Water baptism is a very powerful basic principle in the Word of God. You can get baptised again. If you identify with the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as a condition of faith in your heart, you can exercise that condition of faith in your heart again; it is a circumcision of the heart, it’s about a change of your life, and it’s about devotion and a commitment to God. And if you get baptised the second time, then what you’re saying is, “Lord, I continue to recognise that Your power is working in my life, circumcising my heart, making a devotion available.”
John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance (Luke 3:1-3 NKJV). We no longer receive a baptism of repentance. We have a repentance of the heart where Jesus has come and changed the condition of our heart, and we become a new creature (born again). When you get baptised in water, you are not being baptised under John’s repentance. You are being baptised into the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
The word baptise comes from a Greek word – baptisma. It consists of the process of immersion, submersion, and emergence, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of the New Testament.
The only requirement to be baptised is to have a repentant heart and a living faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Acts 8:36-37 (NLJV) says, 36Now as they went down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?” 37Then Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
When you get born again, you’re baptised into the Body of Christ, 13For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. 14For in fact the body is not one member but many (1 Corinthians 12:13-14 NKJV).
He baptised us into Jesus so that we could become one body, united together, following God together, receiving the Word of God together. As we recognise the gifts and callings in the body, we’re not one, but many members of one body. Therefore, don’t dislocate yourself, don’t dismember yourself away from the body of Christ. Because the minute you do that, you lose authority, power, strength, and God never intended that. He intended for the body to be so tightly knit and connected together that the body can fully represent Jesus on the earth.
When you have an Ecclesia, you have people that are so completely intent on representing Jesus on the earth that they begin to govern in the realm of the spirit. You don’t take over the government. But God can raise up people (like Daniel) who can influence government.
There are three baptisms: the first baptism is when you make Jesus Lord and Saviour of your life – then you’re baptised into the Body of Christ. The second baptism is into water – you identify with the death and the resurrection of Jesus. The third baptism is when you get baptised by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2), with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.
I expect that when you go down into the water, and you come up out of the water – this is a very spiritual moment. You are identifying with the death of Jesus. You are identifying with the resurrection of Jesus, and it’s a powerful moment because you are saying: I recognise that He has delivered me from sin. I am dead to sin. When you die to Christ in the water, you come out in a new person, a new recreated person that is alive to God. When you identify with the death and the resurrection of Jesus, you should be putting your faith out there to receive everything that Jesus has for you, which includes the free gift of the Holy Spirit.
I say: I’m dying to the stuff that brought me here. All of those things, those cultural things, those emotional things, those financial things, all of the things that brought me to the place where I haven’t fulfilled all the things that God wanted me to do. When I die to myself, in identification with the Lord Jesus Christ, I’m raised up in a newness of life. He empowers me. He graces me. He comes with His Holy Spirit to give me a new lease on life, a new energy, a new ability, a new power to say no to the things that kept me from my divine connections, my divine alignments, the gifts and the callings, the places that God called us to be. I’m now free to walk in the things of God. God redeems the lost time for me, no matter how many years I have lost.
Those people that are going to get baptised; you must recognise that when you have died and you are raised up with Jesus, He’s raised you up with gifts, with callings, with power. Not to be a weak Christian that has no authority or no power over your habits or over the things that are holding you, those old things in the past that keep making you trip over yourself all the time, offenses, relationships, things that happen…. When you are raised up in the newness of life, He gives you the power to have the ability to go and live in peace with all men as far as is possible.
He gives you the power to overcome your own self. The only reason you still sin after being baptised is because the enemy triggers you with temptation. He triggers your old self, your mind; but the power of grace you say: I repent, and I keep living in the newness of life. I’m not going to let this sin keep me back. I’m going to live in the power of grace – His empowerment for me to live in the fullness of everything that God has for my life.
We are destined to be a much more powerful people than we are. You must keep be being filled with the Holy Spirit, sing to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
As Christians, you think that when you live a life as a Christian, there are no demons that are coming to harass you – that come to your mind and tell you you’re not saved. They tell you that there are other gods that you should rather worship. They tell you that you’re not good enough or that you should be ashamed of yourself because you did something wrong. Or they come and tell you all manner of different things or come and tell you to do things, that suddenly you realise, how did I get to do this thing, because that’s not me?
When you get baptised in the water, it doesn’t mean that demon spirits leave you alone. They become more determined to try and prevent you from becoming the Ecclesia because our power is becoming the Ecclesia, the governing body of the Lord Jesus that has power over demon spirits, power over sickness and disease, it has power over habits. It has power over all things that hold you back.
I declare over you that as you go down in the water and you come up again, you’re going to encounter God. Some – it might come on you physically. You might cry. You might laugh. You might have none of that. It might just be very deep inside of you, but I know that you’re going to encounter God. I know that something deep and spiritual is going to happen to you.
I’m declaring that you are going to have an encounter with God. If it doesn’t happen in the water, you’re going to go home, and over the next few days, you are going to begin to have the Holy Spirit draw you. This is a calling, an announcement to every spirit in the heavenlies, every demonic spirit and every angelic spirit. This is an announcement that you are dying and resurrecting in the newness of life. This is an announcement that you are going to walk in the power of grace.
© 2023 – Heritage of Faith Ministries International
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