Dear Lord, strengthen my belief.
The is another of the central issues of our faith. We actually have a three point path of faith; believe, repent, be baptised. Without these three our faith is not complete. Without belief, we wouldn't have any faith, as belief is the starting point. But once we do believe, we have to demonstrate the belief in a way that God has asked.
The way God wants us to demonstrate it is via a simple show of our faith. A demonstration that our lives have died to the world and risen anew in Christ. We do this through baptism, which is a symbolic death, burial and resurrection. It also symbolises a complete washing away of our sins.
Baptism is a complete immersion in water. The word was associated with the dying of cloth, to change the colour from one to another. There was no point in just sprinkling a few drops and calling that baptism. In order to get a total change the cloth had to be complete submerged. The idea of sprinkling is a fairly new one, started in the middle ages, but the examples recorded in the Bible highlight this. All towns and villages would have had a well or spring, people traveling would have carried water skins or such like. Yet baptisms took place where there was "much water". John baptised in the River Jordan.
The most graphic example of baptism is recorded in Acts 8, when Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch. The record states
"And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more".
I've highlighted the fact that they 'went down into' and 'come up out of' the water. In fact, if the middle age practise of infant baptism hadn't taken place, they this part of the subject would never have come up. If you want to read more see last years notes.
So we'll go back to the central theme; In order to demonstrate our commitment to God, he has asked that we start a new life by being buried in water and raised again. And that by this demonstration we have the opportunity to be raised again, this time to live immortal.