Yesterday, I had an awesome privilege of baptizing our son, AJ in the Pacific Ocean after our Sunday service. He is 20 years old and we are very proud of the way AJ has grown spiritually. AJ has grown tremendously after going to the university (California Baptist University) last year (he is a sophomore). He has faithfully attended many bible studies, church activities, school chapel, and church worship services on his own without our nagging.
My wife and I did not pressure AJ about getting baptized. We have had many spiritual conversations and experiences but never asked him to get baptized because he would have felt pressured if we did ask him about it. We wanted to be like Ethiopian eunuch experience where he would initiate getting baptized (Acts 8:26-40). It happened several months ago when AJ asked about his baptism. I shared our conviction about not initiating but waited for his initiation. It was a great conversation as I always dreamed about having an adult-to-adult spiritual conversation with him little more than father to son conversation. It was great to have that conversation and saw how God was working in his life and he wanted to get baptized and saw his thinking process.
I told him that there are many different options about getting baptized. He can get baptized at his church near his university or come home for winter and get baptized at our church. He wanted to get baptized our church to share that special moment with many of his family friends and church leaders as they have been watching him for a very long time. I told him to start writing down his testimony and we have had many good conversations about that, too.
During the Sunday service, AJ got to read his testimony and I got to baptize him in the ocean around 2pm-ish. It was cold (57 degrees) and the waves were about 5 feet tall, which was higher than usual. We had another person who was getting baptized so we prepped them well and we were headed into the ocean. When we were walking in the water, we were greeted with big waves, which one of them took me under and drank some sea water. After struggling little bit, I was able to stand and I realized that my glasses were gone. I have lost one pair before and this was my second time I have lost my glasses while baptizing people in the ocean. Someone told me afterwards, “it is better to lose the glasses than losing you”. hahaha
We were able to baptized them really fast, dunking them (fully immersing them) totally under the water symbolizing Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection and proclaiming that we are dead to self and Christ lives in us. It was a huge blessing to baptize our son.
As it was almost end of the year, I was reflecting on all the blessings that we were able to experience this year. Our daughter got married in July, I was able to take my sabbatical, and my son was baptized in December. Wow, what a blessed year. Surely, God is good all the time and all the time God is good.
I am looking forward to 2025 as I preached yesterday to seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness. I want to live that kind of life for me, and for our family and our church family as well. I would love to have so many testimonies of how God added “all these things” and expansion of God’s kingdom as well as experiencing growth in our relationship with God and with others. May God receive all the glory.
-young su mccann-