Baptism 01-15-2023
Jared Murray
Hello, my name is Jared Murray, and I am in twelfth grade. This is the magnificent work that the Lord has only begun to do in my life. I have been raised in a Christian home all my life and have been blessed to have extremely patient and loving parents. For most of my life I have always intellectually believed and agreed with the gospel, mainly because my parents told me, and I was raised to believe that. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,”. This is the gospel, Jesus; His perfect life, death, and resurrection. I agreed with what the Bible said, and that Jesus did in fact die on the cross for my sins. Because I believed that was true, I thought I was a Christian, and if you would have asked me I would have said I was. But there was no evidence of a new creation.
I lived my life as a normal kid who wanted to make money when they grow up, have fun, live for my own desires, etc. I was a sinner who walked according to the flesh. My identity was in the fulfillment I got from doing worldly things like sports. In 9th grade (winter of 2020) Tyler invited me to a bible study group. And through the group a holy, just, and righteous God had mercy on me and still evidently had His hand over my life. He allowed me to fail in what I found fulfillment in and took it away. I was injured multiple times and couldn’t play baseball, the sport that had mastered me and dictated my contentment.
When I would go to the bible study group, I started to grow a desire for reading the Bible with other people and enjoyed being there once a week. The Holy Spirit had started a work in me. Because of Covid, we stopped meeting. During this time, I lived like a person who went to church but didn’t know Jesus. But when we picked up meeting together several months later my desires started to change. I started to learn that putting my identity in things like baseball was wrong and led to unfulfillment.
Where things really started to change fast was during the spring of this past year 2022. Another man of God came into my life led by the Lord named Harley who has been a servant to me and lived like Jesus and displayed what a man of God lives like just as Tyler has done. My desires really started to change, and I wanted to pursue the Lord and have God’s desires. The old me was starting to go away. And finally, around the late spring/early summer of 2022, I was finished with the life of intellectually believing but never knowing Jesus. I was done with being carnally minded, Romans 8:6 “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” I was done living a pointless life where I believed the Bible was true but didn’t live truth. This was all the work of God. It was here where my heart was renewed and I believed in my heart, God truly revealed to me what saving faith was, and who it was through. Romans 10:8-9 “But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” God saved me, I finally believed in my heart that Jesus is in fact Lord and came to comprehend the cross and received Jesus as my Lord and savior. Jesus’s first words in ministry were “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Mark 1:15. By the grace of God I repented and believed In Jesus in my heart, not just of Him.
Since God has saved me, the Holy Spirit has taken over. As Philippians 1:6 says, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;”. Ephesians 4:24 “and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” As a new man the number 1 thing evident that has changed is that I have received and felt in my heart the love of God, and secondly I have come to despise sin. 1 John 4:19 says “We love Him because He first loved us.” My love for Jesus has grown and so has my love for others. Like David prayed in the psalms, God has created in me a new heart, a servant like heart.
Once you experience Jesus everything about you will change. God saw a teenager who found his identity in a sport, who loved the things of this world, who was selfish, self-seeking, without love, of the world, impure, a wretched sinner, and lavished His love upon me that I might become His child. While I was still a sinner Jesus died for me. By the grace of God and through the finished work of Jesus on the cross I now walk by the spirit. Galatians 2:21 “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” All glory to God!
Elisa Walton