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THE
BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?
EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?
GOD
- MAN
Is Jesus really God?
RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?
SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?
TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.
SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.
FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?
GUIDANCE
How does God guide?
REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.
BORN
AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?
SAVING
FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven
ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?
TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?
MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.
THE
CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the
new millennium.
PURPOSE
How
can I find a great purpose for living?
IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of
God.
SELF-ESTEEM
How
can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.
LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.
THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.
Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.
The results of being born again
The results of being born again The immediate results of spiritual rebirth can vary from person to person. We are all unique individuals and God deals with us according to our needs. For some there is an immediate sense of being forgiven. Oswald Smith, whose church in Toronto has sent out and supported hundreds of missionaries around the world, tells of his conversion at a meeting conducted by the evangelist R. A. Torrey:
Suddenly the tears began to flow and I knew without doubt that my sins were forgiven and I was a child of God for all eternity. There wasn't any particular excitement, no sudden surge, just the quiet confidence that I would never have to wonder again about where I would spend eternity. I now had God and he had me.
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"I felt like loving everybody. It was like on a hot day and you are dirty and take a shower, only I felt the shower was on the inside" |
A teenager, who had been well hooked into the drug scene, but who was converted during a Billy Graham Crusade in Minnesota, described his experience:
I felt like loving everybody. It was like on a hot day and you are dirty and take a shower, only I felt the shower was on the inside and it was even more than just getting the mud washed away, it was like something else came in.
For some it is a sense of peace or joy. Philip Crothall, who has been working among Maori and Polynesian families in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn, wrote in Challenge Weekly of his conversion:
The immediate result was peace, and later a new confidence, joy and love for both God and other people.
Sir George Williams, founder of the YMCA, as a 16-year-old apprentice in London, was deeply moved by the gospel at a church service. He returned to the shop and knelt in prayer and submission. He later recalled:
I cannot describe to you the joy and peace which flowed into my soul when I first saw that the Lord Jesus had died for my sins, and that they were forgiven.
Russian author and intellectual, Marcinkowski, spoke similarly of "the deep indescribable quietness of eternity" and wrote, "an inexpressible joy brightened my soul."
For some it is a sense of being loved. Susan Hainsworth ran away from home at 15 and got involved in the drink and drug scene. She attempted suicide three or four times. In Challenge Weekly, she told of her experience the day she decided to follow Jesus:
I remember walking out of the house and looking at God's creation like scales had just fallen off my eyes. Everything seemed so clean and pure...The depression and hopelessness, that I had felt for so long, Jesus lifted off me...He enveloped me in his pure love, so different than the "love" of physical relationships. His love I know I can be sure of.
For others it is the sense of finding meaning and purpose to life. Actress Colleen Townsend Evans, on the verge of finding success when offered the "big buildup" by a head producer in Hollywood, tells how she found instead real purpose in Jesus. She found him in a quiet undramatic way at a Christian Conference:
I went for a walk and said, "God, if all this is true, if this is the answer and if you are the way, I just want to give my life to you...everything." There were no voices, no visions, but that was the beginning. I walked along the road that morning with a totally new life. Everything looked different, things smelled different, life was different, because I had found the meaning of life in the person of Jesus Christ.
Quite common is the experience of seeing the world of nature, God's creation, through new eyes. D. L. Moody, the American evangelist, said of his experience:
I thought the old sun shone a good deal brighter than it ever had before - I thought that it was just smiling upon me; and as I walked out upon Boston Common and heard the birds singing in the trees, I thought they were all singing a song to me. Do you know, I fell in love with the birds. I had never cared for them before. It seemed to me that I was in love with all creation.
Jonathan Edwards, styled by one critic as that "flinty-minded Calvinist", told of a similar feeling:
The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were a calm, sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost everything. God's excellence, his wisdom, his purity, and love seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees, in the water and all nature.
However, the presence or absence of such feelings is not the vital thing. One needs more than just feelings in order to maintain a commitment to Christ, especially when difficulties arise. Often awareness of the changes involved does not come till some way down the track. Singer Cliff Richard uses the following helpful illustration:
When you cross the border from Switzerland to Italy the scenery doesn't become Italian - it's still alpine in fact. It is only as you go further into Italy that slowly the snow gets left behind and the sun gets warmer and it becomes obvious you are in a different country. The border represents the moment of decisive change from one nation to another, but only as you press on into the new country can you expect to discover just how different it really is.
As a person presses on in the Christian life and seeks to grow in faith - by using the means he has given us such as reading the Bible, worship, fellowship with other believers, and daily seeking to serve God in the ordinary things of life - then changes will become apparent. The things one can expect to occur are a new love for the Bible as it becomes God's personal message to you; a growing love for God and for others; and a growing awareness of God's guiding hand in the circumstances of life. Theologian Jim Packer, in his book Keep in Step with the Spirit, says, "the only proof of past conversion is present convertedness"!
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"The
only proof of past conversion is present convertedness" |
Perhaps one of the greatest evidences of spiritual rebirth is the growing awareness of the reality of the spiritual world and the presence of Christ. Robert Laidlaw, founder of Farmers Trading Company in Auckland and author of the booklet The Reason Why, which has sold millions of copies around the world, wrote:
If I had to say in one sentence what my experience of being a Christian is, it would be quite simply a continuous consciousness of the presence of Christ in my life.
Paul describes this experience as being "in Christ", a phrase he uses 164 times in his letters in the New Testament. He also describes it as having the "eyes of your heart" enlightened (Ephesians 1:18), or as having the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" shining into our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6).
In tropical waters lives the anableps fish. This fish has two pupils in each eye, an upper-storey pupil and a lower-storey pupil. The upper pupil is focused to see clearly in air while the lower pupil focuses in water. This fish can lie on the surface and see clearly in both worlds. Jesus called the Holy Spirit "the Spirit of truth". If he has come into our lives, he will begin to give us second sight. We begin to see things as they really are. As Paul puts it, "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18). We begin to get a proper perspective on both worlds, the world of the spirit and the world of material things; the relationship between them and the relative value of each.
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What does it mean to be converted and born again
The necessity of being born again
Popular substitutes for spiritual rebirth
The results of being born again
