At Summit Church, when someone steps into the baptismal waters, they are asked two questions:
"Do you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary to save you?"
"Will you go wherever He tells you to go and do whatever He tells you to do?"
After they affirm both, they are immersed in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Going under symbolizes death and burial with Christ. Coming up symbolizes resurrection to new life (Romans 6:4). It takes about thirty seconds.
But those two questions have stayed with me for years — not because of a single moment in the water, but because I realized they were never meant to be answered just once.
A One-Time Event That Demands a Daily Answer
Most Christians think of baptism as a one-time event. And it is — like birth, you're born again once. You don't repeat it. But the posture behind baptism — the surrender it represents — is meant to be lived every single day.
Think about what those two questions are actually asking.
The first question is about belief: Do I really believe Jesus has done everything necessary? Not "Do I believe Jesus helps those who help themselves." Not "Do I believe Jesus saved me and now I need to earn the rest." Do I believe He has done everything — past tense, finished, complete — necessary to save me?
That question confronts the performance engine most of us run on. We work harder. We try to be better. We check the boxes. And somewhere underneath it all is a whisper: Maybe if I do enough, I'll finally be worthy. The first baptism question demolishes that. It says: You're not. And He already did. Stop striving.
The second question is about obedience: Will I go and do whatever He says? Not "whatever seems reasonable." Not "whatever aligns with my five-year plan." Whatever He tells me. That's a blank check written to God — the same kind of surrender Jesus modeled in Gethsemane: "Not my will, but yours, be done" (Luke 22:42).
From Baptism to Breakfast Table
It started in 2023, the day I was baptized. I stepped out of the water and something stuck — not just the memory, but the questions themselves. I started asking them the next morning. And the morning after that. Three years later, they're on my prayer list, woven into my daily rhythm. Not because I'm disciplined. Because I'm desperate.
It has quietly changed everything.
Not because the questions are magic. But because they force a daily reckoning with the two things I'm most prone to forget: that I am saved by grace alone, and that my life is not my own.
Here's what a typical morning looks like now. Before I check email, before I look at the schedule, before the chaos of five kids and a construction company kicks in, I ask myself:
Do I believe — right now, today, in the middle of whatever I'm facing — that Jesus has done everything necessary to save me?
Some mornings the answer flows easily. Other mornings, honestly, it's a fight. The lies crowd in: You're failing as a dad. You're behind at work. You snapped at Jen last night. You don't deserve grace today. And in those moments, the question isn't just a question — it's a lifeline. Because the answer doesn't depend on my performance. It depends on His finished work.
Then the second question: Will I go and do what He calls me to today?
That one scares me more. Because "yes" means I might have to have the hard conversation. It might mean I have to forgive someone who hasn't apologized. It might mean stepping into a situation where I'm completely out of my depth. It might mean sitting with someone in pain instead of fixing it.
But saying "yes" to the second question while standing on the first is what it means to walk in the Spirit. You go because you're already saved, not in order to be saved. The security of the first answer fuels the courage for the second.
Posture, Not Progress
Pastor Josh Ingram at Summit once said something about communion that applies equally to this daily practice: "If I come to the Lord's table and I don't feel like I'm bringing a need here, then maybe there's things in this world that I'm finding more satisfaction in than the hope of the gospel."
The same is true of these two questions. If I wake up and they feel routine — if I breeze through them like checking a box — that's a diagnostic. It means I've drifted. It means something else is satisfying my hunger. It means I've started running on my own strength again.
The goal isn't to answer them perfectly. The goal is to keep asking. It's posture, not progress. It's orientation, not arrival.
Think of it this way: baptism is the moment you publicly declare your allegiance. The daily questions are how you live it out in private — at the breakfast table, in the carpool line, in the boardroom, at 2 a.m. when no one is watching.
What the Posture Produces
When I started asking these questions daily, three things shifted.
First, my shame lost its grip. I spent years believing the lie that I needed to clean myself up before God could use me. The first question — Has Jesus done everything necessary? — dismantles that every morning. Yes. He has. Not partially. Not contingent on my behavior today. Everything. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
Second, my decisions got clearer. When you start the day surrendered to the second question, you stop agonizing over every fork in the road. You don't need to know the whole map. You just need to know the next step. "I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken" (Psalm 16:8). Setting Him before me means I'm oriented. And when you're oriented, the path becomes surprisingly clear.
Third, my relationships got healthier. When I stopped performing for God, I stopped performing for people. The two are more connected than we realize. Most of the ways I'd been failing as a husband and father were rooted in seeking worth from the wrong places — from results, from others' perception of me, from success. The first question re-anchors my worth every morning: I am saved. I am His. That's enough. And from that place, I can love people without needing anything back.
The Invitation
You don't need to be baptized again. But you might need to be baptized today — in your posture, if not in the water.
Try it for a week. Before your feet hit the floor, ask yourself:
Do I believe that Jesus has done everything necessary to save me?
Will I go wherever He tells me to go and do whatever He tells me to do?
Say yes. Mean it as much as you can. And then get up and walk in it.
Some days you'll crush it. Most days you won't. But the asking is the thing. The posture is the prayer. And the Spirit who met you in the water is the same Spirit who meets you at the kitchen table — faithful, persistent, and relentlessly kind.
Baptism was never just about getting wet. It was about declaring who you belong to. The two questions simply ask: Do you still mean it?
Every morning. Every day.
Yes, Lord. I believe. And I'll go.