*Names have been changed
A young man living in Hamilton (Peter*) got in touch with me through The Last Reformation world map. He said that he wanted deliverance. I gave him a ring and chatted with him a bit more. I wanted to find out where he was at spiritually, and why he wanted deliverance.
He said that he was brought up in a Catholic home but wasn’t fully following Jesus. Then a few months ago, some evangelists talked to him on the street and showed him that he needed to make a choice with his life. Ever since that day he has got more serious with God and started to read his Bible constantly and listen to a lot of preaching online.
After chatting to him on the phone I encouraged him to read Romans 6 which talks about baptism and then we arranged a time for him to come over on the weekend. He never showed up but I received a message a while later to say that he wasn’t able to make it and that he had run out of credit to let me know. We then arranged a time for him to come over on the Sunday and I told him to bring his togs.
This time he did show up and we chatted for a while face to face. I asked him if he understood Romans 6 and he said that he did. He said that it means we just need to die underwater and rise with Christ. I then explained repentance to him and he fully understood. He thought that he needed to fast for 40 days and spend a lot of time with God before he could be blessed by God. I told him that the only pre-requisite to be baptised is to repent. As long as you’re fully repentant, any demons that are cast out during deliverance will not have a way of getting back in. He said that he understood repentance and was ready to be baptised.
We took him down to the river and contacted another man (Henry*) whom we had just baptised the week earlier to come and help out. It took a while for him to show up so we had to wait around for a while. It was interesting that when we got there, there was another group of people there too. There must have been about 50-60 people and one young lady had her togs on and there was a guitar there too. I thought to myself that it would be funny if it was a church baptising someone.
It turned out that that’s exactly what it was! They sung a few songs, one of the people played the guitar and the congregation sung some songs. The same person who played the guitar then took the girl into the water and baptised here and everyone cheered. Once they were out of the water, the same person prayed a blessing over her while everyone else closed their eyes, looked down and held out an arm toward her. Then there were a few speeches from people and they eventually left. This took around an hour to complete and everyone from their church went away feeling like it had been a success.
After this all happened, Henry showed up so we were able to do our baptism. I asked Peter if he was repentant and he said he was. We baptised him on his own faith. There were 2 or 3 witnesses there. Then we started praying for him for deliverance and the infilling of the Holy Spirit. After what happened the week before, I was prepared to pray for as long as it took to get the break through. I mentioned this to Peter but unfortunately after a few minutes of prayer, Peter wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. He had had enough and just wanted to get home. I tried to explain to him that it doesn’t always happen straight away but he was set in his mind that he wanted to get home.
Henry told me afterwards that he could tell straight away that Peter wasn’t ready. I couldn’t understand what happened. I knew there was more that God wanted to do with Peter and it was just so frustrating that we couldn’t get it for him. I still think that it was right to baptise him because he fully understood repentance, but I realise now that I should have asked him what specifically he wanted to repent of. That would have brought him to a place of true humility to have to bring any hidden sins out from the darkness into the light. I’ll know for next time.
Two people got wet and no more. One group of people deemed it a success. Another group of people deemed it a failure. God knows people’s hearts. We will continue to disciple Peter and trust that he will be filled with the Holy Spirit and start speaking in tongues.
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