Quote from the audio message, The New Birth. Life is in Christ. Life is received by an experience. Life comes through a birth. Natural life comes through natural birth. Spiritual life comes through a spiritual birth. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again” (John 3:7, KJV). The Holy Spirit, like the wind, moves in, invisible in Himself, but changing my desires, my attitudes, my reactions, my ambitions. Giving me godly desires. Making me delight in that which is pure. Giving me a love for the Word of God. Making the Scripture alive and real to me. This was true in my experience over thirty years ago. I was a philosopher, studying the Scriptures as a work of philosophy. Seeking to reason my way to the truth about God and about life. And the more I reasoned the less I understood. I had read and studied hundreds of books. But the Bible baffled me. It was the only book I read that did not make sense to me. I could not analyze it, I could not dissect it, I could not find out what its real message was. And in the end I came to the limits of my own ability to understand and to reason. And I was brought to a place of definite face-to-face confrontation with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. And I ceased my own efforts, I ceased my struggles, I yielded up my ambitions, and I allowed Jesus Christ to come in. I had at that time no doctrinal knowledge of salvation. I couldn’t quote verses of Scripture. I didn’t have evangelical terminology about being saved, or being born again. But the most tremendous, total revolution took place within me. My whole way of thinking, my desires, my attitudes, my pleasures, my ambitions were changed. I stood back, in a certain sense, and viewed the change that had taken place within me. I was both astonished and scared. It was the most revolutionary thing that ever happened in my life. It was not primarily an emotional experience. It went deeper than my emotions. It was the yielding of my heart and will and life to Christ made real by the Holy Spirit. I cannot emphasize too strongly that it’s not an intellectual study of Christianity. It’s a vital contact with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 19:00:00 +0000
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