“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the Name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Amen.
Matthew 18:18-20
Baptism is a part of what our Lord commanded His disciples. As disciples on the Arabian Peninsula, we have been baptized in accordance with His command and we are baptizing new believers as we disciple them into obedience to Christ. Here are some of our stories of obedience:
Sa’ad
As a new believer, I felt that I was alone. I only had contact with one foreign Christian who was discipling me. I asked the foreigner if there were any other indigenous believers like me, or if I was truly all alone. The foreigner told me that there were lots of other believers like me, but that he wouldn’t introduce me to them.
“If you want to meet other believers like yourself, then go preach the Gospel,” he told me. “You’ll meet other believers after they come to faith. If you want to be a part of a believing community, then go and start that community.”
The foreigner knew that there were other indigenous believers, but he didn’t actually have contact with them personally. He wanted to encourage me and give me the sense that I had a family out there, even if I didn’t know them–but he didn’t want to introduce me to them either.
As I continued to meet with him, I learned that being a disciple of Christ meant more than just believing. He told me that it’s not enough just to believe. It doesn’t stop there. Believe. Get baptized. Go disciple others. That’s the bottom line. Before I met this foreigner, no one else knew about my faith. He took me from the point of belief to sharing the Gospel. That became my mission. After I started sharing my faith with others, the foreigner finally introduced me to another indigenous believer who took on the role of mentoring me in my maturing faith. This brother began to teach me about baptism and I felt convicted that I should be baptized, so I traveled to the sea with some other indigenous believers and was baptized there. Later, some of the people I was sharing my faith with trusted Christ, too, and I baptized them in the sea just as I had been baptized.
I believe that a person is ready to be baptized as soon as they open their heart to Christ. When someone comes to faith, I try to explain baptism to them from a Biblical perspective and then I baptize them. There shouldn’t be a long time between the time a person comes to the point of belief and the time they are baptized. Baptism is an important time to commission new believers to start reaching out. After they are baptized, they are sent out to share with others. A believer has more power, authority, and accountability in his witness after he has been baptized into a community of believers.
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إذا كان لديكم مشاركة (شعرية، أدبية، تشجيعية، صلاة، الخ) وتودون مشاركتها معنا فبإمكانكم ارسالها إلى البريد التالي