Baptism 2024
Stories of their faith and God’s faithfulness.
We hope you are deeply encouraged by their testimony of why they have put their trust in Jesus. Enjoy!
Brian
Hi everyone, I’m Brian. While I’m not a familiar face since I travel around Australia as an optometrist, I joined Captivate before the pandemic. I want to publicly declare my faith in God, hoping it sparks questions among my friends and those yet to come to Christ. I didn’t grow up in a Christian household, though I attended a Catholic primary school locally. It’s a bit of a mystery why my parents chose that, as they don’t understand Catholicism. Still, it was my first exposure to God. As a child, I would sit on the bench during services, gazing at the church ceiling patterns, not understanding a single word being said. My prayers were mostly requests when I wanted or needed something.
As I transitioned to OC school and then high school, God faded from my thoughts. During my early university years, I was caught up in drinking and partying, losing focus on my studies and ultimately failing my second year, which was devastating as I fell behind my peers. While working a casual job, I met a fellow optometry student who was Christian. He introduced me to his circle of friends at university, who surprisingly were all Christians.
I remember one day after a lecture asking, “Hey, where are you all going for lunch?” They replied, “We’re going to campus Bible study.” I thought, “yenahhh, I’m going to go eat instead.” Over time, I experienced a shift in perspective, deciding to prioritize my well-being and adopt a “why not?” attitude. I became curious about Christianity, realizing that I could spend my time more productively than just gaming or watching YouTube.
I started dating a Christian girl in the group and was introduced towards church. It was so hard to listen to the service as I had no idea what’s happening in the bible, what is Alan talking about, this feels like a waste of time as I’m not getting anything out of it. When Alan invited questions related to the service, I would ask the most off topic questions that I was curious about. This led to having one-on-ones with Alan, bible study leaders at uni, and asking my Christian friends questions that pop up in my head.
As I came to learn more about Christianity I realised how important it is in someone’s life. However, my struggles with family, future family, financial independence, and time freedom, made it difficult to prioritise God. As I had different foundations, this led to the end of my relationship as I couldn’t promise that I would be Christian. I didn’t want to burden my future wife thinking that I would be going to hell and raising a family with different values and beliefs.
Yet, I still pursued my interest in Christianity and over time I started to think hmm maybe I have some sort of belief in this religion. And although there were no big moments, I slowly started building my faith on small stepping stones and began to identify myself as a Christian.
Few years later I was in another relationship, but it was not very healthy. I didn’t realise at the time but I was allowing myself to be influenced. During that period, I reached the most depressing and traumatic point of my life. I was left in a situation where the direction of my life was going to change and I was no longer in control. I was completely broken. In that moment, there was nothing else I could do but to pray and cry out to God. I won’t go into details here but, miraculously an unrelated issue resolved the situation I was in and I truly believe that was God’s intervention. This was when I started to turn back to God and my faith and belief in Him solidified. I believe that this experience was all part of God’s plan.
Romans 8:28 ‘And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose’
Through the people God brought into my life and the experiences, both good and bad, He helped me grow closer to Him.
Although I was confronted by the weight of my sins, I felt humbled by the profound depth of God’s grace. God treated Jesus as if He had committed every sin that was ever committed by every person but in fact he committed none of them. Never for a split second was Jesus a sinner but God treated him as if he lived my life. God punished Jesus for my sin and turns around and treats me as if I lived His life.
2 Corinthians 5:15 ‘And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again’
I have reached a point now in my journey where I have found peace and comfort in God and no longer fear death as I once did. I know that no matter what happens to me or to those around me, I have full trust in God. I know that suffering and hardships will still come my way but this is what will build Christian character and will force me to put my hope and trust in God.
Romans 5:3-5 ‘Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been pouring into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’.
What’s interesting along my journey is that none of my atheist friends would’ve thought that I would be a Christian, and even if they did, I’d be the last one among them to be.
So today I declare my faith and trust in God to this church, to my friends, to the world, that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour through my baptism.
Lochlan’ story
This year marks the 10th I’ve chosen to believe in God. It began in first year uni. I was an engineering student and I liked to believe I was reasonable, so on reason I would base my faith. I spent a year studying the arguments for and against God, examining the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection and debating all the classic new-Christian zingers with my church leaders (e.g. if God is good why does suffering exist). And I came to the conclusion that apologetics was stupid. The evidence was compelling, the theology beautiful even, but for every book length argument for God came an atheistic one decrying it. I had gotten nowhere.
Then along came Martin. Martin was some older dude I vaguely knew from highschool. I ran into him at uni and he asked whether I was sure I would go to heaven. My parents are Christian and I have been going to church my whole life. I could explain the gospel to you, perhaps mount an argument why Christianity is true, but at that moment I admitted no. No, I wasn’t sure.
Martin met up with me a couple of times to discuss my faith. He helped me unravel my biases and consider the facts for themselves since I was worried I would choose to believe because I was raised to. Back to apologetics we go then. But Martin suggested an important point: Perhaps the seemingly impossible coincidences of physical phenomena that allow life on Earth isn’t enough evidence to conclusively prove the world was designed. Perhaps the disciples’ willingness to die for their convictions isn’t a foolproof argument for the resurrection of their messiah. But they each support a shared explanation. Individually you can explain them away, but together they suggest a simple, and I think even likely, solution. That God exists. The God hypothesis. (And then I never saw Martin again.)
Now a hypothesis is far from a proof. But I liked to believe I was reasonable, and if there was a 51% chance that God exists and the consequences of his existence were eternal life or eternal damnation, I liked to believe it was reasonable to take those chances. If the God hypothesis was true it didn’t matter what else was - whether the atheists are right and God is actually an evil tyrant, or whether Christian life is one of hardship and sacrifice. It didn’t matter. And so I chose to believe in God and if I were to be baptised in my first year, so would end my testimony: I believe because I think it’s true.
But I didn't get baptised. Something felt off. I had decided (or logically coerced myself) to be Christian but I wasn’t a very good one. I still lived the same as before and scarcely gave God a second thought. I would zealously embark on uni walk ups and leave them questioning my own faith. After all, it is a high call to “lose your life for my sake” (Matt 16:24-26) for a 51% chance of reward. And so I sought for more assurance. I just needed to be sure I thought, then it would make sense to dedicate my life to God.
In the next few years I prayed prayers big and small and had them answered. Coincidence, I would think. I asked God to just show Himself to the world and then I would believe. But He had already done that in the incarnation of Jesus. Show Himself just to me then. But I admitted I would more likely dismiss that as a Chinese psyop. Help me feel the Holy Spirit? I wouldn’t dare base a life-altering faith on angsty 20s emotions. What then? Is Christianity just a blind leap of faith? For all the Biblical mysticism surrounding Faith (Hebrews 11), is it just desperate, pathetic hope?
Let me digress for now. One thing I’ve learned in these 10 years is that everyone must believe in something. You cannot choose to not believe in God and then just live your life; it means you live for something else. Love, pleasure and security are probably what mine would be. All undeniably good and important things, but also passing things. And if you dared dwell upon their substance, if you followed these desires to their mortal conclusions, perhaps you would even deem them, as I do, ultimately meaningless (see the entire book of Ecclesiastes). Yet I do not believe life is meaningless, far from it. I shall try to explain the profundity of Christian life: the gospel.
The craziest part of the gospel to me is that God knew it would all happen. Before this almighty, perfect being spoke those first creating words, He knew humanity would betray Him. He knew their wretchedness, the grief they would cause Him, how completely worthless they were. He knew me. And He saw me and He thought actually I quite love this garbage monkey, even though to create me He would have to sacrifice the crown jewel and Prince of the universe. The grand creator saw us, in our self obsessed revelry, and He said I am well pleased. How utterly absurd. And yet it is only by clawing at the understanding of this simple truth (more like mystery), morsel by morsel, year by year, that I can gain some passing semblance of being the Christian man He wants me to be.
I grasped at some understanding in the grieving of my late dog, in the outpouring of my own frail love, when I glimpsed the intensity of God’s love for me; how much greater must the love of the Father be, how His grief for the wayward must eclipse any human loss! And I grasped a little more in my relapse into doubt (again) when I saw how stubborn my heart was, how beyond hopeless it would be without His ready forgiveness (again).
It is these two things - understanding the depths of the Father’s love for us, and understanding how badly we need it - that I believe are the meaning of Christian life (and I daresay life in general). It is these two things that give me quiet confidence I am living a life worthwhile, one of eternal value and cosmic significance. I see now that what stopped the younger me from committing wasn’t the lack of assurance but the lack of understanding of what I was assured of. I was so caught up in why I believe, I could not see why we should believe. I needed both truth and purpose.
So then is Christianity just a blind leap of faith? Kind of. But not completely blind - there is a place for reason (I still think first year me was onto something) - and it is no greater a leap than whatever else one might live for. Is Faith just desperate, pathetic hope? After 10 years I think Faith is even more desperate and its believer even more pathetic than I had ever imagined. And what we hope in, what we are leaping towards, even more glorious, even more worthwhile.
Why do I believe? I believe because I think it's true. When the drudgery of life dulls my faith and my mind begins to doubt, I remind myself of the splendour (and mere existence) of the world and I look again over the evidence of the empty tomb. And when my heart wins over my mind and I find the lusts of life veering me from the Christian marathon, I refill it by wandering through the mysteries of His love.
I believe because I think it’s true. And I believe because His love is worth living for.