Water Baptism = Burial and Resurrection!!!

We once again started to continue The Book of ACTS Study...but then we went Around the Table with Bro. Ernie, Sis. Patti, Sis. Audia, Sis. Anne, Sis. Tammie and Sis. Sandy and discussed...If baptism were only symbolic, why did the early church speak of burial and resurrection in the water? We open the door with Acts and walk through Romans 6 to explore a bolder claim: baptism is meant to mark us, not just move us. From the Spirit’s power to witness on Pentecost to daily choices that resist sin’s pull, we map how real faith shifts from emotion to commitment and from counting heads to changed lives.

Ernie and Mama share unforgettable testimonies that bring doctrine to life. A family’s story of deliverance starts with a cold December baptistry and ends with a home transformed. A young airman, fresh from addiction and standing on the edge of court-martial, encounters a dream where baptism in Jesus’ name turns water to blood—and then wades into a foul wartime ditch to be immersed, rising with a joy he can’t contain. These moments underline a conviction we return to again and again: if the name of Jesus carries authority to heal and deliver, it belongs in the water when we bury the old life.

We also confront modern discipleship head-on. Desire isn’t sin; surrendering to it is. In a culture saturated with sexual cues, we talk about building self-control, casting down imaginations, and letting the Spirit “help you shut up” when pride wants the last word. Holiness becomes a direction, not a performance—like a tree growing toward light, losing leaves and bearing fruit season by season. Love turns from infatuation to covenant, and repentance stays active, not nostalgic.

If you’re ready to move beyond “seven people got wet” toward “seven lives were changed,” this conversation will challenge and encourage you. Join us as we return to the pattern of Acts, the clarity of Romans 6, and the everyday courage of living as those raised from the dead. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s wrestling with baptism and commitment, and leave a review telling us how your life changed after the water. (*Recorded 9.15.2025)

Ways to Give at www.m3mi.org...Thank you for your seed!  :)

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Welcome to Simple Discipleship on the Field Tribe. I'm your host, Sister Dominum, and we want to see what Jesus has to say to Debbie, right? Debbie is awesome. We love him. Um, but if Jesus isn't the one speaking, then we're listening to the wrong voice, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

All right. We're thankful to have you. We're here continuing our study on uh a simple presentation into the book of Acts. We're on chapter four, um, and we're gonna be doing a part one of that today. So, Brother Ernie, why don't you just kind of give us a synopsis of what's leading up to what we're about to go into?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Well, it's been a real exciting time. Uh it started out being crushing with Jesus being arrested and abused and beaten and falsely accused and and ultimately uh crucified, and all hope was gone. Uh the disciples not understanding the very things that Jesus told them about his death, burial, and resurrection. Right. And he told them many times. Uh when he rose from the dead, uh it was not just a physical earthquake, it was emotional, it was spiritual, it was intellectual. It shook the disciples through and through.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

And of course, the detractors of Jesus, yeah, they knowing the truth, they paid people to tell a lie. Yeah, yeah. You know, that it's it was a time of great turmoil. Um, they wanted to have someone uh to replace uh Judas. They did that by the casting of lots, not a democratic process, uh, but you'd have to study the Old Testament to see that. Um and then uh they had instructions from Jesus to go and wait for the promise of the Father and not to do anything until they received the promise of the Father, that is, until they were baptized with the Holy Ghost. And he said, When that happens, you shall receive power to be witnesses unto me.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah.

Beyond Numbers: Meaning In Baptism

SPEAKER_00 2:58

And this is not to play down the importance of the Spirit of the Lord and speaking in tongues, because the Bible is filled with that. But people overlook it was to give power to be a witness. So I I would say if you receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, the baptism, and you speak in tongues, that's great. But if you're not being a witness, you're missing out on the demonstration of the power of the Holy Ghost, which is to make us witnesses for Christ. So it was an exciting time. You know, that first day uh when Peter preached on Pentecost, and thousands came to Christ, and uh they they uh not only believed, they didn't just say, I believe, they repented of their sins, they submitted to water baptism in the name of Jesus, and God never fails to fulfill his obligation.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

And uh was talking with some uh ministers Saturday about this. Uh, how many times we've seen people be filled with the Holy Ghost in the baptismal tank? Or just prior to it, or just after it.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

And um, if you're not seeing that, then perhaps we're not preaching that like we used to. Perhaps we're not teaching that like we used to.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

I think sometimes it's more about how many what's the number of people that are being baptized opposed to what's happening in the water.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Always, uh, but I I don't know what I want to say to that because to me, it doesn't matter how many is going in the water. Well, but we see that.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

But we see that because it's like, oh, we had seven baptized. So no, you had seven people got wet, but I mean what happened. I just think there should be, you know, I'm saying I'm saying I think there should be something that happens in the water.

Romans 6: Buried And Raised With Christ

SPEAKER_00 4:58

It's more than symbolic. It is. It is it is supposed to be life-changing, and uh Paul told the Roman church uh in Romans chapter six, he said water baptism was a miracle because he said you were buried into his death when you were baptized. It was like you're translated to the tomb, and when you come up out of the water, you're supposed to rise to walk in the newness of life, just like Jesus came out, a new creature. This thing about being dead to sin. Um if we're not living a repentant life and dying to sin daily, we're just kidding ourselves. We're we're not fooling the Lord. Right. He knows. He he knows, and so uh you know, it's like love. In in our culture, people say you fall in love. Um like you stepped on a banana peel, fell on the ground, and just I'll never be the same again, you know. But actually, love, biblical love, is a choice, yeah, a decision, a commitment that you live out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

And and um When you look at the illustration of of the um Galilean wedding where the the dads meet in the center of town and they take the the son and the daughter, and they don't even know each other, but they but the the fathers know. And the father draws them together, and then they're given the opportunity to drink from the cup or not.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

See, my father-in-law knew when he saw me I was the man. Sure. But some cultures still do that. Yeah, and and it's not a bad idea. But in in in our culture, people are not really ready for that. No. They weren't raised that way. It's all about emotion, it's all about emotion as opposed to commitment. Yeah, it's all about infatuation and water baptism. My pastor baptized a young man because I told him he was ready. And when he came up out of the water, I knew I had made an error. Because you don't get baptized until you've had the faith to repent. Yeah. I mean, that's the only uh prerequisite for water baptism that you believe that the Lord is who he says he is so much that you determine I'm changing my life to follow him. If you haven't made that determination, it's like a guy and and a gal going to the altar saying, We're gonna be married, but you can have your girlfriends and you can have your boyfriends, and we'll just put it down on paper that we're married and legally we'll but you know, I'm gonna tell you right now, mama won't play that.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

No. Well, they many mamas are gonna play that, you know what I'm saying? But but we we ought not treat the Lord like that. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

We ought not treat the Lord like that, and we we ought to go into water baptism with a sense of commitment. You can't if if you're not decided, I need to live differently, I need to learn about Jesus, I need to learn about the word of God, and none of us are are gonna be error-proof, but I need to strive to be.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Strive to be, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

You know, uh if I'm not doing that, why am I getting baptized?

SPEAKER_02 8:53

Yeah, because I think that I I love what you said, that there's something, what Paul says about dying in the water, that something dies there. The dead man is buried. The dead man is buried. Where where exactly is that verse?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

That's Romans chapter six. Let me open to it for you.

Commitment Over Emotion In Faith

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Let's just stay on this on this podcast, and we'll start our chapter four, because I really would like to hear what your experience was when you were baptized.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Uh I will give it to you in just a heartbeat. Mama too.

unknown 9:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

I was baptized when I was 16.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Hold on, mama. Hold on, mama. Let me get mama because I want to hear her. Yes. We're unfiltered, so we're just gonna move the mic and let mama talk.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

I was goodness. I was 16 years old when I was baptized. Um, my mother um came to me when I was 16 or 15 actually, and said, Um, I need a miracle. And so knowing what her lifestyle was, yeah, she needed a miracle. And so I said, Okay, I'll take you to the church I was going to, but she says, they don't believe in miracles, but I I know a little church on the other side of town. And so we went there to this little church called Life Tabernacle on the other side of Almo Gordo, New Mexico. And when she walked in the door, she felt something. And before she left that day, she had made a commitment to change her life. Now she had been in a uh a dope addict and she was also an alcoholic. And um, so the next before the month was out, she was baptized in Jesus' name and came up out of the water speaking in tongues. Now, the baptistry where she was baptized in this was December in New Mexico, the water was very cold. She said when she got into the water, it was cold, but when she came out, it was warm. And then she started speaking in tongues, and it just changed her whole life. And so that when summer came, my brother and I went to a youth camp in Alma, in Amarillo, Texas, and I went to the altar because a friend of mine who had been raised in Pentecost said, I want to go to the altar and receive the Holy Ghost. So she went down and she did not receive the Holy Ghost that night. I did, and I had two prayer warriors praying with me. One that was uh Vesta Mangan and the other one was Winifred Black. And that when we went home, a couple of weeks later.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

If you don't know those names, those are true warriors for Christ.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

And so when we went home, uh the couple of weeks later was Father's Day, and my father, my brother, and I were all baptized in Jesus' name, that changed our lives. My brother and my father and I, and my mother. You don't know what our family changed when that happened. So it was just, I mean, I didn't know what to do. I here I had real short hair wearing all these ungodly clothes, and then I had to start wearing these long dresses, and I had to take off makeup, and my pastor's wife came up to me. She says, Not your hair is way too short. So she put it into a real tiny uh ponytail, but then she stuck another ponytail on top of that.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

I I I don't get the that that makes a difference, but that was done.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

But it was done. Yes, yeah, yeah. So that the people that was that would that saw us thought, hey, you know, they've been there a long time. So the baptism in in Jesus' name in our family was life-changing.

Testimony: From Addiction To Calling

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Why don't you share with us, brother Ernie, what what happened when you uh when you were baptized? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

I had been through several changes. I had been delivered from my own addiction and uh I was 20 years old, been delivered from my own addiction, and um a life-changing God came into my life. Yeah. Uh I thought I was uh on my way to Leavenworth. Uh I had made some foolish mistakes in the military. I had threatened to kill my my supervisor.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Probably not a good choice.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Not a good choice. They frown on that. Yeah. Even my commander. And um and then Jesus showed up in my life and and miraculously delivered me from my addiction. And so um I was in the commander's office because uh I was waiting to find out you know, are they gonna give me an article 15 or am I gonna be court-martial? They were trying to decide. And I had the commander call me in and he he looked at me and he says, Airman, he said, I've heard you've turned over a new leaf. And I said to him, I said, All I can tell you is I'm trying. That's all I'm gonna say. What could I say to a man that I had already spoke to so stupidly? You know, and so I uh I just after saying that I just froze and and and he's he turned some papers around and he pushed them over to me. And he said, if you will accept these orders to Vietnam, if you will sign them, I will expunge your record. Because if we go through with this, and I didn't know a decision had been made until that point, he said, if we go through with this and you're court-martial, I won't retire on time. And I want to retire on time. And so, you know, I knew I was baptized with the Holy Ghost because of no smart aleck words came out of my mouth. You know, the Holy Ghost doesn't just help you speak in tongues. But how the Holy Ghost helped you shut up.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

What I how did you actually get baptized?

SPEAKER_00 16:01

I was I was uh in Vietnam. And uh God had sent me a man who who became a a chaplain in the military. He wasn't at that time.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

So you hadn't been baptized before you went to Church.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Oh, I was baptized as a child, as a baby in the Catholic Church.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Oh, you got sprinkled.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Right. Then after I got the Holy Ghost, uh, I was going to the First Assembly of God in Almogordo, New Mexico, and I just became, and there were some people there really discipling me, and I I became uh understanding how could that do anything? I didn't know I was a sinner. I didn't I couldn't commit to God, so I decided, well, I need to be re-baptized. So I was in the Assembly of God. And um, it was a great moment for me. Then I got to Vietnam and I met my mentor, and as we were uh going day by day, and and he is giving me pretty good counsel. And I'm gonna insert this now. I don't know if Jeff will ever get to hear this, but one of the greatest things he ever did for me was he believed God would talk to me and that I could hear from heaven.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Yeah.

Why The Name Of Jesus In Baptism

SPEAKER_00 17:20

He believed I could read the Bible and I could gain understanding. And many times when I had questions, he would say, Do you know what the scripture has to say about that? And then he would say, Uh, Did you ask God about that? One day I got a little frustrated with him. I said, Why aren't you telling me? He said, Because the same God who delivered you from your addiction, filled you with the Holy Ghost, He's still your God, and He can still talk to you. You have to hear what He has to say. Yeah. So he taught me, it's not in He taught me many things scripturally, but he he taught me it's not enough for me to say it. You have to be able to know that God is talking to you. Yeah. So we got to talking one day. Uh he got to talking to me about uh being baptized in Jesus' name. And I thought, well, I've been baptized. And he said, you know, well, let's go through it in the book of Acts. So I why not? He had been taught me so much. Unbeknownst to me, he probably hadn't been a Christian a year himself. But uh I went through it with him and looked up all the scriptures about water baptism. And then I went through it by myself. And so I became convinced I needed to do this. So I sat on my bunk praying the night before I got baptized, and I I prayed, I said, Lord, I believe this is right. I need to be rebaptized in the name of Jesus. I followed the teaching through the book of Acts, and I know that's how they interpreted the teaching of Jesus. But I've had so much happen to me. I was an addict one minute, I was not the next. Then I was speaking in tongues, and I didn't really know what it was, and was shocked by it, you know. And then I was talking to you about who you are, and that became a source of revelation for me. And now this guy's telling me, you know, you need you need to be baptized in Jesus' name. I mean, the night I was delivered, I saw visions of angels, and I thought it was bad drugs.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

It took me some time to understand it was real. And for a lady in church to walk up to me and say, God told me to tell you something. At this point, with all the things that had happened to me, I just said, Right, okay. I didn't know what to do with it. So I said, Well, okay, that's nice. You know, go ahead. So she said to me, the night that you repented, there were angels in the park rejoicing over your soul. And that was the vision I had seen. And I had so I demanded of her. Is that in the scriptures? Oh, yeah, she showed me in the Gospel of Luke, you know. And so I'm telling God, all these things is shaking my world, it's shaking up. What period of time was this like within how I'd say from August 19 till probably around uh October 14th. Oh, within just a few months. Yes. And uh I remember October 14th because it was my sister's birthday. You know, she wasn't with me in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Yeah. But within a couple of months, in a couple of months changes happen.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

I've had visions. Um, I remember laying on my bunk, probably been a Christian two or three weeks, filled with the Holy Ghost, maybe 10 days. And um, I'd heard all these testimonies about angels, and of course, then there was my own vision. And then I told the Lord, I said, Lord, I'd like to see an angel. I mean, you know, up front, like these people say, that angel just walked in the room. Yeah, I like that. And I was laying in the bunk. Now, if you've ever had to sleep with one of your siblings, you know what this feels like. The bed behind me sank. The mattress went down on it, and I was too scared to turn over and look. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yeah, but you felt it. You're like, oh, okay, God, I'm not asking anything else.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Did you turn around to see what it was, neighbor? No. Yeah. No, my world was turning too fast for me. Yeah, that's a lot. But at any rate, I and I I prayed that night. I said, I'm ready to do this, but I need you to show me that it's right. I was taking the advice my mentor had given me, but I didn't know I was really practicing biblical principle. We're supposed to depend on God. I was too young in my faith to realize all that was happening. So I went to sleep and I had this dream. And in the dream, uh I was baptized, and I was standing in the water, but I looked like a man in a coffin. You know how you used to see in the movies they cross their arms over their chests, coins on their eyes, whatever. But yeah, I was standing upright, as though I were in a coffin. And a man named Hayes Butler, he baptized me in the name of Jesus. And when he, I'm not like watching it on TV, when he said, in Jesus' name, the water flashed and turned into blood. And then I came up out of the water, and I was standing on on the side of the pool in that same position, with my like a dead man in a coffin, and my face was toward the throne of God, but I couldn't, it was so bright, I couldn't hardly open my eyes. And then I'm watching myself, and none of the blood drips off of me. It all soaks up into my body as though I am a sponge. None of it goes to the ground. And I'm looking at myself, like watching a person on TV, and I see the top of my head, and there's the only place you can see blood. And the blood is in the shape of a cross. And I wake up and I sit on the bunk. I'm so silly. I start talking out loud to God. People are walking up and down past my bunk, and I say, God, I understand. I'm supposed to get baptized in the name of Jesus. I got it. But I don't understand the little cross on my head. It didn't register. And the Lord spoke to me. You can think what you like, folks. The Lord spoke to me and took me back to the sixth grade. And the one lesson I learned in the sixth grade, because I was a little brat.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Imagine that.

Living As Those Raised From The Dead

SPEAKER_00 24:33

You didn't ask my wife to testify, so we're not. So um the Lord asked me, you remember when you were in the sixth grade and the lesson you learned in social studies about shepherds and sheep. And this was uh was in our book, and it was about someplace in Europe, Sweden, Switzerland, somewhere, where Scotland, I don't know, there was shepherds and sheepfolds, and there was some giant roundup of them, and there'd be, you know, 30, 40 shepherds with all these huge flocks. And the Lord said, How does a shepherd know his sheep? And how do the other shepherds know that this is a particular shepherd's sheep? And I said, Lord, they earmark them. They they cut a specific design into their ear, and it dawned on me. The name of Jesus is specific. Wow. And so I I did. We went down, I was at Thomson Air Base in Vietnam. I told Jeff, said, tonight we get off work, gonna get baptized in Jesus' name. We were working 12-hour shifts. This is in the war. And uh he said, okay, we got a hold of this brother Butler, and we went down, we got off, we went down to try to do it at the chapel, but there was no baptismal tank there. It was just, they were ready to sprinkle you, but there was no immersion. And then there was a pool at Towson at Air Base, so we went to the pool and they said, You can't use the pool for religious reasons, we won't let you in. So we're walking around thinking about how are we gonna do this. It's dark now. And we're looking at the Benjo Ditch. Now, Bjo Ditch is like a lagoon, only it's moving. You know what I mean? A lagoon, like for those people who couldn't afford a septic tank, they just dug a lagoon. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was. And it had a little chicken wire in it every now and then to kind of catch things and strain them. And and uh I don't know if it was Jeff or Brother Butler who said to me this, it looked at me, said, Brother Ernie, I'm not afraid to go down in that water. I said, Yeah, you'll be standing up. You only knee deep. I'm not sure about all this. But I was so desperate. I was so desperate, I just looked up and said, Let's do it. Brother Butler gave me a handkerchief, and I literally held my nose and and went down in the water in Jesus' name and came up, and I was so drunk on the Holy Ghost I couldn't speak in tongues, and thank the Lord I couldn't smell. Yeah. And and uh we I stumbled down the street speaking in tongues.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

You literally got baptized in a sewer.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah. I mean, I didn't really want to say it like that.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

But really, but I mean that's what it is, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

It was it was open drainage, is what it was. And and I don't know all the different types of filth that were in it, but the water always stenched and and uh there was always stuff floating in it that made you uncomfortable. My gosh. And uh I got so drunk on the Holy Ghost, probably for an hour, maybe longer, I couldn't speak English. Wow. And uh got all showered up and cleaned off, and and uh I know I had been baptized as an infant, that that was not my choice. And in faith, I was baptized when I was attending First Assembly of God at Almogordo, reaching out to follow the Lord in faith, in integrity. Nobody could take that from me. Yeah, but when I was baptized in Jesus' name, me and Mama were talking about this yesterday, as a matter of fact. Um, just reviewing the good things that God has done in our lives. Yeah. And I said, when I got baptized in Jesus' name, it was just a whole new world. Yeah. You know, and I I'm grateful for anybody who gets under conviction and wants to be baptized. I'm I appreciate you having the integrity to do this, but let me encourage you follow the example in the book of Acts. Yeah, and be baptized in Jesus' name. And I had one fellow tell me one day, he said, I don't see that it makes any difference because we know that name. The reason I think it makes such a big difference when you lay hands on someone to be healed, what do you say? In the name of Jesus, because you know that there's power and authority in that name. Jesus said, In my name, you'll do these things. Cast out devils, yada yada, yada. Peter understood the commandment in Matthew 28 to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, singular name. To be Jesus. Philip understood it to be Jesus. Paul understood it to be Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

But that's where everybody gets to say all three, right? Yep, well.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

They do, and I believe they do.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

You're just taught it your whole life and you believe it in that, you know.

Temptation, Self‑Control, And Growth

SPEAKER_00 30:17

And I want to be careful because I'm not challenging the integrity of someone's decision. Yeah. Or of their action. What I am encouraging them to do is let's become the church that's in the book of Acts. When the angel said to the disciples, the two angels, hey, the same Jesus that you see going up in the cloud is coming back again. He's coming back for a church. What church? The church that is established in the book of Acts. So I I know people think, well, you're alienating us. I'm not alienating you. I'm telling you. The scripture says they baptized in the name of Jesus. Aren't we striving to become that? And and uh when I was baptized in the titles Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I felt good about it. I sure did. And I I did it for the right reasons. So then my next question becomes then why did God convict me through his word, through teaching, then through revelation in the dream? And you know what? Years later, I was at Texas Bible College in Houston, Texas, then it's in Lufkin now. I was at Texas Bible College sitting under the teaching of a man named A. B. Keating, Arnold Bryan Keating, man of God, and he was teaching from Romans chapter six that day. And he began teaching my dream, having never heard me talk about it. Wow. And I hadn't shared it hardly with anyone, perhaps with my wife.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Don't look at me, that was 50 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

But the the reason I hadn't shared it is because sometimes when you try to share visions with people and dreams, they look at you like that's real nice, brother. That's real, yeah. And and so uh, and I and I hadn't had it taught on in the little church that I was in. I'd never heard teaching out of Romans 6. And as a matter of fact, the pastor that we had, uh bless his heart. Bless his heart, he could preach circles around people, yeah, and and he'd get anointed and deliver the word of God. But we knew when the paper called him and asked him, Reverend Johnson, can you give us a title for your message this week? He gave him the same thing every week. In the name of Jesus. And uh he was a wonderful man of God. But that was a topic we'd never covered, Romans 6. We didn't cover it until I was in Bible college, and the teacher began to teach my dream. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

And were you gonna read Romans 6? I thought.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Yeah, oh, I got you, yeah, I have it here. I knew you did. And so it's looking at water baptism backwards.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Okay. The book of Acts is looking at water baptism from the perspective of a new convert, a babe in Christ going forward. I I believed, I've repented, this is my next step. All they needed to know is you need to have enough faith to repent of your sins, trying to follow Jesus and obey him in the baptism. That's all.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

But looking back, Paul is more thorough in his teaching. So he tells the Roman church, I'll start reading it Romans 6.1. I won't read the whole thing, but we'll read a few verses here. Uh probably uh we'll read down to verse 9. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? There were people, obviously, who were teaching then. You can just sin all you want, you know. We got that now. We hear it all the time. Yeah, yeah. I had a guy tell me, I'm gonna die of adultery and I'll still go to heaven. I told him, brother, don't try that. Don't try it. Don't try it. All right, so he says, Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? That is teaching that repentance equals death. If we are dead to sin, we died at repentance. Yeah. Verse 3, know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death. How strong is that? You gotta read the next verse. Therefore we are buried with him. Wow. He doesn't say pay attention to the symbolism. He doesn't say that. He says, Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death. He doesn't say this is symbolic. He says that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. We're supposed to come out of that water, a different person, because we're counted as buried in the tomb with Christ. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, that's immersed. If we've been immersed like him in the same fashion like when he was buried, we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. My question is then, what if you hadn't been planted? There is a statement. You're buried with him. So when we wake up out of the water, we're risen with him. What is that? It's Colossians chapter 3. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. We're not supposed to act the same once we've been risen with Christ. You know, it doesn't mean that you'll never have a need for repentance, it means that your goals, your life goals are now changed.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

But see, here's where I can I just interject something real quick. That's why I get agitated with Christian people who call themselves Christian, because they still continue to carry the thing to say, I act this way because that's just how I am. And so they give themselves permission to stay the same.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

So they really need to go back and read Romans 6. Right. Okay, so we'll we'll continue with that. Six, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him. Oh, we were nailed to the cross when he was nailed to the cross, that the body of sin might be destroyed. That's why we were buried with him because we were nailed to the cross with him. That henceforth we should not serve sin. Okay, it doesn't say you'll never make another mistake, but we will not be bound by sin. Yeah, we come under conviction when we think wrong, say wrong, do wrong. The power of the Holy Ghost is to check us, say, really? Yeah, is that what you need to be doing? You know, one of the proofs to me, the fruit of the Spirit, is you're being touched by God all the time. You're not lining up producing the right fruit. He touches your conscience from then on. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now, verse 8 If we be dead with Christ, we believe this, we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more, death had no more dominion over him. I'll go a little further. For in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Verse 11. Like, wise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin. Reckon means count it to be so. Count it to be so. But alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lust thereof. This is putting the onus on us. Yeah. Paul is putting the responsibility on the Roman church. You can't go down to the Pantheon anymore. Yeah. You can't go down to the public baths anymore. Yeah. You know those famous taverns where all them women are there for sale? You can't go there anymore. What let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey it. Yeah. Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God. Listen to this, as those that are alive from the dead. Why? Because we were buried in his tomb when we were buried in the water, and your members as instruments of the righteousness of God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace. So sin doesn't have dominion over me. It doesn't mean that I don't battle with my carnal nature. It means that I learn to beat it down with repentance. It means that when I have certain thoughts come into my head, I cast down these imaginations in the name of Jesus, and every thought that will exalt itself against God. You know, Jeff taught me that without using this scripture. What he said to me one day, and I guess I was probably talking to him about dreams and daydreams and things that because your past is real. And he he said to me, You cannot stop a bird from flying over your head. You know it's there. If he lands there, you shoe him off. That's how you handle these dreams and these thoughts. He didn't say you'll never be attacked by those things. He said this is how you respond to them. I found it later in the Corinthian letter, casting down imaginations and every thought that exalts itself. This is why Christianity is not for wimps, because it is a mental battle as much as it is a spiritual battle.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Every day, every moment of every day, you have a choice to make.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

You live in this body.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

And if if you don't think you're you're carnal, let somebody you know insult you about your spouse, yeah, your child.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Or cut you off in traffic.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Yes. All of a sudden your spiritualness is if you've never read the book, um, the same kind of different as me, you ought to read it. In it, this this man testifies that as he's moving closer and closer to the Lord, his wife is really moving in and he's following her. He's meets this lady from the church who has this, I think he said suburban. Anyway, she's got a big sign on the back, honk if you love Jesus, bumper sticker. So he's driving down 635. This is a true story. He's driving down 635. Mama read the book.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

And this lady goes past him, and somebody cuts her off very rudely in traffic. And she's waving at him. We're number one in whatever she's yelling. He can't hear. You know. So he thinks to himself, wow. This is what happened. This is a woman who's, you know, real mover in the church, and you know. Yeah. But he he puts it in his back pocket and forgets about it. A few weeks later, he ends up at her home for a big get-together, I guess, several families from church, whatever, and a barbecue, and he walking in the driveway and he sees that suburban. But the bumper sticker has been scraped off. Oh. He never said anything to anyone about this, about what he saw. But he got a little froggy, and he walks up to her and he says, I noticed you scraped your bumper sticker, you know, honk if you love Jesus. You scraped that off your bumper. Now, this is why I know this woman was filled with the Holy Ghost. Yeah. He said, She looked at me and said, Yes, the Lord told me the Holy Ghost said, if you you don't need that bumper sticker until your middle finger gets saved. Wow. Wow. So, you know, Romans chapter 6 is a great chapter for us learning that with water baptism comes a responsibility to live a certain way. Wow. And it doesn't mean you'll never err again. It means you are now instead of like a tree that is growing in one direction, now you're growing in another. You're growing towards Christ. I love it. And so the wind still comes, right? Yeah. You still every year you lose leaves and fruit, and then every year you bring them, but you're growing in the direction of productivity.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

And so I think that's so funny because I I I've been counseling this young man that's like 17, and and uh he's like, Well, Sister Diane, I I just I I keep having these lustful thoughts and and all these things. I said, Baby, you're 17.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

You're a 17-year-old boy. And what's worse than that, in this culture, yeah, in this culture, they're exposed to so much. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

Now I did say you have to take the responsibility of not allowing yourself, yes, you know, to watch certain things, or or if the Holy Spirit tells you don't do that anymore, don't do it. But it but if you're just living your everyday life and these thoughts come to your mind, that's perfectly normal that it comes there. More normal in this society than in many others. You have to learn to cast it out.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

It's on TV.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

It's in certain music, it's in the magazines and the books.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

You know, they have TikTok and Instagram. It's everywhere. They don't do Facebook, but they do TikTok and Instagram, and it's everywhere everywhere. There's no censor to they're they're not taught that sexuality is wholesome.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

Yeah. They're not taught that. They're they're taught uh more than that. They're they're they're taught. Fellas are taught if you're a man, if you're male, you need to have sex. It's only natural. And they're taught you're like dogs in heat. No, we're not. No, we're not at all. You are to take authority. Men are to take authority over the seed that they carry is the seed of life. Yeah. Women carry the egg, the ability to bring life into the world.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

I'll not play with that.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Yeah, and that was that was my big thing to him. Is that it's not that you have the thought. It's not that you even have the emotion or whatever and the desire to do it. We're born with that. But the responsibility for each one of us is how we act upon the thought.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

I bet you more than once my wife is my wife has thought she could kill me in my sleep and be away with all her headaches.

SPEAKER_02 46:43

So maybe you feel yourself a little weak.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

It's a real life. It's temptation. Temptation is real, and it's not a sin for your hormones to work. What's a sin is that we don't teach our youth. Yeah, it's natural for you to have these desires, and it's also natural for you to build self-control.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

That's it. That's it. That's it. And us too. I mean, even as adults, I think it's even more so harder when you have had that and then you don't have it. So you're like, what are we gonna do now? You know? It's a real life. It's a real life. Thank you so much. I know we went off a different topic. We're supposed to be on chapter four of Acts, but this is.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

We can get there on the next podcast.

Closing And Community Invitations

SPEAKER_02 47:43

This has been really good. So uh thank you guys around the table, brother Ernie. Thank you, Anne. Thank you, Mama, sister Patty, and and Audia. And we've got Sandy and Tammy over there in the background, and and um just enjoyed conversation with y'all today. So uh we're gonna close. And I want to just remind you guys if you you if you like this podcast, go like and share it. Go watch, you know, videos that we have up now, and we got all kinds of things going on, but just uh just share it, just go and share it to your friends, your family, and um God's really doing the work here. So, what do we always say? Go show some love, show some compassion, give mercy and go be Jesus today.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Hallelujah.

SPEAKER_02 48:29

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