God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
The suffering of sickness and the suffering of persecution have this in common: they are both intended by Satan for the destruction of our faith, and governed by God for the purifying of our faith… Christ sovereignly accomplishes His loving, purifying purpose, by overruling Satan's destructive attempts. Satan is always aiming to destroy our faith; but Christ magnifies His power in weakness.
According to the Bible, baptism is fundamentally a physical sign of a spiritual reality. Matthew 28:18-20 indicates that it is for believers only, the initial step of obedience in our new life of discipleship to Christ. Romans 6:1-4 is even more specific, indicating that baptism symbolizes our death and burial with Christ as our representative head, and our spiritual resurrection with Him from the symbolic grave. Colossians 2:11-13 indicates even more specifically still that baptism is the physical representation of the spiritual circumcision of our hearts (Mark Dever and Paul Alexander).