Month: December 2017

Sweet Little Hand In Mine

~ Pat Vick ~ 6 Comments

This morning at Church, while waiting for service to start, I snapped this sweet photo of mine and my grandson’s hands. The sweetness of the moment reminded me of a memory twenty-five years earlier.

My grandson’s daddy, my oldest child, was three, the age of my grandson now.

I was standing in the kitchen, holding his hand. My husband’s Great Aunt Edna was visiting.

She was a classy lady. Always well-dressed, hair fixed, nails manicured. Her home was full of polished antique furniture, draped with crocheted doilies. She brought out the good china for every day occasions, and no one would dare think of accidentally breaking a piece. Kids behaved in her presence because of the formality that she brought into a room with her.

If her appearance and carriage weren’t enough to cause you to take notice, when she spoke, everyone listened. With one sentence, it was apparent that she was a genteel, southern lady.

Aunt Edna saw me holding my son’s hand, and commented wisely, “Right now his little hand fits inside yours, but it won’t be long before yours will fit inside his.”

How right she was.

One day, when Logan was a teenager, he held my hand in his and said, “Look Mom, Aunt Edna was right.”

And so she was.

Through the years, a squeeze of our hands has always been an unspoken conversation between us. Now that my boy has his own boy, those old memories carry an extra sweetness.

As I looked at my grandson’s hand on mine this morning, I was thankful.

Thankful that Aunt Edna spoke a word into my life all those years ago that would cause me to value time with my children.

Thankful that even though they are grown, they were all raised in Church.

Thankful that through the crazy busyness of our lives, we somehow made the time to instill into our kids that God comes first, and Church is a priority, not just something we add on to our lives.

Thankful that all my family was in Church together on the last service of the year.

Thankful that all my children and daughter-in-love are used in the ministry.

Thankful that my three year old grandson loves to raise his hands and worship Jesus.

I’m thankful that men and women of God are my children’s heroes. Click To Tweet

Ma’am, Sir, as the old year rolls up like a scroll that has been read, and the new year is spread out like a blank page, I urge you to take your children’s and grandchildren’s hands in yours.

Three or forty-three, no matter.

Give them a squeeze. Study them carefully. They won’t look like that next year, or in ten years, or in twenty.

Show them by example how to reach high in worship, how to locate the books of the Bible, how to play an instrument in praise, how to clean the Church house.

Time is no respecter of persons. When those youthful hands are wrinkled with age, they’ll be glad someone taught them what is most important.

Trust me.

Warm Regards, -Pat

Seasons Change, So Don’t Be Afraid Of What’s Around The Corner

~ Pat Vick ~ 4 Comments

Photo by Paul Green on Unsplash

This time of the year always makes me a bit wistful, like something is slipping through my fingers that I want to grasp and hold tightly to. Beach sand. Warm breezes. An incomplete thought. Relationships.

This unsettledness seems to be brought on by two things. One is the crisp morning air. I can look out the window and see the horse and cows lift their faces in the morning coolness, breathing it in. Even they know change is coming.

The second is my hummingbird feeder. In the middle of summer, it is the center of much activity. Once the weather starts to cool, it hangs idle. I leave nectar in it longer than most, because you never know when a lone traveler will need energy for her journey. But sooner or later, all my beautiful jeweled hummers leave for warmer places.

It reminds me of a time in my life about twenty-five years ago. We were living in Birmingham, Alabama, and were very active in the Church there. There was a young man in the Church who was from Florida, but was attending college in Birmingham. He spent a lot of time in our home. Everyone who ever met him, loved him. When it came time for his graduation, and for him to move back home, I was so distraught that I could hardly stand it. I just couldn’t bear the thought of him not being in our day to day lives.

Fast forward a quarter of a century…Our family is now very involved with the Global Missions department of the United Pentecostal Church International, something we could have never foreseen twenty-five years ago. My husband schedules Missionaries to be in Church services all over our state while they are traveling on deputation.

Would you believe that young man from our Birmingham days is now involved in the Associates In Missions program of the United Pentecostal Church?! This means that one day in the future, this man’s family will travel through our state on deputation and my husband is likely to be the one scheduling his services in our Churches. I am looking forward to catching up and enjoying with him the season of life he is in now.

As I’ve grown older and matured a little, I’ve realized that not everyone that God brings into my life is going to be a permanent fixture. We must allow people to follow the path God is leading them down. There are seasons in each of our lives. Often, those seasons overlap, and occasionally diverge.

We must allow people to follow the path God is leading them down. Click To Tweet

People come and go in our lives for many reasons. Schooling, jobs, illness, vacations, military, dreams, passions, travels, bad decisions, good decisions, death and endless other reasons that we often have no control over.

Just remember, life and relationships are a series of changing seasons. Whoever God has placed in your life during this season of time, be a true friend to them. Cherish them. Add value to their lives. Then, when a season of change is in the air, don’t hold on so tightly that you, nor they, can enjoy what is right around the corner.

Life is a series of changing seasons. Click To Tweet

INVITATION FOR FEEDBACK

  • Have you ever been afraid of change?
  • Do you or someone you love feel the need to control every aspect of a relationship?
  • Have you ever held on so tightly that a relationship was damaged?
  • How has God taught you to trust Him through changing seasons?
  • Has God ever restored a relationship that you thought was lost?

As always, please feel free to leave a comment, share to social media, subscribe to my newsletter, and email me: Pat@PATVICK.COM.

 

 

Baptism In Jesus’ Name

~ Pat Vick ~ Leave a comment

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

IS IT REALLY NECESSARY?

Isn’t salvation granted by faith? Absolutely. Baptism does not destroy faith; it fulfills it. If a person truly has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then he or she will follow through with His commandments. Is it possible that a person can be a true believer and yet ignore Jesus’ very words?

It was Jesus at the Great Commission of His disciples, just before He ascended into Heaven, who spoke these words, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark 16:16) The obvious implication being that a person who truly believes, will be baptized and a person who doesn’t truly believe, will not be baptized. And that it makes a difference to his salvation.

Let’s also consider the words that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in John 3. He told him that unless a man was born again, he couldn’t see the kingdom of God. At Nicodemus’ confusion, Jesus clarified his statement by saying, “…Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5) From this passage of scripture we learn that the born again experience is essential to our salvation and that it involves two elements, water and Spirit.

Moving into the Acts of the Apostles, we hear a very important message from Peter. Remember, Jesus gave Peter the “keys of the kingdom” in Matthew 16 because of his revelation of Jesus’ true identity. If anyone other than Jesus Himself should be able to say what steps are necessary to salvation, it would be Peter.

The crowd that was gathered on the Day of Pentecost heard Peter preach about Jesus and were “pricked in their hearts,” wanting to know what they could do to right the enormous wrong they had done by taking part in Jesus’ crucifixion. Peter was full of Apostolic Authority when he stood up before the crowd that day and instructed them saying, “…Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” (Acts 2:38) He summed up his oration with the sobering words, “Save yourselves from this untoward generation. (Acts 2:40)

Peter also tells us in his first letter that just as humanity was saved by water in Noah’s day, so are we still saved by the water of baptism today. “…when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us…” (1 Peter 3:20-21)

Paul reminds us that when the Lord delivered the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage by the hand of Moses, every one of them had to pass through the water of the Red Sea. Turning back from this water crossing would mean either death or a return to slavery. There was only one way to the Promise Land, and it required two elements: to travel under the cloud and through the water.

“Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” (1 Corinthians 10:1-2)

Both Noah’s family and the children of Israel were saved by God’s mercy, but that salvation was still dependent on their obedience to the process He established. It makes one wonder, why believers today want so desperately to avoid the water and the Spirit.

THE QUESTION OF WORKS

Many people avoid baptism, using as their excuse that baptism is not essential because we are not saved by our works.

When the Bible says we are not saved by works, it is speaking of good deeds, not baptism. Works of service are a natural extension of a Christian’s walk with the Lord and very much expected, but cannot be used as leverage to tip the scales in one’s favor for salvation.

Paul makes it very clear in Titus 3:5 by what process we are saved, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” (The original greek word for washing used here is “loutron,” Strong’s 3067, meaning to bathe or baptize). Baptism is not works; it is OBEDIENCE to the gospel.

Baptism is not “WORKS”; it is OBEDIENCE to the gospel. Click To Tweet

THE FORMULA FOR BAPTISM 

Jesus sets the stage for the formula of baptism when He commissions His disciples in Matthew 28:19, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

Many ministers baptize by reciting these exact words over the person. But it is important to realize that Jesus was not telling His disciples to repeat what He said, but to do what he said. They understood fully that He was instructing them to speak the name of Jesus over those they baptized.

We know this is the case for two reasons:

First, we know that Jesus is the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The only way the disciples could have fulfilled Jesus’ instructions was to baptize using His name.

Second, we can look through both scriptural and historical accounts and find that when the disciples baptized, they used Jesus’ name. Not one time does scripture record that the early Church baptized reciting His titles. Either Jesus’ disciples understood Him to mean for them to speak His name when baptizing, or all baptisms in the early church were administered incorrectly.

NEW TESTAMENT ACCOUNTS OF BAPTISM 

“Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost…Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.” (Acts 2:38, 41)

“Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)” (Acts 8:15, 16)

“And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord.” (Acts 10:48)

“Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 19:4-5)

“And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” (Acts 22:16)

WE ARE INNOCENT BY ASSOCIATION WITH JESUS’ NAME

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him in baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.” (Romans 6:3-5)

“For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Galatians 3:27)

THE NAME OF JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY TO SALVATION 

“Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

“And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus…”(Colossians 3:17)

It was Jesus’ precious blood that was shed for us. It was Jesus who hung on the cross in agony until the work was done and He could say, “It is finished.” It is Jesus to whom we owe our lives and our allegiance. If we claim Christianity, why wouldn’t we want to take on the name of Jesus Christ in baptism?

PEOPLE DO ALL MANNER OF THINGS IN JESUS’ NAME…JUST NOT BAPTISM 

When I did a search for photos to use with this post, I used the phrase, “in Jesus’ name.” There were 25,471 photos that turned up in the search. I got weary of looking for even one of an actual baptism. There were images of people boating, biking, flying, climbing, taxi driving, sky diving, etc…There was even one really cool photo of a parrot, whose name I’m assuming is Jesus.

Apparently, people do all sorts of things in Jesus’ name…just not baptism. Don’t be one of those people.

We are associated with Jesus by baptism in His name!

Warm Regards, -Pat

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