Automatically Generated Transcript

Hello, everyone. So, for those of you who don't know me or I haven't had the chance to meet me yet, my name is Samantha, and I'm married to Cameron Weir, and pretty much everyone knows Cameron. So, I started coming to Salisbury when Cam and I started dating, so many of you probably don't know me from before 2020. Therefore, I'd like to share my journey with you on how I became a Christian and why it's important that I get baptised today.

So, I grew up in Coffs Harbour in a Christian home and was brought up Christian. Therefore, I went to Sunday school and knew all the Bible stories. But if anyone really knows me, you know I have a lot of questions. And throughout high school, I questioned so many aspects of Christianity.

So, some of these questions included: How do I know there is a God? Is the Christian God the real God? If God is good, then why would he allow bad things to happen in the world and why would he allow me to suffer? At this time, I didn't really feel that church was answering my questions, and it wasn't making sense, or I didn't like the answer. Whatever it was, I stopped attending church and I drifted away for a bit.

But towards the end of high school, I went through a rough patch and, for some reason, decided to go back to church looking for answers about life, death, and God. And this time when I went back to church, I received more insights into my questions. And while there is still no black and white answer to all of these questions, there are many shades of grey. I found truth and hope in knowing Jesus.

I would say that at the end of grade 12, I made a decision to follow Christ, but I didn't have a light bulb moment or a sudden point in time where it just sort of made sense. It was more of a process, and I remember that bothered me, that I didn't have this moment.

But in 2015, I moved to Brisbane, and I got connected into a church where I learned what it meant to not only love but to serve Christ. And then I started attending Salisbury in 2020, like I said before. And since then, I've seen a lot of baptisms and asked a lot of questions to Jim and to those around me about baptism, and this niggling feeling didn't go away.

So yeah, at my previous church, we believed in infant baptism, and I was considered already baptised. I remember questioning this, but not really finding a clear-cut answer as to whether that was really baptism. I just figured it was one of those grey areas, and I needed to let it go.

But at Salisbury, I learned that baptism is an act of obedience and is based on a declaration of faith. So while I was baptised as an infant, one of the passages I came across when looking for answers at Salisbury was in Acts 8:36, and that's when the eunuch asked Philip, "See, here is water. What prevents me from being baptised?" And in verse 37, Philip's response is, "If you believe with all your heart, you may." So the eunuch answered, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."

So when I was baptised as an infant, I didn't believe, as I could not have made that decision at that age. So, therefore, today, while being a Christian for years, I have come to realise the important act of obedience and declaration of faith. So, therefore, my baptism is an outward expression of what has already happened on the inside years ago. This is my testament to God and what he has done in my life.