Once Born, Forever Born

"I was born again, “according to the will of our God and Father” (Galatians 1:4)!

He is the perfect Father, who sought me out while I was His mortal enemy, deep in sin. If I am saved by grace alone, then “it is no longer by works” (Romans 11:6). He put the seed of the gospel in my conscience, gave me over to conviction of sin, and led me to the Cross of Christ. I confessed with my mouth and believed in my heart....and the word says “I will be saved” (Romans 10:9). My sins were washed “white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18); I have confidence in today to “come boldly unto the throne of grace”” (Hebrews 4:16); the Spirit is given to me as a promise, as a “seal of ownership” (2 Corinthians 1:22) and as confirmation of my enduring “sonship” (Romans 8:15). The Son ever lives to intercede for me before a willing Father, “Who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son”. (John 3:16).

All I need to do I glance at Him in faith, inasmuch as the Israelites were healed of the deadly vipers’ poison with one glance at the bronze snake lifted up in Sinai (Numbers 21:8-9). He adorns me with grace gifts and convicts me in my conscience – from the inside out – of a life that pleases the Father. From hereon, all God’s dealings in my life are His fatherly dealings. Even the tough things are His discipline in me, “that I might share in His holiness" (Heb 12:10). God picked His fight with Jesus on the Cross, and now He has picked me as a son in Christ. The Lord does not change His mind. He has sworn on oath that I am His.

My salvation is a flawless, eternal work of the Trinity, into which I have been swept up. Just as no baby chooses of itself to be born, when to be born, and to whom to be born....so I was born into sin and darkness, but by the eternal foreknowledge of the Father, I was “born from above” into the Kingdom of light!

If Nicodemus struggled to understand how he could “enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born” (John 3:4), how could I believe I could enter heaven’s womb a second time again to be born again....again? I am born from above, once for all time; the Cross has slain me and raised up the new Christ-life within...I am born again of imperishable seed…. “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23 )

I am a son. Even a worldly father would not disown his son for his sins – would he tear up his birth certificate or disavow his title? God is the perfect Father! And now, I have the new Spirit, genetic, name, family and Father, so I may grow up “by the Spirit” over the course of my lifetime. Having begun by the Spirit, I need to continue by the Spirit. But my status as a son remains unchanged. If any natural child started to believe they had lost their father’s favor - that they were on a long and painful road towards being rejected forever as a child - it would produce all manner of bad psychologies and behavior. The child would work to gain favor and approval incessantly. He would strive to show he was a “worthy son”. It would be a sad time for the parents, watching their son driven ever more by insecurities multiplying from such a core fear of rejection.

I am a son – I have not worked to gain my sonship. No servant can become a son through serving. The fact that a son chooses to serve with his Father does not add to his sonship – it adds to the quality and depth of his knowledge of the Father, and the quality of his life....but it does not define his status as son."

(excerpt from essay, "The Perils of Once Saved Probably Saved", Nick Davis 2009)

Goodness Gracious

We try hard to change things, so hard that if they change we take the credit. We just don't see the evidence of Grace when we live in prayerless perfectionism. It is at the same time egotistical and exhausting. God is perfect but not a perfectionist. We see this in scripture, in the frail lives of those who wanted to believe. God opened Sarah’s womb in spite of Abraham fathering Ishmael. God sent Moses to Egypt in spite of his reluctance and Israel’s grumbling, and God delivered them in spite of their fears. God raised up heirs for Jacob in spite of his deviousness. God crowned David with favor in spite of his bloodied hands. God sent prophets to Judah in spite of her stubbornness. God sent His Son to the world in spite of its hatred. So now, in Whose hands is the deliverance of your life and your church? If my life is my hands, I am destroyed. If the church is in my hands, all is lost. Living under grace, is expecting favor in spite of our weakness, in spite of our past sins. Yes, it is about responding to God, but no-one gets it bang on.

Esse

"When I radiate rightness

Full of incredible light-ness

People hear Christ-ness

But are left Christ-less"

I realize now more than ever what a difference there is between Christ and doctrine. Being Bible-based and teaching-centred is no guarantee of the softness of heart and firmness of faith that delights God. It generally produces the opposite - superficial relationships, pride and disqualification. Books on marriage do not, at their final chapter, convert your marriage to greatness. Love does. The Bible does not make us great Christians - Christ does, who is the Word of God abiding in us.

I realize it is far easier for me to pursue moral rightness than holiness. It is easier to live than to die. Christian moralism still allows me my private sins; my anger; my pocket idols. It is not too hard to find a church that will celebrate me for my gifts and brilliance, above my fellowship with the Spirit.

We reject the lie that holiness can come through observing the law - we are too wise for that one - but then we can make laws out of grace easily - as easily as we can preach about the gospel without preaching the gospel. As the puritan Thomas Watson put it, "There is as much difference between heavenly comforts and earthly, as between a banquet that is eaten and one that is painted on the wall."

There's no getting away from it (praise God) - the man is his message. This gives us over to the liberty of responding to Jesus in our hearts. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I care not whether the man be the apostle Paul or the church janitor, this is the truth. No-one is blessed by a man's rightness. All are blessed by God's righteousness in Christ, finding a home in you and me.

As the law produced animosity towards God and men, so now Christian moralism produces prayer apathy and private scorekeeping. We will be prayerless without private passions to God. Desire and desperation - the stuff of Real Life - drives us to God. Moral rectitude keeps us in neutral. It was the reality of David's fears and desires - coupled with his belief that God was real and rewarding - that drove him to worship and petition. Doctrinal and social rightness is the reward in itself...to have proved myself more right than my fellows. It is the antithesis of love, of self-emptying love.

John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Evidence

Christians are material witnesses to Christ’s death and resurrection, through the indwelling of the Spirit and a first hand testimony of the life of God in them. In fact, the indwelling Presence makes them more than witnesses – it makes them material evidence to a real historical event that occurred 2000 years ago. Sin is the devil’s attempt to tamper with the evidence; to taint it so as to make it inadmissible in the courts of the Lost. In spite of this, the Blood of Christ means that a Christian can be re-admitted as material evidence of the enduring and ongoing work of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Nick

THe Children of the Desolate Woman

Only when the Holy Spirit enters a person can there be Life. Only when a man enters a woman can there be conception. Only when a preacher embodies his message can there be revelation. Only when a bee climbs into a flower can there be pollination.

So then, how much life, conception, revelation or pollination can we expect in a church movement built only on associations and convocations? Without the divine and human intimacy of the Book of Acts, all you are left with are empty acts. My contention is that true intimacy between God given friends, ministers and churches need be felt in our bowels, not merely our year planners.

Jesus washed feet, wept over death, was moved with compassion and indwelt his relationships with persevering love. He discipled his friends by imprinting his life on them, by leading the way and taking the fall. So too, we are not ministers and apostles if we merely preach, travel and counsel. - these alone make us professional churchmen, no more. True ministers have entered the kingdom through many hardships, carry men on their hearts and suffer for the sake of the elect.

When I'm Surveyed (Nehemiah's not Dead)

My life is a castle and the castle’s cast down:

The walls all collapsed and the turrets half-crumbled;

The singing well silent; the mighty all humbled.

This castle in ruins, with stones all around.

Nehemiah’s weeping, His tears full of pain:

He’s heard of my plight, He’s heard of my pillage,

He’s seen visions of my destroyed little village.

Nehemiah’s tears will me whole once again.

Nehemiah’s coming and coming with zeal:

He’s coming to build up, to raise and reverse -

His envy flows over, and so does His purse.

Nehemiah’s promise is an oath with a seal.

Nehemiah’s circling this city of smoke:

This shell of a husk of a skin of a town

Where Black was the colour and Dark wore the crown.

Nehemiah’s angry, His passion’s provoked.

Nehemiah’s entered this city of shame:

He’s working and building and surveying it all;

His eye’s on this hamlet He’s raising up tall.

Nehemiah’s grounded and founded his Fame.

Nehemiah’s temple is cleared of its ash:

His songs and His Scribe are both well installed -

My heart, mind and soul are as priests now enthralled.

Nehemiah smiles, His flaming eyes flash!

Nehemiah’s come at the Father’s command;

Nehemiah’s invaded this town and its lands

NRD

Challengeability

Some are too challengable: the weak consciences. Some are only challengable after a time: the independent consciences. Some are unchallengable: the hard consciences. A few are challengable in Realtime by God and friends: the soft consciences. Be soft

Pliable Parenting

If the kindness of God leads us to repentance, this surely is central to how we raise our children. The law was put in place as a guardian only to the Jews. We must not confuse loving correction with the heresy of preparationism, that being a misguided belief that putting the moral law on someone is a necessary preparation to receiving the gospel. Jesus was the full embodiment of the gospel - to adults and to children. Kindness includes correction and rebuke, but always from a kind heart, seeing danger further down the road. Religion has set more children on a pathway of rebellion than all the forces of hell.

Missing Fruit

Kind words are rarely clever;

clever talk is seldom kind, still

he builds the little platforms for

the windmills of his mind.

Those mills use up some yardage

in a yard with little space,

as he crowds his own dominion

with things that hide his face.

Such things are not organic -

those organs of success

that play their faulty music

inside his hollow chest.

“The sides must be protected!” -

at the centre all is quiet.

So truth is most neglected

except where he can buy it.

[Exception is the norm now

except for once or twice

when through the mental storms now

he glimpsed a Great Suffice]

He started planting seedlings,

that seedless, saltless sage,

who traded Kind for Clever and

sold Wisdom for a wage.

The wise man he is fruitful

and fruitfulness is peace;

he knows his yard needs yardage

for bushes, plants and trees.

He breaks up all that’s fallow;

he chops up all that’s “good”

which doesn’t pass inspection

by the Inspector of Good Food.

So inspect your own dominion,

examine all that’s there

and ask yourself this question,

“Is it foul or is it fair?”

Do not protect your shadow

where the old branch is so bare.

Do not pretend to Plenty

with plastic pineapples and pears.

Change your life direction,

reject the Clever for the Kind;

don’t live on in your dissection,

In your chants of “Hey, I’m fine”

There is a plough and ripper

There are more seeds to find

To help replace the Failure

Of the windmills of your mind