Born Again

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   They are in awe and amazed at your glory and your power and your wonder and your majesty and that you are the king of heaven and earth. You are the creator of heaven and earth and everything and Lord, you are the mighty one. There is none other like unto you. You are the king of kings and the Lord of lords Jesus. You are the living word. You are God manifested in the flesh. You are the Messiah. Lord, you are the lamb of God. You You are Lord God the risen one, the resurrected one. You have the keys of hell and death. We praise your name Jesus, the name above every name. We praise the name of Jesus that that Lord at that name demons tremble. At that name Satan trembles. At that name Lord, people can be saved and delivered and healed. We thank you for the wonderful wonderful name of Jesus and we exalt you Lord this morning. We thank you. We declare your kingdom come and your will be done in this place in each of us in Jesus name. Lord, you have a a plan and a purpose for us individually Lord as a church. You have a plan for Fire and Grace Church. Lord, I pray for the anointing and the power of the Holy Spirit to come upon us and fill us in greater measure that we may complete that work that we may be like Paul one day and say I have finished my course. I have fought a good fight. I have finished what God gave me to do. I finished it with glory and power. Father, I pray that this morning in Jesus name. Amen and amen. Praise God. Well, I do have a word. I want to I want to say this this morning. God still speaks even if folks don't show up to church. Oh. Amen. And I'll tell you one thing, if you um And this is all for those out there. If you have a If you have a pastor that tries to pray and hear the voice of God, well, I'm going to tell you what, you probably shouldn't miss those meetings. Amen. That's why I like to get around men of God that I know hear from God. And I'm not talking about just men of God, but women of God, too, that really hear from God. Not flakes, not weirdos, you know, not false prophets, but people of the word who hear the voice of God. Uh that's why I love David Copeland so much. That's why I love Gene May so much. I mean, they've they've proven track records of hearing from God and um So, anyway, you know, just don't take that lightly. You know, Sunday mornings is about us getting together and hear what God is saying. And it's not always going to be through me. There'll be times God gives you guys, different ones of you, prophetic words and things of that nature. And um but the the Sunday morning service, it's important. It really is. It's important to hear from God. It's important for your soul. It's important to be fed and strengthened for

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   the week. And um you know, you shouldn't miss it unless you absolutely have to. I'm just going to say that. And I And I I say that for anybody. It doesn't matter where you go. If you Wherever your church home may be, you know, and I say that cuz people listen to this podcast uh we're finding out from all over the world they listen to our podcast. So, you know, if you're you don't miss your home church for life things. Don't miss that service. Pray for your pastor. Uh you know, if he's struggling, not hearing from God, then pray for him. Right? God wants to speak to his people. Amen. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. Now, the Lord did something this week that's unusual for me. Um Saturday morning, sometime early Saturday morning before uh the sun came up and before I got up, I had a dream. And uh And the dream, once I woke up, I knew the dream was exactly what I'm supposed to preach on. Um and I got up and I spent some time with the Lord before anybody else got up, and I just I know that God was speaking to me. What's interesting about what we're going to get into this morning is that I preached this message. Now, it's not going to be exactly the same, but 1 year ago to this weekend when I was at Iris's church. And what the Lord wanted me to talk to you about this morning is about what it what it means to be born again. Now, let me say this. I know that in here, I believe that everyone's born again. I mean, if you're not, you'll find out in a minute. But this is something in the dream what God was showing to me was that as believers, as Christians, and in our witness, um we need to be prepared to explain to people clearly what it means to be born again because there's a lot of confusion out there on this matter. There's a lot of confusion even within the church world. What does it mean to be born again? And and in this dream, I'll just share a little little bit before we get into the word, but in this dream, I was I was at some house that I didn't really recognize. I was kind of in it was kind of like a party or a get-together, and I'm not talking about, you know, drinking or anything like that. It was just kind of like a you know, somebody's birthday party or something was going on, but it was people that I didn't really recognize. But I was standing in the kitchen um with about eight to 10 people, and I could tell that they were 20-somethings. I could tell they were college age, most of them. There might have been one or two that was was older than that, but I could tell it was mainly college-age people, and I could see out the door of the kitchen into like another room, and there were other people in there. I mean, there could have been 30, 40 people in this house, you know, normal-size house, but it was again some kind of get-together. And I started sharing with these these young people a little bit about end-times things, and I don't know, I don't remember in the dream specifically what I was sharing with them about end times, but but they started listening, and then as I was talking to them, the Holy Spirit really came on me in the dream, and it's just like, you need to explain to them what it means to be born

3. 0:06:02

   again. And the moment the Lord laid that on me and it to explain that to them, I started explaining about, you know, Jesus said that unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And a couple of verses down in John 3, he said, if a man, if you're not born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. And that's why this subject is so important. But in the dream, the moment I started talking about being born again, it was like I even got their attention even more so. They got very intense and very intent upon what I was saying, and they were listening. And I remember it was so vivid as I went down through the scriptures and explained to them what it meant to be born again, to believe in the Jesus of the Bible, to understand there's a heaven and there's a hell, that you have sinned, that you have broken God's commandments, that all have sinned. I mean, just the the pure gospel message, you know, that you must repent, you must confess you're a sinner, that you need Jesus. Only Jesus can save you. He is the only Messiah, the only way. And I was going down through that with them, and then I remember getting into beginning to share my testimony with them before the meeting kind of broke up and there and people started having to go, but there was one person really hanging on to me the whole way. Now, I woke up and I just knew that we needed to get into that because I believe the Lord is saying to me that there are people uh maybe even tomorrow, maybe even this week, but in the in the days ahead of you that you need to be able to explain this clearly and biblically to people, and you need to focus on this because a lot of people out there we assume that they're born again. Just because they go to church, just because they say they believe in Jesus, we assume that they have had this supernatural born again experience. And they may even be good moral people. You know, I'm not talking about sinless cuz there is none sinless, but the bottom line is they may be good moral people. They may not be into alcohol or drugs or or sexual sin or things of that nature, but it doesn't mean that they're born again. It doesn't mean they're saved. You know, let me say this real clear. Good works do not save you. Being moral in your own strength, trying to be righteous in your own abilities does not save you. If if that could save anyone or make a person born again, then you don't need the blood of Jesus. You don't need the the savior. You don't need the Messiah. You can save yourself. And that really is what the world believes. The world believes that That's why they believe all religions lead to God and all religions have truth. All religions have virtue. You find your own way. It doesn't matter what way because they believe by by developing their their, you know, mental state or developing their spirituality through meditation and all these other things that they do, that they're finding their way to God. And they have their All of them have their own ideas of what is it acceptable, what is righteous, what is moral, what is not, what is evil. And

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   they got all these different ideas. But basically the same theme runs through all of those lies. And that is it's not You don't have to have Jesus. If that's the way you've chosen, that's great. But my Buddhism will get me there. My Hinduism will get me there. My morality, my goodness, because I give to charity, because I'm, you know, in the Big Brother program, or because, you know, I I do good things. I'm not a murderer. I don't, you know, I don't I don't hurt anybody. All these excuses, no? Jesus made it clear. We're going to look at these scriptures. Unless a man is born again, he will not see the kingdom of God. Unless a man or woman is born again, they will not enter into the kingdom of God. And let me just add this. I'll prove it in a second. But unless we believe the Bible, we will not see the kingdom of God. You're born again, you'll find out I'm going to show you in the scriptures. You're born again by the word of God. Let's go to John 3 real quick. I've quoted these verses a couple of time, but it's important that you see them and see them in their context because they're preached out of context. Now, let me let me say about like for instance, there are people out there like Gnostic Christian Have you ever heard of the Gnostic Christians? The Gnostic Christians and and {slash} New Agers that say they believe in Jesus. You have to define these terms because to to a New Ager or to a Gnostic Christian, they have had a spiritual experience through meditation, visualization, maybe through some type of guru laying hands on them or something, but they've had spiritual experiences that are counterfeits to the real. But if you ask them, "Have you been born again and had a supernatural experience with Jesus?" They will say, "Yes." Okay? But then if you ask them if they believe in the Jesus of the Bible, that Jesus Christ is the one true God manifested in the flesh, died on the cross for the sins of mankind, rose from the dead the third day, and is the only way to heaven, if they say no to that, they have not been born again by the spirit of God. It's impossible. Because if you don't believe the right things, you don't have the right faith, and the Holy Ghost is only going to witness to truth. Right? So, if you don't believe the scriptures, you are not saved. Now, did I say if you don't believe in the pre-tribulation rapture, if you don't believe in the mid-tribulation No, I'm not talking about doctrines that maybe, you know, we have differences upon, but on the essential issues, what constitutes being a Christian? And another reason I bring this up, there was an article this week in the Washington Times, I believe it was or the post, one of them, about Joel Osteen said that Mormons are Christians. Now, Joel Osteen pastors the

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