Frank and Stephanie Szymanski’s Testimonies

I do not see my baptism as the end but only the beginning of my journey with Jesus Christ.

Today I confess my sins before my brothers and sisters and before God.  I ask for your guidance in my Christian walk through accountability, wisdom and the word.

For many years I struggled with faith.  I never felt worthy of joining a church community.  Since attending at Grace my life has changed for the better.  I understand now, I am saved by the death of Jesus on the cross.  He died for my sins and his death is my death.  His resurrection is the resurrection of my soul away from eternal death, to eternal life.  I know now that it is by God’s grace alone we are saved.

I observe examples of the man I aspire to be, by observing the men God has placed here to shepherd me.  Just as in Matthew 3, Jesus’ Baptism opened heaven for all mankind; I feel this church community has opened my heart to Jesus as never before.

My sins died on the cross, a debt I can never repay.  I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and I ask for Baptism today both for repentance, and as an outward sign of my faith and commitment.

I was raised in a loving home with good, hard-working parents.  My dad took us to the Catholic Church every Sunday.  But when I was 16, I started going to the Bible-believing church.  I continued going there through high school and became very interested in the things of God.  After high school I attended Cedarville.  It was at that time I had been struggling with the question of was I saved?  I wasn’t really sure.  I became convinced that I needed the Lord as my savior and accepted Him.  All these good and right things I had in my life were not enough to save me.  So after the conference, when I was 18 I had accepted Him as my savior from my sin and Him alone.

About twelve years ago, I was baptized by sprinkling in another church I attended.  But now that we have been attending Grace for about three years, I wanted to be baptized by immersion with my husband to follow Christ’s example because it represents His death and resurrection.

Romans 6:3-5 states that, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.”

Christ is that newness of life for me.