remember billy?

For those of you who have endured the entirety of my blogging days, suffered through countless spelling typos, grammatical errors and other such flaws let me take you back a few blogs. The blog entitled "Internet not cool....singing cool". Before you read the blog that I am about to write, take the time to re-read that old blog. For those of you who have more recently experienced my blogging massacres, take the time to read the blog titled "internet not cool....singing cool".

Throughout this blog I talked about a teenager that I called "Billy". In this blog I wrote, "Billy hasn't accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. Really, if I were to ask or remind Billy about him singing last night he probably wouldn't remember or think anything of it. Sadly enough, Billy probably wasn't sincere about what he was singing. Why wasn't he sincere? Chances are that Billy doesn't really know who Jesus Christ REALLY is. That's why I want to be here. That's why Ron and Chandy want to be here. That's why Paul, Suzanne, Don, Martha, and all the countless others want to be here. We all want to be here so maybe over the course of time we might be able to fill Billy in on just who Jesus is. Who knows, maybe the next time he sings those words he will be sincere."

Guess what? Billy got baptized Tuesday.

Billy, along with another one of our teenagers, got baptized Tuesday upon confessing Jesus Christ as their Savior. It was quite the experience. Not only for Billy, but for Ron, Chandy, myself, and all the other teenagers present.

Several minutes before I baptized Billy I took him into a small room and talked to him for a few minutes. I asked him, "Billy, why do you want to be baptized?" He responded, "I just want the devil to leave me alone, to quit tricking me". He also explained how he just wants Satan to leave him alone. I went on to explain to Billy how if he decides to get baptized and to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior his troubles wont end, the devil will come at him just as hard, even harder. I read to him in 1 Peter how it talks about how his faith will be tested in order to confirm or make sure that he really, really wants to follow Christ. It will be tested so that once his faith proves to be true and authentic it, "may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed". Billy said that he was ok with that, he was ready to accept Christ.

Billy doesn't know the entire Bible. Billy couldn't name all the books of the old and new testament. Billy couldn't tell you all the stories of Jesus as a child. He couldn't sing the Sunday morning church songs that most of us know from our childhood days of growing up in the church. Billy doesn't know memory verses and scriptures by heart, but one scripture that Billy has heard and does know is Romans 10:9...
"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Not only does Billy know this scripture, Billy lived this scripture. On Tuesday afternoon in front of his neighborhood friends Billy confessed and accepted Jesus as the Son of God, the ultimate, perfect sacrifice, and the Savior of his life.