WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE BORN AGAIN?
MY STORY
The story of my baptism. I went to church for the first time when I was 20 years of age and I became a Christian on my second visit to church. Later, after about six weeks, I was water baptised. During this baptism my pastor also encouraged me to believe for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Sort of two for the price of one!!
As they prayed for me, and the pastor and his assistant were praying in other tongues, and I was concentrating on receiving from God. Nothing much happened and I went home rather disappointed. However, I was determined to receive this gift of speaking in other tongues because I had heard a lot of other people speaking in tongues and if they had received it then I want to receive it also. So for three more weeks I was praying to God and asking for this gift. I became more and more desperate for this gift as time went by. This is what I now understand to be hunger and thirst.
Then one evening at church, the congregation were all asked to come forward to gather at the altar and just praise God and pray to Him. This was a time when everyone was praying and lifting up their voices to God at the same time. It was noisy. I was praying to God and saying, “If you don’t fill me with the Holy Spirit I’m going to die!” Due to the loudness of everyone’s prayer around me, I lost my self consciousness about speaking out, and at the same time God filled me, and out of my mouth came a rush of language! I was speaking in other tongues and with it came the joy, the elation of God’s Spirit filling me.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit we learned last week is an experience that takes place after we receive Christ as saviour, after we are born again. The disciples in John 20:22 were born again. Jesus said to the disciples, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This was their Born Again experience. Later in Luke 24:49 He told them, “Wait here in Jerusalem until you receive power.” He then immediately ascended into heaven, that being the last thing He spoke to them while on earth. 10 days later they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2).
REGENERATION
This morning, what I want to share with you, is the wonder of what takes place when you’re born again. What happens to us at the new birth?
Every human being is a spiritual creature. When we are conceived in our mother’s womb we are a spirit that is being clothed with a body. At that time and right on through our life we are a spiritual being but we are spiritually dead. That means cut off from God, having no relationship to Him. Although we exist as a spirit, because we have no relationship with God, He refers to this as dead. Though our life as a spiritual being has just begun, we are of the same nature as our parents. We are born into sin and have a nature that is rebellious and wants to sin and do wrong. Any parent will attest to this, disobedience comes naturally to a child.
Eph 2:1 And He has made you alive, who were once dead in trespasses and sins,
Eph 2:2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience;
Eph 2:3 among whom we also had our way of life in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
Eph 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love with which He loved us
Eph 2:5 (even when we were dead in sins) has made us alive together with Christ (by grace you are saved),
Eph 2:6 and has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, (NKJV)
As verse 6 says we are raised up together with Christ. Once we were dead (spiritually) now we are raised from the dead. We are now alive to God and living in relationship with Him. So what happens at the moment of salvation?
We are born again!
Joh 3:1 And there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
Joh 3:2 He came to Jesus by night and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles which you do unless God is with him.
Joh 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Joh 3:4 Nicodemus said to Him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?
Joh 3:5 Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Joh 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Joh 3:7 Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again. (NKJV)
Here Jesus likens the spiritual birth of a person their natural birth. When you are born as a baby, you become your parents son or daughter; later when you are born again you become God’s son or daughter. At the moment of salvation you are born again or born from above (as John 3:3 implies). Your human spirit which was dead in sin is regenerated. You are actually a totally new person spiritually.
THIS IS HUGE!!
Being a Christian is more than thinking differently, more than being sorry for your sins, more than taking on a new philosophy, more than changing your attitude, more than deciding to be different, IT IS BECOMING A NEW PERSON!
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come! (AMP)
When this happens, it is the Holy Spirit who does the work. We are born of the spirit. We are a totally new person spiritually, by the action of the Holy Spirit. The old person has died, so we bury them in the waters of baptism, and rise to newness of life.
Your new spirit is not only entirely free from sin and the nature of sin but it is recreated in the image of God.
2Pe 1:4 through which He has given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, so that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Now that you are born again the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within you. He is resident within your life as a co-resident in you.
Rom 8:9 But you are not living the life of the flesh, you are living the life of the Spirit, if the [Holy] Spirit of God [really] dwells within you [directs and controls you]. But if anyone does not possess the [Holy] Spirit of Christ, he is none of His [he does not belong to Christ, is not truly a child of God]. [Rom. 8:14.] (AMP)
1Co 6:19 Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received [as a Gift] from God? You are not your own, (AMP)
When you are born again, you are born of the Holy Spirit, and He dwells within you.
This is what happened to the disciples in John 20:22. However Jesus still asked them to tarry, to wait here in Jerusalem to wait for the promise of the Father, which you have heard of me. This is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is a later experience and it is for power; power to witness, as we learned last week.
The main reason we need the baptism of the Holy Spirit is that we would become a witness for Jesus. Every Christian needs this power of the Holy Spirit to become an effective witness for Jesus. It is our calling now, to go into all the world and preach the gospel and reach lost people. We can’t do it in our strength and Jesus wanted to equip us with the power to do it so He asked the disciples – wait for the power.
Act 1:8 But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency, and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.
This morning, will you come and receive Jesus as your saviour – be born again?
This morning will you come and receive power as the Promise of the Father comes upon you – be baptised in the Holy Spirit?
In the next two weeks I will speak more about tongues and what it’s for and why we need that. Today come and receive power.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Can you remember and share the moment when you were born again?
- Did anyone experience the “light going on” when you were born again? That experience of seeing for the first time the reality of what God has done for you?
- Read 2 Cor 5:17 and discuss how that can be applied to your life.
- Now that the Holy Spirit is living within you, what does that mean to you?
- How comfortable do you feel about talking to the Holy Spirit?
craigmanderson 