All family and friends and for the brothers and sisters to come and celebrate in here and witness the testimony and the baptism of our four brothers and sisters this afternoon. Before I pray again, I just wanna give you an encouragement again. Every baptism obviously is special. We're hearing the story of what God is doing in their life.

And I know a lot of the brothers and sisters here have played a significant role. And some of them coming to Christ and discipling them, encouraging them, walking with them, praying with them. And so I wanna thank you for all your labors. And I think every single one of us who has a testimony can testify that we are here in some way because somebody invested in our lives.

They share the gospel with us, or they met up with us, or discipled us directly. In some way, God always uses people to reach out to people. So again, the presence of all of you here is always important for us to, again, not just to hear their testimony, but be a witness.

We've been sharing on Sundays about confessing our faith and confessing that Jesus is Lord and believing that he was raised from the dead. And we talked about one of the significant ideas of confessing is publicly making a covenant with God, and that's what baptism is. Ultimately, publicly confessing that this is what Christ is doing in their life.

And so we wanna thank you for coming and again participating here in your testimony. So let me pray, and then we'll jump into the rest of the ceremony. Gracious Father, we wanna thank you so much for our poor brothers and sisters who are being baptized today, and the work that you've been doing in their lives and in the midst of our church.

We thank you, Father, for each one of them, and how you've led them through different paths to come to know who you are. And as a result, that they're able to be baptized, make a public confession of you as Lord and Savior over them. And I pray that our time would be fruitful, that we would be encouraged, that they would be challenged.

And again, it would be a great opportunity for all of us to be blessed in the midst of what you're doing. So I pray from now until the end that you would be in the midst of us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. >> Good afternoon, everybody. Before we hear the testimonies of our brothers and sisters, I wanna give a brief encouragement from the word.

I wanna start by reading a passage to you from Romans chapter six, a familiar passage during baptism services, speaking of what baptism is. And just briefly, in Romans chapter six, starting from verse one, that's what shall we say then are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

By no means, how can we who die to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.

We too might walk in the newness of life. Now baptism, as you know, is an incredibly important aspect, service, and you can even say, or you should say, the ordinance that we have in the Christian faith, it is not a novel idea that early church fathers brought up. It was a command of Christ.

And as we go and share the gospel, as people are being transformed and converted, the church would baptize those who are entering in to the kingdom of the Lord. And today then, as baptism is such a essential core of the gospel, I wanna highlight one aspect of it, just highlighting one aspect of the gospel.

Okay? I wanna ask a question that I think all of us can relate with. Was there ever a time where you wrestled with some kind of addiction or you had a habit that was incredibly difficult to get? Was there ever a time where you felt like, even though you really wanted to, either do something, whether it's go exercise, or not do something, whether it's eat too much?

Was there ever a time where you felt like you didn't have the power or the control to actually do that in your life? I'm pretty sure all of us can relate to something like that. All I have to do is even talk about cell phones or smartphones, right? We try our best not to be distracted.

We try our best not to waste our time with that thing. But in all honesty, it's like an addiction. As a matter of fact, the psychology world is very concerned about America because so many people have a deep-rooted addiction to media. So they call it media addiction. And people are consuming it so much.

And so the question is, do you deal with that? Do you experience that in your life? And denial is a part of a sign of that addiction. If you just think about it, I mean, we want to be in control, but in many ways, the smartphone and the media is with us all the time.

We feel a need to look at it. We feel an habitual need to go to it in the morning, sometimes even as soon as we wake up or even before we go to bed. We sometimes take it in hiding to look at it, you know, whether it's at work and you take it to the bathroom or something like that.

All around us and very close to us is this thing. And when people, they don't realize they have this addiction, they come to be aware of it when they lose their phone and they're like, "Oh my goodness, I'm naked." They feel this tremendous sense of unease. And I can go on about the symptoms, but again, in many ways, we have been controlled.

We have been controlled. I ask that because I'm getting to the core of the question, which is, have you ever felt powerless? Have you ever felt that something outside of you is controlling you? And even though you wanted to, there was a frustration in you because over the period of time, you just can't seem to overpower that thing.

And in many ways, you probably felt that kind of frustration, not just with media, but other things. And I just give this kind of light example of media, but we all actually have deeper, maybe more serious and consequential addictions or things in which we feel powerless to. For example, there are some of us who struggle to control our anger and our temperament actually feels like an overpowering force in our lives.

There are some of us who struggle with the opposite maybe of someone trying to take control and angry, but rather the fear where there's a habit of running away, scared. Some of us struggle with the habitual nature of lust. Some of us struggle, and I can just keep going on, right?

There are things that are more consequential with increasing severity of negative results. And so I ask that by way of asking again, coming to the point of, have you ever felt the frustration of seeing some of these things in our lives and not feeling the power to overcome it?

I know in a room like this, I'm speaking to both individuals who've been Christian and individuals who are not Christian. And this, what I'm talking about now is a universal sentiment where at one point or another we might have felt. Why? Because to be without Christ, to be without the power of God is to perpetually feel this frustration.

You see, the problem is, although this is a reality, we all know by personal experience and simple assessment of ourselves that our willpower is very weak. We all know by the experience of the totality of our lives that just a, "Come on, let's do this. Just do it." It just doesn't work.

And as a matter of fact, that is the case seen throughout all kinds of different disciplines, philosophies and psychology. And yet we want to so badly believe in it. Believe in it meaning we want to believe in our willpower. We want to be able to say that I can pull myself up by my bootstraps.

And sometimes we have friends who annoyingly come to us and give us that kind of worldview. "Ah, you just gotta, just try this. All you have to do is just do it. Just decide." You know, maybe the parental voice in them is coming out of saying, "Well, did you, you know, how come you just don't?" And it just becomes annoying to us because we've already been wrestling with that for so long.

Have you ever felt this kind of frustration? Now the problem that I'm pointing at is from that frustration, we are going to turn to different things. When you feel a lack of power, when you feel that need, you want to change but you can't. You are going to turn to certain things.

And in this generation, we have been taught to trust our will, our willpower. You know, we have little idioms where there's a will, there's a way. It's almost like this, you know, very hopeful, you know, you just hope in the power of mankind. I've studied psychology to a certain degree.

And I think about even the major philosophers and psychologists of our generation, they believe in modification of our behavior by the empowerment of our will. Even an individual like Sigmund Freud, he believed that we're, our behavior is produced by a lot of unconscious thinking, a lot of unconscious like structure that we've had.

So all you have to do is unearth the unconscious. And once you are aware of it, you can modify the behavior. Well, the thing about it is Sigmund Freud, you know, this genius, you know, rightly so as a human being, he was a genius. He had such a horrible addiction.

He smoked over 20 cigars per day. He had cancer in the mouth and the doctors kept telling him, you have to kick this habit. His heart was failing. And ultimately he died, not because just that, he gave up and asked his physician, would you euthanize me? And he made a very controversial death by asking his physician to do it.

So here's a man who believed we can modify our behavior if we just learn the inside. That doesn't work. You see, the scriptures, God who knows us well is teaching us, you cannot modify your will. You cannot modify something that is so enslaved, that is so sick, that is so bound and dead that is the way scripture describes us.

That we're not simply talking about a weakness right now. I've been talking about habits. I've been talking about bad, you know, habits in your life and things that you feel controlled by. More biblically speaking, we have sins in our lives. We have passions in our lives and these things dominate us.

As a matter of fact, one of the first lessons of the word of God tries to teach us is you have to realize your willpower is completely insufficient. And the more you try, the more you exert yourself, you buy into a lie, you deceive yourself. You have to come to a point in which you come to the end of yourself in order to actually find help.

And so one might be saying, my goodness, how am I starting this encouragement, so to speak, from the word? The way I'm starting it is your willpower cannot actually help you. Your willpower according to the Bible is weak and dying, is fatally sick. Your willpower is enslaved because of the lust of the flesh.

Your willpower is enslaved because of condemnation. Let me take a moment to explain that. Earlier I talked about habits, things that we can't seem to control. But we don't realize those habits and actions and decisions have incredible consequences because some of our habits, there are things like lust, anger, and they have an offense given to people and to our maker.

Those things you do not just rectify by your will. It's like, oh, I know I offended you. I know I hurt you. I know I, you know, whatever it may be, you know, transgressed against the law of the state, but by my willpower, I'll fix it. You can't do that.

You cannot do that. And you are bound when according to the law of God, even according to even on a humanistic level by the law of the land, if you're culpable and guilty, you are condemned and therefore you are bound. You're bound. Our will is enslaved because we know no other than that.

And so my exhortation starting from this is we have to realize that life apart from Christ is incredibly powerless. Our wills cannot be trusted. Our flesh is too powerful. Condemnation is too powerful. Then what can we do? Have you felt that frustration? Have you felt that moment of feeling like there is no other alternatives?

There's no help. Well, apostle Paul described that exact same feeling. If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans chapter seven and this very sentiment apostle Paul describes, and then he actually gives the answer to the question. If my will is in such a condition, then where can I turn to whom can I, can I even ask, how am I going to find help?

And apostle Paul says this, verse 24, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? There is your frustration and here is your answer. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And if you jump over to chapter eight, it says there, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of simple flesh for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to spirit.

What am I saying? What I'm saying is I tried my best to describe a scenario before Christ, whether you have been deceived and duped to think it was possible, the reality is there is no renovation. There is no fixing. There is no trying to make it any better. You can't take rotten fruit and say, well, if we make it bright, vibrant color, it's going to be better.

No, there is only one destination for that kind of situation. You can't simply modify. You can't say, Hey, let's change, let's change policies and let's make better decisions. The life prior to Christ is destined to doom. There is no other option but to admit there is no hope here.

And so what does Christ say? Christ did not come in the form of man to renovate. He didn't come to repair. The message of the gospel is he came to make new. And that's why for every single one of these individuals, even in their testimony, you're going to hear it.

I read their testimony and was incredibly encouraged. They've come to the end of themselves, trying all this kind of different stuff, especially trying to rely on themselves and realizing there is no repair or minor modification that will help. I need to rely on the gospel of Christ where it says because he came as a man, died the death we deserve.

And therefore, when I die with him, there is the end of the previous life. But through his resurrection, I am made brand new. That's why in scripture it says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, not a modification, not a self-improvement, but brand new. Old is past.

Behold, the new has come. That's our hope. We're not looking forward to better days tomorrow. We're looking forward to brand new life by the power of God. That's when you can talk about the power of the will. That's when you can talk about true change. That's when you can talk about advancing in life and growth and sanctification, because it's then when God has called us to be new with Christ that he works in our lives.

Scripture says in Philippians chapter two, that it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. This is the hope of the Christian gospel. When we are in Christ, he will do absolutely completely away with the old and he will grant us newness in Christ that we would walk in freedom, not in the feelings of frustration and bondage and slavery, but in freedom in Christ.

Amen. Let's take a moment to pray over them as they come up to share their testimony. Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the hope of the gospel. Lord, it is not like the hope of the world. Lord, it is not like the offerings of the world where we could simply try to have temporary changes, temporary moments of pleasure, a materialism and some confidence, these fleeting, fleeting promises of life.

But God, we thank you that in the gospel of Christ, we have a hope of perfection in Christ, of glorification with the Lord in heaven. God, that we have a promise far beyond what surpasses understanding. Lord, we want to thank you so much for that. And God, now as we listen to the stories of four individuals, we pray that you would continue just to magnify yourself through their story.

We're so encouraged to hear how you've been working in their lives and God for every single person here, may we truly be refreshed in your love. Lord, we thank you. It's in Christ that we pray. Amen. The first person I want to invite up is our sister, Emily. Hello, everyone.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Emily Leung and I'm going to be a junior at UCI from college. So like many others, I was born into a Christian home and grew up in the church ever since I can remember. My parents were strong believers and emphasized the importance of God ever since I was young.

And I went to a Christian school until third grade. I was active at my home church. I remember talking about salvation with my second grade Sunday school teacher and praying to accept Christ one Sunday. And in fourth grade, I even made the decision to get baptized. I have no doubt that I truly believe that the gospel is true, but I didn't understand how the gospel was supposed to look like in terms of a changed life.

My walk with God seemed healthy, but as I was regularly attending church, going to Friday fellowship, and even serving various roles on Sunday, but I soon found my faith to be tested. As I began transitioning into my adolescent years, the sins I struggled with became more and more apparent.

I found myself fighting the sins of lust, pride, and a great idolization of worldly forms of success and happiness. The more I engaged in sin, the less guilty I felt and the more I was able to justify it in my head. I soon became numb to my sin and during my junior and senior years of high school, I would be able to sin with little thoughts of guilt.

I knew my salvation was in jeopardy, but I pushed it off in my head as something I could go back to later. I had no sense of urgency that I could die at any moment and that my salvation was truly at stake. I knew I was living in a life of sin and darkness and I was okay with it.

My pride caused me to keep my struggles to myself and prevented me from being kept accountable by other brothers and sisters. When I came to UCI, I was still living in my sinful ways, however, ever since the beginning of college, I also had this desire to find a local church.

I don't know whether it was because church and Christianity were familiar things in an unfamiliar place, but more likely than not, I saw the very early stages of when my heart was slowly starting to change. Early on during my freshman year, I chose to commit to CCM, a Christian fellowship at UCI, and I also began attending brain.

Halfway through fall quarter, I started doing devotions again and really spent time reading and reflecting on God's word. I saw all these positive changes in my walk with the Lord, but, and because of that, I started to think I was saved. However, internally, I was still struggling with the same sins that I had struggled with in high school and I often became frustrated.

The difference was that for the first time in a long time, I did not only feel an overwhelming sense of guilt, but a deep sense of disgust with the way I was living. The problem came when I would repent and then give into my sin once again because in my mind, I rationalized it by saying that God is a forgiving God.

And although this is true, I lacked a true understanding of God's grace. I was saying that it was something so cheap that I could turn it on whenever I wanted for my own personal satisfaction. Throughout my freshman year, there were many times when I thought I was saved, but only oh so many times when I questioned my salvation.

However, despite all that, I truly thank God that freshman year was a year of positive growth. I was constantly immersed in a community of believers who genuinely cared about me and desired to help me grow. More so, I'm so grateful for a Bible teaching church like Berean that taught me things like how to study God's word, what the purpose of the church was, and why surrounding yourself with a body of believers is so important.

However, knowledge in itself is not enough and my heart had to truly be convicted of my sin before I was able to fully repent and accept God's forgiveness. A few weeks into my sophomore year, I began reading Hosea for my devotions. The story of Hosea and Gomer truly reflected the relationship I had with God.

Despite the fact that I had a God who loved me so dearly, I was chasing after idols that I thought could satisfy me. The more I read through Hosea, the more I became sick of the way I was living for so many years. How much longer must this go on?

And I knew I was the only one who could change that. When I read Hosea 6.3, it really struck a chord with me. It says, "Let us strive to know the Lord. His appearance is as sure as the dawn. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the land." If Jesus were to come again at that moment, what would happen to me?

I truly had no certainty of my salvation because I knew that for so long, I was inherently unwilling to give up my old self. That's why I kept on engaging in sin, and that's why I found it so hard to stop. In addition, I didn't see God as the holy and perfect God that He is, and my low view of God resulted in my low view of sin.

I remember praying to God during my devotions that day and truly repenting of my life of sin that I had been engaging in for so long. I was finally ready to change and to accept Jesus as the Lord over my life. I truly believed that He had died on the cross for all of my sins, not just the ones that were supposedly easy to forgive.

I had to remind myself that Jesus came to save sinners, not those who were perfect. I told myself that God's grace and forgiveness is perfectly complete, and since I truly repented in belief, then I could have that peace that I was truly saved. That's the wonder of salvation. It's so hard to grasp from a human perspective, but it's truly something so beautiful.

Although this is only the very beginning of my walk with Christ, I truly see a difference in my life. Things that I once did out of obligation now have become my greatest joys. Whether it be the times I get to spend in prayer or the times I study His Word, I see each of these as a way to draw closer and closer to my Heavenly Father.

Evangelism was something I once was scared to do, and I can see why I had no desire to evangelize before. It was because I didn't completely believe in this wonderful gift of salvation. I am now excited to share this joyous message with my friends and family, and I have a deep desire to continue growing into a woman who fears the Lord.

1 Peter 1, 8-9 says, "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him, and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. For you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls." The joy I have is in Jesus Christ, my loving Savior, and though I know that Christian life is one of struggles and trials, I look forward to this continual process of sanctification until I can see my Savior.

I believe you understand by entering into the water, you are uniting with Christ as death, and when you come out, you are uniting with Christ in resurrection. Amen. I baptize you in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Hey everybody. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Justin Yee, and I've been coming out to Berean for about six months or so, and yeah, just in these past six months, I can truly say that I've really grown to love this church. What began filled with awkwardness and uncomfort has slowly but surely changed into feelings of homeliness and community.

Being raised in a Christian home, church was always a part of my life. My whole family went to church, my best friends were from church, and I spent most of my time there as well. I grew up in a typical Asian family, always being taught to be respectful and to be a good kid.

I attended every year's VBS, and I always went to Sunday school as well as Friday night fellowships. This was essentially all I knew, the church. But over the years, it became more clear to me that as I matured physically, I never matured spiritually. It wasn't clear to me until college, where I realized that my whole life, I knew that I was a Christian.

I knew what a Christian looked like and what the church was, but I never truly knew Christ. I never appreciated what the cross stood for, nor did I understand what it meant to be justified before God. I never appreciated the death and resurrection of Christ, and I never looked at scripture as the gift that it is.

I knew all the right things to say and do, but I never had the heart to glorify a God who deserves my best. I prided myself in doing good and looking good, but like everything else in this fallen world, my so-called good morals fell as well. I became exactly the person I prided myself on never becoming.

I remember vividly thinking of myself as righteous because of my good morals and separation from the secular world. But in the end, I became a person no different from the world. In fact, I was so lost that people were even surprised I identified myself as a Christian. I was lost in sin, living a lie on Sundays and living for the world for the rest of the week.

I had no foundation in Christ, and so I crumbled to the temptations of sin. But through this darkness, God's grace abounded all the more. Despite being deep in my own selfishness and blindness, God continued to be faithful. I will never be able to fathom or understand why God chose to cling on to me when I chose to cling on to the world.

But I am truly thankful that a God who is so patient and merciful decided to soften my calloused heart and allow me to see myself for who I truly was, a sinner. He opened my eyes to show me that I needed a Savior and the life I was living was a path towards death.

He chose to lead me to the truth and give me a hope that He had something infinitely better for me. Looking back just a few years ago, when I believe I first truly became a Christian, I remember how confused in heart it was for me to leaving my sinful life behind.

I remember so clearly struggling in my heart, wondering, "Why do I still have these desires if I'm saved?" Am I even saved? Is it too late for me? Will I ever change? Why do I still long for the world so badly, and why aren't I satisfied in Christ? I remember envying my friends who were able to confidently say, "My hope and joy is in Christ," while fervently praying for God to give me a new heart.

Fast forward to today and how awesome it is to realize how much has changed and how God has answered my prayers. It truly is amazing to see that God can transform hearts, especially when it's your own. God has continued to mold me through trials and victories over the past years, and when suffering has been the hardest, His grace has been the most evident.

Being baptized is a public proclamation of genuine faith and identifying yourself with the death and resurrection of Christ. I was baptized in high school, but since becoming a true believer later on, I've always wondered in my heart whether I was truly baptized. Through prayer, talking to pastors and brothers, I came to the conclusion that as a Christian, being baptized is what would glorify the Lord the most.

So today I stand in front of you confidently identifying myself with the death and resurrection of Christ through my baptism, openly proclaiming my hope and joy is no longer in the world, but in Christ, fully willing to bear the burdens of the church body, but also sharing and rejoicing with you as well.

Hi everyone, I'm Mallory Kwan and I'm going to be a junior at UCI. So I grew up in a non-Christian home. My family grew up, or my mom grew up Christian, but she fell away for a while. My dad's not religious. So I was always able to remember I've always believed in God.

My mom signed me up for a Christian preschool because she thought it was good for me, but I didn't go to church on Sundays. In second grade, my mom signed my brother and me up for Oana at the church where I went to preschool. Oana was on Wednesday nights, but I still never went to church on Sundays.

When I first started going to Oana, I was very excited to memorize verses, sing songs, and play with my friends. After a while, I went through the motions of seeing and memorizing verses because I did not know what it was all for. I just did what my leaders told me to do.

I did learn the basics of who God is and what Jesus did for us, but I never really thought about the things in my daily life. Also in second grade, my dad signed me up for a basketball team that was part of Wintersburg Presbyterian Church. This particular team was not the team that I signed up for because there was a mix-up in which team I was supposed to be part of.

When I found out that I was supposed to join a different team, I was very upset. At this time, my heart was very hard and did not take change very well. Things had to go my way or else I did not know how to handle the situation and I would get very stressed out.

Most of the girls on my team grew up Christian and always went to church, while I had not. When we got into fourth or fifth grade, my teammates started talking about this one week church camp in NorCal called Mount Hermon. I would go there from fifth grade to twelfth grade.

I had no idea what they were talking about, but I ended up going because it sounded like fun. I did not know what to expect going up. I thought this camp was going to be like the camp in the movie The Parent Trap. Mount Hermon was somewhat like the camp in The Parent Trap, except we would listen to sermons from two guest speakers multiple times a day and then discuss our cabins about them.

The messages that the pastors preached were also new to me and I learned so much about God and different topics in the Bible. But unfortunately, I would forget a lot of stuff that I learned when I came home. Every year, Mount Hermon gave me a spiritual high, but I was not able to keep that high for very long, especially since I was not exposed to more Christian people.

I would only open my Bible up at Mount Hermon and Ilana, but never at my own leisure. The summer going into seventh grade at Mount Hermon, everything that I had learned in previous years had all started to make sense. Everything started to click and made me realize that I had a purpose and that I did not need to worry about anything.

Even though I realized that, I still did not open my Bible that often, but I opened it a little more often than before. That same year, my mom came back to Christianity. At this time, she would give me verses to memorize to help me not worry. She would also start to take me to church.

I thought I wanted to go to church, but I did not want to go. I used to do nothing on Sundays, so I would be defiant, and that would cause my mom and I to be late to church. After a little while, my heart changed and I went to church with no problem.

But I did not really listen to the message. I was zoned out until the service was over. I did this until about junior year in high school. The summer going into senior year was my last year at Mount Hermon. It was the year that the teachings I heard years ago affected my heart.

That year, I truly believed that I am a sinner and that I do not deserve Jesus' sacrifice because of an exercise I did with my cabin and my brother's cabin. Each of us got a rock and labeled it sin to signify that our hearts are full of sin, making our hearts a heart of stone, and only true repentance of our sins would give us a new heart made of flesh.

I was very convicted after that, and in a time of prayer, I started to clear my heart, and I decided that I did not want to keep on living the way I had been living. I was living a life where I did what I wanted to do and not what God wanted me to do, which was not pleasing to God because His ways are righteous and without sin, all mine are not.

I ended up repenting and my heart felt lighter like a weight was lifted. From then on, I saw my heart soften. I would gladly go to church and pay attention. Senior year was when I let God take control of my life. I remember that He had a special plan for me and I had to let Him lead me there.

But my life didn't reflect my beliefs because I still lived pretty worldly. This was because as a new Christian, it was easy to fall back into old routines. This changed when I got into UCI. Going into UCI, I didn't know anyone. I thought I was going to be able to make friends easily or get closer to the ones I sort of knew from high school.

Neither of these things happened for me at the beginning of college. I thought I could make friends all night long, but I was humble. My mom told me to spend time with God and just wait for His timing. I knew that was the answer, but I was getting impatient.

I did start to spend more time in prayer and devotions. I started not to care about having friends until they just showed up one day during winter quarter of my freshman year. When this happened, I realized that I needed to give my life back to God because He is sovereign and His timing was perfect.

This event strengthened my relationship with Him and made me realize that He needs to be praised and glorified in everything. It reminded me to put my complete trust in Him even though it can be hard. Hey, Mallory. Do you understand that as you enter into the water, you symbolize your union with Christ in His death?

And as you exit the water, you union with Christ in the resurrection. I baptize you in the name of the Father, the name of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hello, church. My name is Marsha. Let me just start off with, before I came to Christ, I was full of anger, anxiety, and restlessness.

I didn't respect my mother or family members, and I felt like she only wanted to use me to benefit herself and my older siblings. I developed a strong sense of independence and bitterness, so I moved out after my first year of college. I lived with a frame of mind that if you had enough willpower, you could do anything, be anything.

And so I exerted my strength to any means that I could grasp to transform my way of living. Through sheer determination and to simply to follow the formula, if you do X, you will gain Y. Therefore, you will be happy and reap the rewards of a full life. But the more I exerted myself, the more I became tired of that lifestyle.

Because my biological father passed away when I was very young, I never really knew what a loving father or respectful man is like. I always lived like I had to fend for myself, and whatever mistakes I made or how I was treated, I had no one else to blame but myself.

It made me feel like I was less than a person, that I was damaged goods, because I didn't have a father, that I grew up with one that was less than loving, and therefore, I lacked something that everyone else seemed to understand about life. I worked hard to go to school and support myself until I started becoming frustrated with my own lack of progress, as I would continue to struggle with depression and a sense of hopelessness.

I remember coming to work and realizing how much anger I harbored towards everything around me. Seeking to find some sort of peace, I decided to go to church again. At that time, I considered myself someone who was born a Catholic but became agnostic, and in reality, I was just jaded and cynical of those who were religious.

I came to know Jesus intimately through studying the gospel on my own. I was captivated by the stories and testimonies of people who were transformed by the Bible and thought perhaps maybe I could be changed too. And through my desperation, I told myself this was my last chance to change my ways.

There was no other choice but to be sold out for Christ, and to be honest, I wish I had opened up my Bible sooner. At the crossroads of anxiety and depression, of fear and sinfulness, of need and shame, of judgment and mercy, of grace and discipline, Jesus met me there.

And surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time that my mother conceived me, and yet, he sought fit to give me life through his word. I was so broken by the trial and torture and death Jesus went through just so that I wouldn't have to feel the wrath of hell.

In my pride, anger, foolishness, and sinfulness, God did not destroy me according to his judgment. I had so deeply offended my Creator, but for him to sacrifice his own son for me and withhold nothing less than his pursuit of me, I knew that this was the love I had so longed for.

I am truly thankful and so in love knowing that he waited for me, he was waiting for me all along, to come and humble myself and repent. I came to God seeking a father and found the Creator and lover of his people who sent his son to remind me that I don't need to associate with the pain and pride of my past.

Growing up without a father or being surrounded by many respectful men in my life was one of God's greatest blessings to me. God directed every step and knew every mistake I would make just so that he would reveal his goodness to me. I stand before you now knowing that I have a future in Christ and as long as I come to him, I'll never be alone again.

God makes everything beautiful in its own time and he has taken my time and redeemed it for his good will so that all may come to know him through Jesus Christ. And now that I believe in Christ, I am truly able to know the sweetness of following his commands and continue to empty myself and kill the old me that feared and desired the things of this world.

I found that his laws, terminated and fulfilled by Jesus on the cross, has restored broken relationships, heals me from my past and gives me continual hope for the future. He is in control of all things and I can rest knowing that God is a good father and Lord. I no longer need the wisdom of this world but have the ability to test the truth according to the word that God has given that would stand the test of time.

Where everyone else has failed, including myself, God has promised the sweetest comfort that he would always be with us through pain and joy. The very patient and tender love that God has abundantly blessed me with causes my heart to long for him daily. It is the patience of God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, the very death that I so readily deserve for the sinful life I led, that has restored my relationship with him and leads me to turn from my old ways.

I will move forward and seek to sin no more. I will bear my cross for God and for those who are as lost as I was, for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Thank you, Church. Amen. It's such an incredible encouragement to hear from our brothers and sisters their testimony of witness, of what they experienced, how they felt when they really saw the love of Christ. And I want to just take a moment to address that anybody who is in here, you know, maybe you know about Christianity, you know about maybe what the gospel might entail, but you feel that you don't know that kind of experience with God, it's a great opportunity.

If any of that really resonated with you, just seek the Lord. Simple question for us, you know, is not like how we live the perfect life track, because clearly we have not. Simple question for us is do we desire to know the Lord? Do we desire to be in his presence?

And that's going to forever change us. So as an encouragement to, again, anybody in here just joining us this afternoon, please feel free to reach out to any of the pastors and elders, and we'll be more than happy to speak with you about that. At the end of service, we do have refreshments and light snacks in the back, so please stick around to both celebrate, congratulate, and to have some time to fellowship.

This time I'll turn it over to the worship team to lead us in the closing song. Thank you.