If you recall, back in January I told you about my "prayersolutions" which was my version of new years resolutions: The things that I was going to pray for in the coming year written on a little blue and brown card. My card is pretty well covered with names and situations and while it covers a pretty vast pool of Life, my card's subjects have one thing in common-all of them were BIG prayers. You know, the kind that cannot be fixed with a little elbow-grease and chocolate chip cookies....They are all much bigger than that.
And a few days later I shared with you one of the prayer requests on my card: A Friend For Ransom.
Well, in the last month or so, God has really answered that prayer with a little boy named Jacob who moved here with his parents from Fort Bliss and who got connected to us through mutual friends. And, PS, I'm not even kidding when I say, I had FORGOTTEN that I had blogged about Ransom wanting someone to play baseball with, until we were literally sitting at a baseball game with Ransom's new little friend this past Saturday.
So, yeah, we've got a God of details answering our prayer, people!!
Ok, so I tell you that to say, the other day I was praying over my prayer card and I was thanking God for answering that specific prayer when I felt the Lord telling me that He was going to answer MORE of my prayers! "Whoa, I thought, that's pretty huge!" basically the Ransom getting a friend was one of the "smaller" prayer requests on my card! haha!
But, sure enough on Wednesday of last week, God rocked my socks off and answered yet another long standing prayer of my heart that I did not see coming! You see, right underneath where I had written, " a friend for Ransom" I had written " Get to Baptize Someone" ( it was circled in an artsy cloud for emphasis) -this prayer came specifically from reading the Great Commission that the Lord gave to ALL His people before He left Earth the first time:
"Go, make disciples of all people, baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always even to the end of the age. "
So, I figured, even though I doubt Jesus would hold it against me if I didn't baptize someone, I felt like it was something worth praying for! However, in my mind it was very churchy in nature: I'd meet some young girl, and share the gospel with her, she'd start meeting with me regularly and would start following Jesus and then when she decided to get baptized after a few months I would get to do it....yup. That's my embarrassing little story of what I thought would happen!
Instead, I got sick. So sick that every time I had an opportunity to go and be a part of the little Bible group that we had started with some ladies nearby, I seemed to never be able to go ( you can read the details here.) In fact, I only got to go once. And then the second time I got to go ( I was thankfully on antibiotics again) we were scheduled to talk about God's command to get baptized! BUT before we even got started the older lady we were meeting with said, "So, I have a question: I was raised Catholic, so I was baptized as a baby, but I read in the Bible that Jesus was an adult and he was also dunked when he was baptized. Why can't I be dunked?! I want to be baptized like Jesus!"
We were dumbfounded! And we laughed! And we told her that we just so happened to have planned to talk about Baptism that night! And so, by the end of the evening Debbie had decided she wanted to be "Dunked" and she wanted me to do it!
After having met me twice.
And we were going to do it in three days. Boom.
I went home on cloud nine, and as Brett and I talked about it, it just became even cooler. Because, you know that story that I had invented in my head about how God would answer my "baptize someone" prayer? Well, that story had a lot to do with me. I didn't see it at the time, but at the end of the day I could have given myself a serious pat on the back. "Go me! I totally changed someone's life and now they are getting baptized!" But instead, it wasn't that way at all! There was no way that I could take credit for the Holy Spirit's moving! In fact, we didn't even get to take credit for doing an awesome job of sharing a bible study about baptism! Because the Holy Spirit had already put it on Debbie's heart before we even got there!
In fact, the only thing that I had even the slightest regret regarding how God had so miraculously answered my prayer was that, my mentor and friend Deb actually had the same prayer request on her prayer card ( actually, I'm not sure if it was on her prayer card, but I do know we'd talked about how much she'd like to get to baptize someone!) and on the night that Debbie ( I know, two Deb-names, keep up!) had asked me to baptize her, my friend Deb was at my house taking care of my children. I felt guilty. I felt like I had somehow cheated, but little did I know, but God had THAT worked out too!
On the day of the baptism, it ended up that Brett was also going to be baptizing his long time friend Ash, who also had never been baptized and who, on Thursday, mentioned to Brett that he felt like it was something he needed to do. Of course, this time we weren't even surprised! Of course, the timing was perfect! And so we all met with friends at a neighbor's pool and waited for a last few people to arrive. And then I found out that another couple had asked to be baptized as well! And sure enough, when they arrived, the wife asked for my friend Deb to baptize her!
And so, I shouldn't have worried, God once again took care of every detail. In fact, from the Holy Spirit moving Debbie to say that she wanted "to be dunked" on Wednesday night, we had four people get baptized on Sunday. The Lord continues to remind me that He is truly a Big God who can do Mighty and Great things.
And so as we all take a look at our prayer cards ( even if yours is figurative) I hope that this story encourages you to pray for Great Things. We have a very great God!
Now, I'm super excited to see what other cool things get answered from my prayer card soon! ;-)
