I found on Facebook zillions of sarcasm about the born-again experience. Someone said it was demonic. He cited the extra-biblical Pentecostal experience where the congregants fell to the floor and did crazy things. But it is not the born-again experience we are examining here.
I heard about Christ as our Advocate or Lawyer to the Father. What is it? Christ is not only our Savior from sin but our Helper or Advocate in this life. You are like being pulled out from the mire of sin by our Savior, but He did not just stop from there. Because of His eternal love for you, He took care of you and sheltered you every inch from the devil’s lies and accusations. Our Christ does not just SAVE but COMFORT us after rescuing us from the slavery of sin.
The emphasis in this book is the born-again experience lived by true Christians. It is this experience of truth that Christ’s followers chose death over recantation. It explains the willingness of William Tyndale, the father of the English Bible, to be burned at the stake. The unbelievers and atheists see the second birth as a subject for amusement and mockery. But there’s no truth in their misjudgment of Christians for the reality they don’t have any understanding at all.
Christmas is about Christ; but right after His birth, people dethroned Him and removed Him away from His rightful place as Savior of the world. Songs composed during this season were about food, fun, and Christmas lights. Humanity’s rejection of Christ is best expressed this time of the year such as people’s efforts to reduce Christ’s birth to a Christless feast and holiday.
Our belief of a deathless life in heaven is the most remarkable Christian expectation and confidence in this life. Why, because “it has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Our Christian hope of immortality and a blissful life in heaven—in a new, incorruptible body (1 Cor. 15:51-54)—is not mere utopian or quixotic dream. It is a living hope that will always survive with the Holy Spirit watering such seed of anticipation of the forgiven soul. The Apostle Peter called this Christian hopefulness as the living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
In Psalm 34:8, we find God continually inviting us to His boundless love and grace. “O taste and see that the Lord is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” Making God your shelter in this life has an added incentive of blessedness. The “Lord is good” if you will just decide to “taste and see” the experience. Sincerely trusting God and taking refuge in Him by faith open the door of Heaven’s blessings. This inwardness we venture to call as faith experience only starts to develop after hearing and meditating upon God’s blessed promises. “For this reason,” wrote the apostle Paul, “we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.” (1 Thess 2:13) Sincerely trusting God, therefore, is only possible if you hear the Word of God and it begins to perform “its work in you who believe.”