They had a call for a baptism and it was in that moment where I realized I had to lay down everything that I’ve been holding onto, all that I gripped with my fists because I didn’t believe that God could offer me something better in exchange for. I had been dancing during worship for weeks building up to that faithful call which erupted a dormant excitement that waned after 23 years of serving The Lord. This year, 2021, had been my best on earth after confessing the deep mourning of lost dreams and destiny, and the freedom that it brought when I confessed it at the age of 46. There was great significance of my turning the age that doubled the number of years I had known my Savior but still felt betrayed by. Since January I made five distinct choices that would piggy-back on the next to aide in my mental and spiritual freedom. I ended a relationship, and walked away from the church that he and I were attending because the scales tipped in favor of his continuance. I let go of the ministry that I moved down South for because I realized that with all of my performance and obedience to their ministry, their lack of love stifled my gifts from being received by them. I had to relinquish an investment into my health from a wealthy medical community in order to surrender my chronic conditions to the Great Physician, not accepting my pain as my lot, but resisting the need to be healed in order to gain happiness. Finally, I had to walk away from a job of drudgery that although I was good at it, the only reward was passionless money. Those five reasons propelled me forward for baptism because it was my proclamation that I needed the Lord’s grace to actually be Lord over my life.
Since that immersion in water, I have felt cleansed from all unbelief and have a newfound fervency to get back into the miraculous that manifested when I was a new convert at 23. My naive prayers of the past resurfaced; I’ve prayed for many people in wheelchairs and their legs have moved for the first time after being paralyzed from the neck or waist down, I have prophesied times and events that have happened on earth, so when did my faith dry up? I had given up on the call that marked my early life because I wasn’t certain that God could do it and I stepped in to help Him which eventually became heavy laden and pragmatic. Yet here I am picking up the delayed promises and walking out in the steps to fulfilling my destiny. The things that I gave up on I breathe back into life, the things that I believed he had taken from me I repented of unbelief for and I spoke them back into existence, the hopes that I still have to travel and preach the word don’t have to stop because of the falling fear that’s exhibited on the land and I get to give my life back again, to Him. I feel born again, again, and this hunger for more has been what has led me back to my first love, and I intend to raise the dead with childlike expectancy that has been reclaimed due to that love. I’ve already seen His hand move in spite of my limits and now it’s high time I get back to aligning with an open heaven. I used to get in my car with a pair of running shoes and work out at the YMCA, shower, sleep in the car, and get on the road to the next destination wherever He wanted to lead me, just to share His love. That is the fire, that is what has been rekindled, that has been the sudden excitement to fulfill every call and hope that I have had in my visions and dreams. And that became apparent on my day of baptism, and that is grace manifested. To know that my life is not mine Alone, that it is His first, and I get to walk it out with Him gives me gumption to grow wiser, and praise Him for my resurrected heart that needed to be cleansed that beautiful day of my baptism.