Are ya busy Sunday?

For a lonnnnggg time, Samuel's been asking about getting baptized.  I keep thinking that he just likes the idea of getting dunked.  He's gone forward in children's church several times to 'ask Jesus into his heart', but when he came home, he could never tell us anything about the experience or why he did it or what it meant, etc.  He could quote scriptures & knows what being saved means, but every time we had conversations about it, it sounded like he was just repeating things he's heard us or the children's pastor say and he'd get distracted in a couple minutes' time.  Larry & I felt like when it was time & he really understood, we'd know.

 

Tonight I went into his room to tuck him into bed & found him sitting there with his little devotional book (called "Jesus Wants All of Me").  He'd just read today's passage & was writing a letter to God.  It said (and I quote):

 

"Dear God,

I love you so vaery much.  You are my heroe and my savyer."

 

There was more to it than that, but that was the jest of it.  Very sweet...totally on his own.  I read it & melted.  Larry was coming past the door so I called him in to read Samuel's sweet letter to God.  Samuel went to brush his teeth & I quickly said to Larry "Hey...you talk to him....I've had this conversation w/ him a thousand times & I want to hear him explain this in HIS words without sounding like he's repeating things he's heard other people say."  Larry just grinned & pointed to Samuel's letter to God & said "I don't know how much more he's going to say to convince me that he has put his faith in God."

 

When Samuel came back, I mostly sat quietly & listened while Larry asked him to explain what his letter to God meant & then asked if he knew what it meant to have Jesus into your heart.  He said he did it once at church when he was 5, but he didn't really understand it, so Larry asked him if he understood now.  He said he did, but Larry explained it again just in case.  Larry offered to help him pray & ask Jesus into his heart if he wanted to, and Samuel said he wanted to.... so we all prayed together right then.

 

Larry is going to baptize him Sunday morning!  We have a baptism service scheduled for then anyway, so Larry said he'd get Samuel's name added to the list.  Since Larry is the one doing the baptisms, he'll get to be the one to baptize Samuel!!

 

So......if you're not busy Sunday morning, come join us.  It's at 10:30.  Hope to see ya there!  And if you can't come, don't sweat it.  We have the owners of Studio3 in our church & he takes professional pics of the baptisms from up IN the baptistry, so we'll have AWESOME pictures to share later.

 

The funny thing about all this is......Sarah is also very 'close'.  We may be doing this again in a few months!