My wife (Ashlee) and I have 3 young sons. From the moment we found out she was pregnant, we have been prayerful about all of them giving their lives to Jesus.

Almost a year ago, we had the blessing of baptizing our middle son (Mayes) after he made a decision to follow Jesus! Mayes was 6 years old when he made this decision. Mayes kept telling us he wanted to be a Christian and wanted the assurance of heaven. It got to a point where my wife and I realized we were almost holding him back, unintentionally, just in our own effort to make sure he understood the gospel and the decision he thought he wanted to make. We felt a clear nudge from the Lord that Mayes’ age wasn’t the issue and he was definitely ready. So we “got out of the way” and helped him take that step with Jesus!

That moment, as a family, was very special and I love thinking back on that time.

While all of that was happening with Mayes, our oldest son, was going through almost the opposite experience. Kress is 11 years old and for a couple of years he has seemed to be more than ready to follow Jesus. Ashlee and I weren’t holding him back unintentionally…we were trying not to push him unintentionally. 

Kress knew the gospel. He could tell you all of the right answers to your questions. But he just kept saying “I’m not ready.” 

I’ve been vulnerable about this with many of you at church and asking you to join us in prayer for Kress’ salvation and how we can encourage him as his parents. As parents, we tried to balance well the encouragement of his faith, without pushing or trying to control the situation. To be honest, it was hard at times not to just ask “what are you waiting for?” 

Kress kept talking about salvation and baptism and being a Christian but then would immediately respond with something like “I don’t know…I’m just not ready.” We would ask if he had fear about baptism or other things and he simply and peacefully would answer “no..I’m just not ready....hey dad did you see that thing about Fortnite’s new update?” Squirrel! Alrighty then. 

So we tried to be patient, wait on the Lord, and not be pushy. We know that it is God who saves…not us. We know God wants to use us in the process but it’s not our job to save him. As much as we know that salvation in Jesus is the most important decision that any of us will ever make AND it is the highest priority of what we can pray for our children, we also knew we needed to wait on the Lord. We needed to be patient with the work that the Holy Spirit was doing personally with Kress that we couldn’t see and didn’t need to try and control.

Like I said earlier, this process has gone on for the past couple of years. But this summer, Kress went to church camp and on Thursday of that camp week, he decided it was time to surrender his life to Jesus! YES!!! 

But the funny part is: he got home from camp…and didn’t tell us. We asked “hey buddy how was camp?” He told us all about the games, the fun night activities, and camp food.  

If you know Kress (and many of your children may be similar), this whole thing wasn’t super surprising. Ashlee and I actually found out about his salvation because one of the camp leaders texted us randomly: “I heard Kress responded to Jesus at Kids Camp this year! Wanted to check in and see how his experience was.” 

Ashlee and I were like “really?!? Wow!! Good to know."

We weren’t upset at all…it was actually kind of funny just knowing our son’s personality. Ashlee and I were overwhelmed with joy, thankfulness, and eagerness to talk to him more about it.

God gave me a great opportunity while Kress and I were riding in the car together. I was able to ask him about this experience and the text his leader sent me. He was very genuine and sweet and responded “yes I did!…honestly I just wasn’t sure how to show up from camp and tell you. It just seemed weird to walk in the door and blurt it out." 

It was amazing to hear him tell about how he responded to Jesus during a worship service. He described his heart beating fast and just knowing that “it was time.”

He talked more about how that felt awkward to do and just wasn’t sure how to tell everyone. I was able to share my own salvation experience and how similar it was to his and how I understood the awkwardness.

But that conversation was a perfect segway to another amazing conversation about his next biblical step of baptism. That’s what baptism is: it’s an opportunity to show/tell people publicly about the transformation that Jesus has done in our lives. Baptism is a public declaration of the personal decision we’ve made to follow Jesus.

So Kress told me and Ashlee more about his salvation experience and then told us that he wanted to get baptized at the upcoming River Baptisms that River Valley is doing at Fisherman’s Park on August 6th at 5:00pm.

If you know that your next step with Jesus is baptism, I want to invite you to join Kress at the river this Sunday evening when I get the honor of baptizing my son! 

We have over 20 people getting baptized on Sunday and it’s not too late for you to get baptized too. Just go to www.myrivervalley.church/baptism and Pastor Josh will connect with you. If you have questions about salvation in Jesus, we’d love to talk to you about that too.

We also want to invite the entire church family out to witness these baptisms and celebrate together. We’ll have free snow cones for everyone to help beat the heat! I can’t wait to celebrate with you!