I grew up in Los Angeles, and grew up attending church in the form of Sunday School, then Youth Group, etc. God was always present in my life, thanks to His faithfulness through my parents, family and friends. (I had not yet been baptized, as my parents wanted to let me make that decision for myself.) God was just an assumption to me. Never a relationship. I assumed God was real and that the teaching of the church was true, but like many young people, that assumed “truth” was overshadowed by other things and forgotten. Eventually I attended an adult Sunday school class led by the theologian and Bible commentator Dr. Dale Bruner, and Dale’s son Dr. Michael Bruner. Their classes became the place I met God for real. Their teaching often assumed the posture of approaching God and the Bible as a Skeptic, as a way of drawing unsure people deeper into the Biblical text to wrestle with hard questions without fear or bias. The need to have a relationship with God made more and more sense to me. This spark of “belief” grew into an understanding of God’s Holiness and Sovereignty. God was not just an invisible friend. God was worthy of worship, adoration, contemplation. God was to be loved as my friend, and yet feared as my master. One day the class was encouraged to pray and ask God if there was anything He was trying to say to us. (This was part of a prayer exercise intended to encourage the class to give God space to speak to US, rather than always running our mouths at God like our personal wishing well.) Lo and behold, I felt a voice clear as day tell me to go to Michael at the end of the class and ask him to baptize me. I obeyed. That same day, my girlfriend (who is now my wife) texted me and said she’d had a dream that I asked Dr. Bruner to baptize me. Since that day in class I have done my best to continue to do the same thing. To obey. I love the Lord, and I love His people, and I am trying every day to be a better and more obedient servant to His will than I was the day before.