A recovering Baptist

Matthew 26:69-75

I am a recovering Baptist, my Baptist life began at birth, and for many years I watched and took note of Baptist life in small churches in Corpus Christi, Texas.  At around 12 years of age, I walked an aisle and was a voted in member of Ebony Acres Baptist church, with one specification, at 12, I did not have a vote.  What I learned there, and later in another small Baptist church did not make me want to know Jesus or obey Him, but it did teach me to be somewhat closed minded of others who were not Baptist, like the Methodist, Presbyterians, or anyone else but Baptists, and then only the Southern Baptist.  It was not what was taught, so much as what was not taught, we did not discuss the Holy Spirit and how He came to live in our life and His desire is to lead us into all truth.  You see the Pentecostals made much of the Holy Spirit and they did things like speak in tongues and for a Baptist in our little church, that was taboo.

So what is a lost religious person, who is Baptist by birth, going to do with a guy like Peter, a chosen disciple of Jesus Christ, who publicly denies Jesus?  Now it might have been ok if Peter would have said, I’m not sure which Jesus you are referring to, in that Jesus was a common name at that time.  But I was grounded in the Baptist faith, its rules and regulations, and no one gets by with swearing, “I do not know the man.”  I can testify as a person of Baptist Heritage who was religious, Peter was a wimp, he had no back bone, in fact I’m sure that if it had been me, I would have never got that far, I would have been packed and leaving the area.  But that did not keep me from being a judge of Peter’s actions.

You may want to read the account in Matthew 26:69-75, what Peter had said earlier, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.”  And do you recall Jesus words to Peter; “Truly, I tell you, this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.”  And do you recall Peter’s reply; “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!”  What Peter will learn after he is filled with the Holy Spirit is that Jesus tells the truth, and that holds true also with a guy like me, a Baptist without an eternal destination that included Jesus. 

Much later after I had acted by faith in what Jesus had done for me on the cross, to forgive my sin of unbelief and confess that only by Jesus broken body and His precious blood was there forgiveness of sin, did I begin to grasp the magnitude of Jesus’ love for me.  But 27 years of being a lost Baptist had built eighteen lane highways in my mind on how to get my needs met outside of Christ.  My friends Bill & Anabel Gillham taught me how to not look to Bob, but to Jesus, and some of those highways are now only two lane roads with potholes, but those potholes are full of misinformation, lust for things that have no eternal value, and desires of the flesh.

Since I’ve had a relationship with Jesus, it has become apparent that my words and actions have been very much like weak Peter, the Peter full of self.  My hearts desire is to walk daily in such a way that my life takes on the flavor of the man Peter who declared after Pentecost these words: “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice