CoffeeCream wrote: luns101 wrote:Nothing that this world offered me through education, philosophy, counseling, etc. was able to produce that change in my life. I know for a fact that my life was changed supernaturally. I don't expect you to believe it, but I know from trying to change on my own that it was pointless. I was changed by God...not through my own efforts.
This is what I'm talking about. I've talked to people who say they were in trouble with the law, but then they somehow
"found" Jesus. They almost never explain to me what they mean by that, but I can see the change in how they act towards other people. How does someone accomplish this?
Well, it’s not something that you accomplish. All you need to do is ask for it. God is the one who does it; He’s the only one who can. This goes back to what you observed in John Ch. 3. It is what happens when one is born anew, or from above.
When you are born to your earthly parents, you belong to them, share their characteristics, and become part of their family. You have the right to live in their house, and they have the responsibility to feed and protect you, and to guide and discipline you.
It’s the same when you are “born again” to your heavenly Father. A “new creation,” a new you, is born and lives in you, which shares His characteristics, and you belong to Him, become part of his family. He becomes your provision and protection and begins to guide and discipline you.
It’s that “regeneration” you talked about that is necessary in order to “see” or understand the kingdom of God. The new creation is part of God’s kingdom, so through it he can begin to show you things that make no sense to the eyes, ears, and mind of the flesh.
It also brings about changes on the outside. Everybody’s different. I know people who immediately got freed from addiction to heroin, cocaine, or alcohol, no cold turkey and no withdrawal symptoms. Others walked away from other life-controlling habits without a desire to go back. For others it’s a gradual thing. Getting freed took, or is still taking, discipline and choices, and treatment, but always they know God has been with them, helping and strengthening them. Either way, as the new creation grows, behavior changes more and more in line with God’s Kingdom.
That is what Jesus bought for us with his sacrifice on the cross. As in the story I told with the judge and his daughter, he required the penalty, then paid it himself. The judge had to leave the bench and take off his robe. The Son had to leave heaven and put on humanity. All my sins had to be forgiven before I could come into the presence of a perfect God and be changed.
That’s how you “accomplish” it. You ask for God to forgive all your sins, because of what Jesus did for you at the cross, and you ask him to come and live inside of you, and make you a new person. Romans 10:9,10: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, for with the heart one believes and so is made righteous (innocent) and with the mouth he confesses and so is saved.” Is this a “leap of faith” as some say? The word for “believe” here has not so much the sense of a mental thing, as a choice to trust or rely on something.
I look at it this way. Say there’s a pond near you where you like to skate in the winter. In the early months, you stop by from time to time to put your toe on the ice and put a little weight on it. You hear the cracking and retract your toe. The day you don’t hear any, you cautiously put down your whole foot. No noise? The other foot. Hear the cracking? Scramble off and go home. Finally the day comes when you take a few steps on the ice, maybe throw a rock in the middle and there’s no cracking. Then you go home and get your skates. Your first few minutes skating are tentative, but as time goes by and the ice holds you up, you gain confidence.
Is that logical proof that you won’t fall in? Not really. Is it blind faith? Not that either. It’s experiential evidence. It’s been 32 years since I first stepped out on that pond, almost twice as long as I had lived before it. Though I’m still not much of a skater and spend a lot of time on my butt, I can tell you that this pond is frozen solid and will hold you up. But my saying it isn’t going to give you confidence. You’ve got to experience it for yourself. Psalm 34:8: “O taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him.”
If you want more help in doing that you can PM me if you want.
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