BAPTISM - Is part of maturing

SCRIPTURE

Acts 22:16 | What are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized. Have your sins washed away by calling on the name of the Lord.

Colossians 2:6-15 | 6 And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. 8 Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. 9 For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. 10 So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. 11 When you came to Christ, you were circumcised, but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision, the cutting away of your sinful nature. 12 For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead. 13 You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. 15 In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.

DISCUSSION

1. In what ways were you made new when you followed Jesus?
2. Do you ever live like the old you or the person you were before you followed Jesus? Why?
3. Read verse 7. Keeping this in mind, how do you grow stronger as the new you, leaving the old you behind for good?
4. What are you doing to grow in your walk with the Lord? How is it going?