Tuesday, March 21st, 2017
REDEDICATED
Michael is the inmate I’m mentoring who is serving an eight-year sentence in a state prison. I previously referred to him as Rafael.
He called me last Sunday to inform me he’d been baptized for the third time – at birth, before his marriage, and now. I thought I knew why but asked anyway just to make sure.
“I wanted to rededicate myself to God,” Michael said. “I had lived such a life of sin before salvation, and being baptized is telling God that I’m fully His.”
Michael’s spirit was filled with the Holy Spirit when he was reborn in a jail classroom two years ago, so he didn’t need to be baptized again for that. But the soul of a person – that is, his or her mind, will, and emotions – does not always draw on that Holy Spirit power. His being baptized was his marker to say, “I want You in my life, Lord, more than You have ever been before. I want to allow Your Spirit to govern my mind, to control my emotions, and to inform my will – all the time.”
Michael’s conversion when he exchanged his life for that of Jesus Christ still stands as the most remarkable transformation I have ever witnessed. I feel richly blessed that God allowed me to see it and follow Michael for the past two years, and, as to my intention, for the rest of my life.