my rebaptism.

My first baptism took place when I was about eight or nine years old. I don't even remember going through the baptismal studies, but I knew I wanted to be baptized because I wanted to take part in Communion. I remember feeling like such a "big kid" after I was baptized because everyone kept coming up to me telling me, "Congratulations" and what not.

I didn't know what I was doing so I wasn't truly baptized. Sure, I got wet, but I was not baptized of the Holy Spirit. I didn't give my life to the Lord that day and I didn't for almost ten years.

I gave my life to the Lord and decided to live for Him on December 2, 2006. That Sabbath morning, the Lord was working on my heart, breaking down the hard wall that surrounded it, and when the words "Decide today to live for Jesus" were heard, they just penetrated the layers that I had created around my heart and struck to the core. I started to change my life after that day. Slowly, I began to learn more about Jesus. I remember waking up early one Sabbath morning because I wanted to watch the live telecast of GYC 2006 on 3ABN. I remember taking notes through the services when David Assherick , David Gates, and Jeffrey Rosario spoke. The Bible began to come alive in my life and I started seeing how I can make practical applications from the messages I had heard. Throughout the following year, I began helping out in Bible studies and doing revivals and just getting a blessing from this new life that I had found in the Lord.

There were several times when my friends had given appeals for baptism during revivals and I felt that I should answer the call to be rebaptized. One day I was talking about being rebaptized and my friend Ashley said she had been thinking about it for awhile too. We made a decision that we wanted to be rebaptized together but we just didn't know where. Finally, a little over a month ago, we decided to get rebaptized with our friend Luke in the Philippines at South Philippine Adventist College on July 4, 2008.

I remember just wanting to be alone that day and just meditate. I didn't want my second baptism to be like my first--where it didn't mean anything to me. I remember Ashley and I standing at the end of the line because we wanted to be baptized last. While we were waiting, we were just praying and I had my Bible with me and I was going over Galatians 2:20. We started crying as we entered the pool together and as we were baptized together.

That day signified something that I had chosen to do a year and a half ago--decide to live for Jesus and surrender my life to Him.

But lately, it seems that I have forgotten what I had decided to do. My heart has been broken many times before and even during the past year and now I'm going through it again. I was so tired of just "sucking it up" and just putting my life in Jesus's hands. I wanted things to go my way and I was so tired of not being the one for someone and just watching that person fall for another person. I even stopped praying and reading my Bible because I already knew what God wanted me to--He wanted me to trust Him with the situation and just leave it to Him. I had already gone through this and I had seen and praised the Lord for how another situation turned out and realized that He truly knows what's best but I just didn't want it to happen for this second situation. I was being so selfish and I knew that the wrong spirit was in me.

As I had my devotion about an hour ago and as I listened to "I Surrender All," I started to remember my rebaptism and how I had wanted to really take Galatians 2:20 to heart. I looked back on what I had been feeling and thinking this past week and realized that if I continued on that path, my rebaptism would have been like my first one. I had lost my trust for someone and realized that I was also fast losing my trust in God. I didn't want to go back to the life that I had lived before and I knew that I had to do something that was so hard: surrender my whole life to Christ again.

Although this is so hard to do and just leaving my life in His hands could possibly mean that I would go through another heart break and pain, I know deep in my heart that this is the best thing I can possibly do.

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." Galatians 2:20