Blessed Birthday

It's my 21st birthday today. And this is the most blessed birthday. Twenty one years ago, on this day, a child of God was born.

In this birthday week, I did a continuous prayer from the week before on my studies. And I have decided that I will get baptized. It happened in one of those nights that I was doing my night prayer and the thought of baptism came up. So, I was thinking to myself, God has already showed me so many signs, things couldn't be more obvious. What stopped me from getting baptized was my mum. I know that she wouldn't agree on that. It's not because I am afraid that she would disown me. Its just that I don't want her to be unhappy. Things have just started going well and I don't want to spoil anything about it. And also, I am not convicted to get baptized, when I first accepted Christ, I did thought of it but because of my mum's on and off hints on her disapproval of  me getting baptized, somehow the subject just drop off. Last year, a group of Christian came to my house in PJ at one night and I did their survey and listened to what they have to say ( I just thought that I should help my dear Christians sisters and brothers since it was just answering some questions). One of them asked if I am baptized and said that if I am not, I won't be in heaven. Obviously, I was a little offended. I know I will be heaven if I die the next day without being baptized. I told him baptism is just a ritual and I even told him about the criminal next to Jesus ( he wasn't baptized and Jesus told him that he will see him in paradise). He quote some bible verses and said look there's water, be baptized and he literally pointed at the drain outside the house. It gave me all the more reason to not be baptized- its just the defiant spirit in me. Then recently, God gave me a lot of hints and the occasional pokes make me think about baptism again. First, I was asked if I want to get baptized by a church member. Second was I went to church with my dad when I was in Penang, I didn't want to follow him but somehow the Holy Spirit lead me there and the sermon was on baptism. The preacher ( who was my former form teacher ) said that baptism is not necessary for salvation but rather, salvation is necessary for baptism. And he mentioned that those who are not baptized are at most a spiritual baby. Even though God has make it so clear to me, I still don't feel convicted enough. I feel that if I decide to be baptized then it would be for wrong reasons because clearly, I do not want to remain as a spiritual baby and I am doing it just to shut people up. After praying a few times, I forgot completely about it. Then, my pastor out of the blues came to me and asked me to get baptized for a couple of times. That night, I remembered about baptism and told God that I want to be baptized. And I have peace.

In one of the message I received in my Emmanuel group, it says that when we are fighting a spiritual war, we must listen to our hearts, the Holy Spirit within us and not our minds. With our minds, we tend to analyze the situation, we weigh the pros and cons, we think of the possible outcomes and naturally fears come in as well. Most of the time, there isn't much thinking required and in my case, God's perfect will is already very obvious. If I would to continue analyzing it, gradually more ridiculous excuses will appear. Most importantly, people fall because they don't have a listening heart not because they are not pious enough. In everything that we do it is important to listen to our Lord first and its never about doing first.

ps: drafted this on my birthday last month. Will update my blog soon. Stay tune <3 nbsp="nbsp">