John 3: 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
The word again means from above. The Father has to draw us; the Holy Spirit has to convict us of sin and our need for repentance and reveal Jesus as Savior, and overshadow us and command light to shine in our spirit which is the impartation of the seed (word-D.N.A) of God in our spirit.
The Holy Spirit will not impart the seed of God unless we say yes to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our life.
We have to surrender our will to God; salvation is of God from start to finish.
Just because you pray a sinner’s prayer does not, mean you got saved. God can use the sinner’s prayer, but I know a lot of people who would pray that prayer, but their spirit never got quickened.
The preacher would say now, repeat this after me.
Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior.
And then the preacher will say now you are saved? The preacher does not know, unless he can see in the spirit.
The Holy Spirit has to overshadow a person like He did Mary.
Luke 1: 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power dynamis-miracle working power) of the Most High (Highest, most elevated, loftiest will overshadow (to envelop in a haze of brilliance) you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God
When a person is born from above, the Holy Spirit comes upon them and quickens their spirit. And their spirit gets saved. You can actually see a change in their eyes.
Eph4: 7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says,“When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives,And He gave gifts to men.” 9 (Now this expression, he “Has ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth?
Jesus decended into hell and when he was resurrected before he ascended into heaven, he appeared to his disciples and breathed into them the Holy Spirit. And they were born from above.
John 20: 19 So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “bPeace be with you.” 20 And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” 22 And when He had said this, He breathed on (into) them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
This is different from being baptized in Holy Spirit. To be baptized in the Holy Spirit is to be immersed in God, He fills the whole of your being, not just quickening your spirit.
Acts 1: 4 Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for bwhat the Father had promised, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with (in-remaining in-intimate union, onesss of thoughts and feelings) the Holy Spirit bnot many days from now.”
Acts 2: 1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing (a moving influence) wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled (to be wholly influenced) with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance
To enter into a relationship with God, It is absolutely necessary that we be born again. Unless our spirit is born of His, we have no common life.
To enter into an intimate relationship with God we need to be filled with the Spirit.
When we were born the first time, we received a human life from our parents. We were born a baby, and we began to grow and become aware of our human existence. That which is born of flesh is flesh.
That which is born of Spirit is spirit. We must be born a second time, we must be born of God. When we are born the second time we receive a divine kind of life from our Heavenly Father which is called eternal life. We are born a baby, and we begin to grow and become aware of the presence of the Lord, the life of God and develop in it.
The life of God grows inside us, as we learn how to tune into it, as we learn how to become aware of it, as we learn how to appropriate it, how to abide in it and move in it.
Just like we received a human life from our parent’s, we must receive a divine life from God the Father. We receive the life of God through the word of God.
The word of God is living. It contains His eternal life and spirit. When God reveals His word to us we experience the life and spirit that is contained in it.
When God reveals His word to us, He commands light to shine in our heart, it is the light of His life, our spiritual eyes and ears are opened. The entrance of His word produces the light of His life. To perceive in the spirit is to experience His life. Revelation is the inflow of His Spirit opening our spiritual eyes to see things through His perspective, to open our spiritual ears to hear His voice.
Our spiritual sight starts out by our perceiving the unseen realm. It becomes real to us as the revelation in our spirit begins to flow and we begin to be aware of the thoughts and emotions of God flowing into us. This is the kingdom of God within.
As revelation begins to flow into our spirit, then as our imagination begins to open up in our soul we begin to get pictures on the screen of our mind.
As we begin to experience the different senses of our spirit, soul and body where they are open and flowing from the inside out which takes time to develop, we can come to the place where we can actually begin to see the unseen realm around us, this is the fruit of being born again, where we begin to grow up into a fully mature male or female son of God.
There are basically four stages of growth with God mentioned in the bible. We begin a baby and grow up into a fully mature son. The lord relates to us differently in each stage of our growth, just like a natural father relates to his natural children as they are growing up.
We have a relationship with God in each stage of our growth. He relates to us when we are a baby and we carry this relationship with us into the next stage of our development.
There are four main words in the Greek describing our growth in God and each word means something completely different in our relationship with Him.
As we grow up to be a fully mature son, we are still going to be a much loved child. We will always have things that we are learning that we have never done before, so we look to the Lord for help. In each new situation we start out as a much loved child, and we go through the different stages in the development of growing in each situation.
In the development of our growth in God we will still feel like a child in the new things that we go through. We feel like a child in the context of who God is for us in this situation.
There are four main stages in the Greek of our growth in God. The first one is the baby stage; the word baby in the Greek is Nepios-strong’s number-3516. We are a baby until we come off of milk.
The next stage is called Paidion -strong’s number-3813 and this is like a young infant or little child.
The Teknon-strong’s number- 5043 is the older child through adolescence, going through youth to a young man, and the word is also used as descendants-offspring.
The final stage is Huios5206 which is a fully mature son.
When we are a baby we are totally dependent, we do not know how to do anything in the spirit, so we have to learn how to see, how to hear, how to talk, how to walk with God. A walk with God is our participating in the divine nature so that all our activities are the result of the Spirit of God living and moving through us.
When we are a baby, every day is about receiving something. To grow up into his image we are going to have to receive a lot from God. Every day we should experience new revelation, and impartation.
Revelation must not be just knowledge in our mind, but something that we absorb in our spirit and soul so that we experience the divine nature. To be conformed to his image and to move in his fullness requires growing in the divine nature and receiving the gifts of His Spirit.
To move into his fullness and abundance, we are going to have to be given a measure of the fruit and abilities of His Spirit to begin to move and develop in.
Every day we have to receive something from God and we have to receive it consciously. It has to flow into us, where we become conscious of it and then it has to flow out of us to the world around us. God likes to give us something every day so that it begins to builds up in us.
What we are learning as a babe in Christ is how to get all of our needs met, not just blessings when we are doing o.k., but deliverance when we are not doing o.k.
The Christian life is impossible to live on a human level. As a babe in Christ we are powerless in and of ourselves to do the will of God. We are totally dependent upon our heavenly Father. Our growth in God is a participation in his divine nature.
Jesus becomes to us whatever we need. As we absorb His Spirit into us, we partake of His divine nature. As a babe we are learning how to drink the milk of His Spirit, how to get His eternal life flowing into us.
1 Corinthians 1: 29 so that no man may boast before God. 30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, 31 so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord
As a babe our spirit has come alive to God and desires to do His will, but our soul-flesh desires what is contrary. So we are learning how to get all our needs met from the inside-out.
God becomes to us a fountain of living waters, to meet all our innermost needs and also to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. As we seek first his righteousness, all the things the world seeks independently of him are added to us.
Our human righteousness is filthy in comparison to His righteousness, so we are learning to no longer have any confidence in the flesh. Jesus becomes to us righteousness.
His righteousness flows into us, where we experience his thoughts and feelings and attitudes concerning any given standard (a level of quality that is accepted as the norm).
He becomes to us wisdom, so that the thought of the pleasure of sin become foolish. And we look to him for satisfaction, instead of looking to the things of the world for enjoyment.
We do not become a new person by changing our behavior. Our obedience is a participation in his nature. We discover the person we already are in Christ, and then that identity begins to flow into us.
As a babe we are learning how to see who we are in Christ, so that as we grow we can begin to step into that identity.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us- this is called placement. We have been placed in Christ. Every day the Holy Spirit is going to show us something more about what this place looks like, about whom we are in Christ and how God sees us in him.
Religion says it is all about your behavior. The father says it is not about your behavior, it is about your identity. This is who you are; I have placed you in Christ. This is your placement. I have put you in this place and what we are learning is how to partner with God by abiding with him in this place, so that we begin to experience a flow of His Spirit within us.
Placement is where we recognize we have been put in a very specific position as a gift from God. He has put us in this place and as the eyes of our heart begin to be opened we begin to experience it inside of us.
Our spirituality is the responsibility of the Holy Spirit. God is the one who causes the growth. The Holy Spirit is responsible for bringing us revelation of Jesus. He takes what is of Jesus and reveals it to us.
The Holy Spirit is the source of our spirituality; we take responsibility for drinking of it and responding to it. Our responsibility is to respond to the Spirit of God working in us.
We struggle because we try to do what only God in us can do; we are living from our soul (self) and not our spirit-filled with God.
God has put us in Christ and when he died on the cross we died with him. Dead people don’t get worried; they don’t get angry because they are dead. We have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer the old self who lives, but the Spirit of Christ in us. What we are learning is how to get out of ourselves, so that we are aware of the Spirit of God in us and respond to his moving in us. As a babe we are learning how to cast the whole of our care once and for all upon Him.
When God looks at us He doesn’t see anything wrong with us, because everything that was wrong with us, He already put upon Jesus on the cross. When God looks at us the only thing that He sees is what is missing from our experience of Him and He is totally committed to giving us that experience.
God has given us the Holy Spirit as a comforter to help us through this process. Every day we need to be discovering something new about the Lord and then partake of that aspect of His nature and His Spirit
When our spirit is newly born in God, what are we learning? What does God want us to learn as a baby in the first stage of relationship with Him? He wants us to learn how to be secured in who God is for us.
He wants us to learn how to get our needs met in God. God becomes to us what we need. We are learning how to respond to things in Him.
The Lord meets all our need with His riches in glory. This means all our needs. We are learning how to look to the lord to meet our need; we are learning how to have our needs met in God.
If we are struggling with something, what is our need? We first of all need to learn how to be at peace. Our need is to learn how to be with God in this situation. Life is going to present us with a need, and God says I would love to meet that need, and this is what we are learning, how to let God meet our need.
What we are learning in our first stage of relationship with God, is how to be confident in the love of God, how to be secured in whom He is for us. We are learning how to get all our needs met in God. God meets our needs because of who he is, a loving father. He does not meet our needs according to our behavior.
As we grow up in the Lord, God gives us more responsibility. He begins to give us the desires of our heart. Our needs and our desires are two different things. He rewards us as we diligently seek him and honor him, but when we are babies he always meets our needs, so this is what we are learning. We are learning how to trust in his goodness.
As a baby every day our primary thing is to learn how to receive. Every single day we are going to be faced with this lesson.
There is a whole lot of provision that we have not yet received. If we are going to be the person that God wants us to be in the natural realm, then there are things that we need to receive from Him to enable us to be that. There are things that we haven’t received yet and things that we haven’t inherited yet.
We are learning how to be accepted in the beloved. We are learning the joy and the wonder of being in Jesus. We are learning how to let God love us.
The baby stage is all about enjoyment. We are not really going to do anything for God yet; God does not want babies doing things for Him. He wants babies learning how to receive, learning how to enjoy.
This first stage of being in Christ is all about enjoyment. It is all about loving His presence. It is about the revelation of our being accepted in the beloved. It is about learning how to rejoice and give thanks, to be grateful. It is to learn how to be continually happy in whom God is for us.
We need to learn the lessons of the Father’s delight, he delights in his babies. We need to learn the lessons of how the Father sees us, he sees us perfect in Christ. We need to learn the lessons of how He wants to be with us, because what we are learning in this season of our life will become a part of us as we begin to grow up into adult. We are learning Christ.
We are learning the delight and the affection of God for us. We are learning how to relax in His presence. We are learning how to be joyful in all circumstances. We are learning how to abide in his presence.
We are learning dependency upon God, learning to receive; we are learning the delight that God has in us, the affections of God for us. We are learning how to be delighted in God; we are learning his nature, that he is good and kind and merciful. We are learning to embrace grace as a lifestyle. Learning these lessons is foundational to the person that we are becoming in the Lord.
As a new born believer we are learning to see differently, we are learning how to tune into the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ empowers us into a new way of thinking about ourselves. God has a way of thinking that releases trust and faith. He sees something different than what we see and he thinks about it differently than we think about it.
When our spirit becomes alive to God we begin to see things. When we are in Christ we are transferred into a kingdom where we see things, this is what the kingdom of light means, and we begin to see things in a new light.
We are seeing who we are now and who we are going to become next. We are seeing what God wants to provide for us. We are seeing the favor of God, the grace of God, and we are thinking about it in exactly the same way that He does.
Our thinking, our perspective, our language all has to grow into this place of delight, into this place of the goodness and kindness of God. We are learning how to praise God, we are learning how to give thanks, and we are learning how to bless the Lord.
What we are learning is that God has made provision for us and we need to start relaxing and enjoy it. We are no longer on our own, we have a helper.
As a baby we learn how to drink of the Spirit so that we encounter him. It is in the moments of our encounters with Him, that we learn how to think like He thinks. We need to learn how to wait upon God, until we can begin to sense His Spirit.
We are learning that everything negative about us has been crucified with Christ on the cross. He wants us to give Him our fear, that bitterness, that resentment. He died for it, He paid the price for it, so in reality it belongs to Him and He done away with it.
Insanity is all the moments when we have been anxious, worried, discontent, bitter, depressed and so on. Insanity is rooted in fear, of not having our needs met. Until we learn how to drink of the Spirit, we are not in our right mind, the mind of Christ.
We should not be having all these negative thoughts anymore; they are manifestations of the self that died on the cross with Jesus.
When we are receiving revelation from God we are being restored to sanity, and the Lord is smiling on us, we feel the light of His countenance. It is like being saved all over again. It is the Lord embracing us and kissing us.
Being restored to sanity is the renewal of our mind. The Lord will look into our eyes and say, my beloved, if you keep taking the old stuff back, you can never be the person I want you to be.
The joy that was set before Jesus that enabled Him to endure the cross was that He knew that through the work of the cross, He could take from us all the things that were killing us. He could take every negative out of our life.
That He could remove from us any possibility of our being anxious or worried ever again. That we never would have to be bitter or angry or resentful again, He could take all those things away from us and we would never have to experience them again.
That He would totally set us free from that way of thinking and seeing and speaking and living so that we could be continually filled with His joy, which is strength and power. The lack of power over our thought life is our dilemma. And we are learning how to think and feel by drinking of His Spirit.
God is calling us to put off all the things that are negative in our lives so that God can accelerate our growth. The peace of God accelerates us; the joy of the Lord accelerates us. We should find joy in everything, because it is an accelerant, it means we grow faster, we grow up quickly. Love is an accelerant.
When we know that we are accepted in the beloved, something happens to us, something changes in us, and we start to relax. We do not have to prove that we are worthy, and we do not have to live as though we were unworthy if we are not doing well. We know that we are accepted in the beloved.
God meets all our needs in Christ, whatever they might be, so that when we need Him the most, He is right there to meet the need.
But God is calling us to grow up, Paul rebuked the Corinthians because they were acting as human being, instead of new creations in Christ, He called them babies.