This is a graphic I designed this week and had blown into a poster. It's a gift for a young man that was baptized in Pastor Ron's Stock Pond this week.
He is newly out of prison and began his new life by giving it to the Lord and then following up with water baptism. His mother was in tears, his friends were in awe. He had not physically hugged his mother since his release and as he walked out of the pond, she met him on the water's edge. They cried through a long embrace and she told me later the he 'felt' different. She knew that something had changed. What a day!
Isn't it good to know that the journey through life is your friend and that this is not punishment for his past but positioning for his future.
My prayer: Lord, everyone standing on the edge of that pond knew this wasn't your average 'dunking'. Something broke. In my Spirit I saw that water try to hold him in his watery grave. I saw it try to 'freeze over' like I was watching a time lapse video of ice creeping over the surface of a northern lake in winter time. It tried to hold him under...It didn't work. He crashed through the surface and celebrated new life in You. The old man will not hold him this time. This was different. I pray that the temptations, the challenges, the habits that held him down in the past dripped off of him like that pond water. Lost forever in the sea of forgetfulness. Let it be God...let it be! ~Amen
