG)

20-23 [Jesus]...went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.” 

And I thank God that the Holy Spirit helps me to continually respond with such great gratitude for this demonstration of God’s most incredible love for me—sending his Son, Jesus Christ, who willingly paid for my sin. 

Romans 7:24-25a (ERV)

24 What a miserable person I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death? 25 I thank God for his salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So now back to talking about my friend, Karen:

I met Karen more than 2 years ago.  She is one of the neighbors of my best friend Christine and her husband Dwight.  We met her and her sweet dogs one evening when my Bible group canvased the area to invite the neighbors to a Bible discussion series.  She had come to almost all of them and had really enjoyed herself.

Karen’s name was quickly implanted into my mind during our first encounter because of the hat that she was wearing. It said, “Concrete Karen”. Karen owns and operates a concrete business, and later I learned about the fascinating work that she does with it.  I imagine that perhaps most people think like I first did when I heard that she had a concrete business, “Oh Ok. She pours concrete”. That evening, I had a better understanding of her artistic style of how she creates her beautiful projects when she showed me her template of a large monster paw that she had made. She designed it so that she could put giant paw prints in the concrete that she had poured for one of the rides at Busch Gardens. Karen does not just “pour” concrete; she is an artist, and her business is just one of the many ways that she displays her incredible God-given talent. Though she had not ever gone to school for concrete science nor engineering, she definitely knows concrete. Her jobs are not only beautiful, but I think that they are the best in the business. Karen puts her whole heart into each job and displays her love of art, even in the unusual medium of concrete. Needless to say, as I have gotten to know her more, I have been so astonished at her talent, but I knew that God had so much more to offer her than this.

In June two years ago, some of us women of “The Burg” (the Bible group here in Williamsburg Virginia) had begun to study the Bible with Karen. We started but then she stopped. Basically “life” interrupted her pursuit of God at that time, so she put Jesus on the back burner. 

She has always been a great friend of mine, and when I came back from my radiation treatment earlier this year, she drove me to church every Sunday and pretty much has not stopped serving me in this way!  Thank you so much Karen!  (Bear with me, a moment.  I am so moved by her loving heart for me that I cry when I think of this!)

Around Easter this year, Karen says that she had a vision, and this vision is what motivated her to begin studying the Bible again with Christine, Jennifer, and me.  I do not remember the exact details of her vision, but she had concluded that Jesus was specifically telling her that she needed to do all that she could to come follow him.

This had an astonishing transformation in Karen, and it put a great eagerness in her heart to get back to knowing God through his Word.  She began fervently examining what the scriptures were saying to her like the Bereans did so long ago in the first century church. 

Acts 17: 11 (NIV)

11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

So yes, thanks be to God that on August 16, 2023, Karen had repented, confessed Jesus to be her Lord and she was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as Jesus said to do in Matthew 28:19. She then received the forgiveness for her sin (all of them mind you: past, present, and future) and was given the gift of the Holy Spirit as it says in Acts 2:38. I have attached pictures of her baptism. Her smile was so contagious that evening that both her and her son could not stop smiling afterwards! I could not either, and every time I think of her and of her decision, it puts a huge smile on my face! To God be the glory. AMEN.

I believe that for any of us to have a true relationship with God, we need to study the Bible and pray that God would help us apply his Word to our lives.  We need personal Bible study, designed specifically to look ourselves as we are, in truth before God, so that we can better understand what it means when it is said that “Jesus died on the cross for my sin”.  Before we can make Jesus Lord and Savior, we need to know a bit more about what we are signing up for.  Most of us want Jesus as our Savior and may say, “Yes, Jesus is my pilot”, but our lives tend to reflect the total opposite. 

Not that by any means is any disciple of Jesus perfect.  This is evident when reading about the first century church in the New Testament.  As I said before in my post on August 4, 2023 titled, “God’s Perfect Plan, Part II”, once you come up out of the waters of baptism, it is not that you will never sin again.

However, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, disciples can be transformed by the message of the cross, Christ crucified, which is God’s power and wisdom.  God calls us to change, becoming more like his Son, Jesus, as we understand more and more how much God wants a relationship with us.  His great love for each one of us helps to motivate us to always choose to do what God’s will is for our lives and come to him with a humble, contrite heart as he helps us to repent from our wayward ways.

1 Corinthians 1:23-24 (NIV)

23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 

Psalm 51:17 (ERV)

17 The sacrifice that God wants is a humble spirit. God, you will not turn away someone who comes with a humble heart and is willing to obey you.

In our society in America today, we are at a great disadvantage of understanding what exactly it means to make Jesus our Lord.  We tend to think that just declaring it or praying to accept Jesus into our hearts, being baptized as a baby, or even getting baptized in the Jordan River is “good” enough.  I don’t know of any person, who calls him/herself a Christian, would ever want to go to hell.  We have this desire to be saved and to be with God in heaven.  Just as we hate when “bad” things happen to us or to our loved ones, we want to be saved and we want our loved ones to be saved as well.  We don’t want to suffer; we tend to avoid it at all costs.  We want so much to be saved that many times we absolutely miss the mark (that is what sin is—missing the mark).  In our pride, some of us may think things like “I’m ‘good’”, “I can do better next time”, “I just need to work harder”, or “Other people are ‘worse off’ than I am.”  Others of us (also in our pride) may think, “I am so ‘bad’ that God could never forgive me so I might as well not even try to ‘be good’” or “Why do I keep messing up?  It must be just the way I am.  Oh well, I’m going to hell.”

Over the years, I have come to understand that our biggest issue is that we try so hard to do all the necessary repenting and “being good” on our own when God had never designed for us to be alone.

Even when you look in the book of Genesis, Eve was created for Adam because it was not good for him to be alone as it says in Genesis 2:18 (ESV) 18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

In fact, even Adam and Eve were at one time with God in the garden:

Genesis 3:8a (ESV)

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… (Wow.  Imagine that: God physically being right there with you!)

Since the time when Adam and Eve were casted out of the garden because of the first sin, known as the fall of man, mankind has been separated from God.  Isaiah 59:1-2 (ERV) says: 1 Look, the Lord’s power is enough to save you. He can hear you when you ask him for help. 2 It is your sins that separate you from your God. He turns away from you when he sees them.

God’s design is for all of mankind to come back to him and to be reunited with one another and that is why he has sent Jesus as it says in Romans 5:10 (NIV): 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 

Satan’s design is the exact opposite.  He is all about hatred, division, war, separation, and for us to be all alone and to keep trying to do things on our own without God and without the help of his people.

So therefore, I believe that the only way for the Bible to come alive in our hearts and for the relationship with our God to be repaired, we need to come to God on his terms and strengthen our relationships in his way. Being on his terms is for us not to be alone.  My personal relationship with God is not meant to be for just me personally.  It is meant to be shared.  What God teaches me through his Word and through my life is not meant for just my own lessons to keep to myself.  I need spiritually minded friends to help me to learn more of what God has designed for us all and in the same way, I need to share with others what God has been teaching me.  That is why the “One Another” scriptures and the “Body of Christ” scriptures, particularly in 1 Corinthians 12 have such a great impact on my heart.

In June, Shawn Wooten had preached God’s Word to my local church, and his sermon had emphasized the importance of these particular scriptures.  He had talked about how the Redwood Forest (note that it is not a Redwood tree) has lasted for thousands of years, growing strong and tall.  The design of their root system is what is attributed to their stability as a forest.  God, of course, makes all things grow, but it is how the roots of the trees in the forest are intertwined with one another that keeps them from falling over when strong winds come.

Shawn and his wife Lena are program directors of a Project known as RevivEE.  God had guided the RevivEE team to be in Moldova as the war between Russia and the Ukraine first broke out.  (For those like me, who are not any good at geography, Moldova is the country next to the Ukraine.)  The team helped H.O.P.E Worldwide with finding homes for various Ukrainian refugees. During the 10 months that the team was there, so many people had come to know Jesus and have now made him Lord of their lives.  As Paul had done on his missionary excursions throughout his life, the RevivEE project is gathering teams of disciples together to strengthen Jesus’ body—the church—all over Eastern Europe.

I see God using his church in this same way—the way that he designed it, deeply rooted together with one another, and most especially deeply rooted in his love.  This is why it brings a lot of warmth in my heart when I study the Bible with my friends.  Church is not just a place to hear a good message and to say, “Oh that was very impactful” but then go home and be exactly the same as you were before you heard the message.  Church is the whole body of Christ.  God gives us his message through the preacher or teacher, but God wants us to talk with one another about how what was preached applies to us and how we feel about what was just taught.  God wants our whole hearts—our humble, teachable hearts.

Deuteronomy 6:5 (ERV)

5 You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Proverbs 3:1-2 (NIV)

1 My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart 2 for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity.

When someone is your lord, you do exactly what they say, but Jesus is different from the masters that history has taught us, because he is also our Savior.  He does not lord things over us as humans do:

Mark 10:42-45 (ESV)

 42 And Jesus called them [all his disciples] to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 43 But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus is God in the flesh, our creator, so HE knows what is best for us. So let us go to him to know how to strengthen our relationship with God and with each other and let us be open to hearing what HE says about how we are to return to him. Let us study the Bible together and see what God has promised for our lives.

To God be the glory.  Amen.

Video of Karen's baptism:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/q7t3X8sYqgs

COMMENTS WHEN BLOG WAS FIRST POSTED ON CARING BRIDGE SITE:

Patty Felker: How wonderful that God is working in and through you and Karen as you have been sharing your faith and love for God with her! I'm so happy to read about your friendship and faith in God and how Karen is now a baptized believer and follower of Christ! Hallelujah!! Amen!! ❤️🙏❤️

cassandra senter : Karen's story is so amazing! It reminds me of Paul's conversion. Reminding us again it is God who works in us to bring us to Himself and to His glory. Love Cassandra2hearts