Tag Archives: september

Believer’s Baptism

“I HAVE COME THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE LIFE…. ABUNDANTLY.”
The words of Jesus, or as John 10, v10 says, “My purpose is to give a rich and satisfying life.” So it is Jesus who provides this abundant life. In the early life of Jesus there is mention of his teaching skills, but no healings, no miracles, not what we would recognise as ’abundance.’
So how did he receive that powerful, abundant ministry? We read in John 1v32, that God had told John the Baptist, “The one to whom you see the Spirit descend and rest upon is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit. So we see Jesus baptised and come up out of the water and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove.
This was the beginning of Jesus’s Abundant Ministry, the mystery of Jesus, part of the Trinity, Three in One and One in Three and here the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus, and that power is released on earth through Jesus on earth.
Today we will witness a Believer’s Baptism. A testament, a profession of faith as a Christian. But that is not all. There is an abundant sign of the Believer following Jesus down through the water as to Death, and rising up through the water as Jesus did to new Life, empowered afresh by the Holy Spirit.
What happens through life after this day is a three-way partnership of the one baptised with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It often fills a long-felt desire of Christians who have been blessed by Christening, Confirmation and their actual experience of being saved, being prayed for, and having hands laid upon them to seal them as Christians.
It is a freewill choice. It is in obedience to what Christ said and did. A disciple, a follower, does what the Master teaches. Let us hear ‘Liz’s personal testimony and witness her baptism today. And watch for the future Abundant Life. Pastor Jim Beveridge

I have always believed in God, Mum and Dad told us he was real and they never lied to us. As a teenager I might have stumbled in my faith more had I not seen their faith played out in their lives. Amid all the hormones and drama, my parents were the constant voice of reason. We weren’t really allowed to dislike anyone, because Mum or Dad would help us see the other side of the story. I could plainly see that there was real good in the world and God was the source of it.

When I went to ‘Uni’ the decision to follow God became my own. Would I attend church? Who would I make friends with? In the first week I had met my husband to be, and friends Steve and Hannah, who all had a big part in encouraging me to keep the faith.
Hannah took me to Romania for a month; God kept me there for two and a half years. I worked with other volunteers who prayed every day and expected God to answer every day. I saw a charity with no income feed hundreds of families every week. Any questions about God were totally answered. There is horrendous injustice in the world, but all the people I met who were truly listening to God were doing something about it. Elizabeth Ford