On September 20, I baptized 17 people in the Atlantic Ocean at Ocean Isle Beach. I’m still rejoicing. I can’t get over it.

Fourteen of them were people we had planned to baptize. We knew they were coming. We knew their stories. We had prepared for the evening. But three more baptisms happened spontaneously, which is one of those beautiful reminders that God rarely feels obligated to follow our plans.

And then there were the two salvations. One of them was slowly stirring even before we arrived that day. God knew it..and we didnt.

A man was visiting Ocean Isle Beach for the first time. He wasn’t someone we had invited to the baptism service. He wasn’t part of our church family. He was simply there. He listened to the music. He heard the testimonies. He listened to the message. And somewhere in the middle of that evening, he gave his life to Jesus.

Then we baptized him.

Think about that for a moment. His first visit to Ocean Isle Beach became the night he met Jesus.

I can’t manufacture a moment like that. None of us can. We can prepare the service, choose the songs, write the message, organize the baptism, and make sure everyone knows where they’re supposed to be. But only God can take an ordinary evening and turn it into an eternal moment.

You see, he and his wife had visited the beach for the first time from out of state. That morning, they had read that there was a church that had a service on the beach (not ours) and wanted to go but, for whatever reason, didn’t. Later that evening, they just decided to go and sit out on the beach as the sun would be setting. That’s when we came and interrupted their evening. 🙂

And maybe that’s part of why the setting felt so significant to me.

I didn’t choose Psalm 107:23-24 because I had some brilliant sermon strategy. I chose it because I couldn’t stop thinking about the ocean.

“Some went out on the sea in ships; they were merchants on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the LORD, his wonderful deeds in the deep.”

Standing there that evening, looking at those waves, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate Scripture.

The ocean was doing what the ocean does. The waves kept moving. The horizon seemed to stretch forever. The sky was almost impossibly beautiful. It was one of those days that felt less like weather and more like a gift. A picture-perfect evening that reminded me that there are some things only the Creator could create.

And I kept thinking about how strange it is that those of us who live here can become so accustomed to all of this.

People spend thousands of dollars to come to the place where we live. They take vacation days. They pack their cars. They book hotels and condos. They sit in traffic just to get here. They wake up early to see the sunrise over the water and stay late to watch the sun disappear.

And those of us who live here? We can drive right past it. We can get so accustomed to the beauty that we stop noticing it. We aren’t even tourists in our own backyard anymore.

I wonder if we do the same thing with God.

We can become so familiar with the stories, the songs, the Scriptures, the language and even the presence of God that we forget to be amazed. Familiarity has a way of making extraordinary things feel ordinary.

But standing in the Atlantic Ocean that evening, watching people publicly declare that they belonged to Jesus, I was reminded that there are some things that should never become ordinary.

Baptism is one of them.

The water didn’t save anybody that night.

It didn’t forgive a single sin. It didn’t make anyone righteous. It didn’t redeem anyone. It didn’t resurrect anyone.

Jesus did that.

Only Jesus.

The ocean was just water.

But the water became a statement.

When those 17 people walked into that ocean, they were publicly declaring that something had changed. They were saying that their identity was no longer defined by who they had been. They belonged to Jesus. Their old life was being buried, and they were identifying themselves with a new life in Christ.

And there was something almost poetic about making that declaration in the ocean.

Because the ocean itself is different.

It doesn’t look like everything else. It doesn’t move like everything else. You can’t see the other side of it. You can’t control it. You can’t tell the waves when to come or when to stop. You can stand in it, but you cannot master it.

You are reminded very quickly that you are not in control. And perhaps that’s one of the reasons I love the ocean so much. It has a way of putting us back in our proper place. We are surrounded by something bigger than ourselves. And that evening, the ocean became a reminder that the God who created it is still in control.

Psalm 107 says that those who went out onto the sea “saw the works of the LORD, his wonderful deeds in the deep.”

That night, I think we saw them too.

We saw 17 people baptized.

We saw three baptisms that weren’t on the schedule.

We saw two people give their lives to Jesus.

We saw one man who had never been to Ocean Isle Beach before walk into the Atlantic Ocean as a new believer.

And we saw the beauty of God’s creation surrounding all of it.

The water didn’t save anyone. But it pointed us toward the One who does. That’s what creation has been doing all along. The ocean doesn’t need to be worshiped. It was made to remind us of the One who deserves our worship. The waves don’t need our attention. They can point our attention somewhere else. And maybe that’s the invitation for those of us who live here.

Slow down.

Look again.

Don’t let the thing you’ve seen a thousand times become the thing you no longer see.

The next time you drive past the beach, stop for a minute.

Watch the waves.

Look at the horizon.

Listen to the water.

And remember that you are looking at the work of a Creator who is infinitely bigger than you, infinitely more powerful than you, and yet loves you enough to meet you in the middle of an ordinary evening on the beach.

On September 20, the Atlantic Ocean became our baptismal pool.

But more than that, it became our sanctuary.And for a few hours, surrounded by waves and people declaring their faith in Jesus, I think a lot of us remembered something we sometimes forget:

We don’t just live near something beautiful.

We live in the middle of the handiwork of God.