Hi Faelynn,
Peter preached a sermon and many in the crowd were touched by the Lord and asked what they must do to be saved. Here's what Peter said.
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Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”
Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!”
So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
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At some point you'll need to get baptized out of obedience to the Lord. When you do, it's symbolic of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
When we're born of the Spirit, we're dying to ourselves our old way of living as if we died on the cross with Jesus and when we go down into the water when we're baptized we're identifying with Jesus' burial as if we were buried with him and then when we come up out of the water we're identifying with the resurrection of Jesus when He came out of the tomb and was raised to new life.
That's what happens to us in the new birth........when the Holy Spirit comes in us to stay, we've been raised to new life in the Lord. It's a beautiful picture of what Jesus has done for us.
