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Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Bible Study Community!
It was Jesus who said in red letters that if anybody wants to SEE the Kingdom of God they need to be “born again.” He made that point to Nicodemus who at the time was a ruler of the Jews and the main teacher of the Law in all Israel. Jesus went on to explain that even though we each experience a natural birth, there is required for those who truly want to be a part of God’s Kingdom a second birth which is of the Spirit (John 3:3-5). Being born again is consummated through faith which not only results in eternal life for the believer but also opens the door to a particular set of laws and principles and ways of doing things that are substantially different from how the world we came out of operates. And, one thing you may not realize is that when you were born again, God saw to it that you became “good dirt” in which He wants to grow some things for His Kingdom-Garden.
The basic principle to understand is that all life comes from the ground, aka dirt, working in concert with seeds. The first man came from the ground as did all the trees and plants for food (Genesis 2: 7-9) plus all the animals as well (Genesis 2:19). The woman came uniquely from the man (Genesis 2:21-22) but their mutual source of life was the ground and the original seeds were the words spoken by the Spirit of Life (Romans 8:2). In short, God used the ground to sow Word-seeds that produced all life on the earth and then implemented a system of seed time and harvest so that life could sustain itself indefinitely. God created life once and thereafter it sustains itself by the bearing of “fruit” which contains seeds which when sown back into the ground provide the means for life’s continuation. It is an ingenious system so that once created, God could “rest” from the work of creation and focus on the spiritual development of His family.
Now there’s a special aspect to the seeds in God’s system that we tend to lose sight of: all His seeds have the fullness, the very essence of life already in them but they can’t release it on their own. They will lie dormant until they are sown into good ground where they must then die so that the fruit of new life can come forth. In fact, each dead seed in concert with good ground that’s being adequately watered produces multiplied life: there is sufficient fruit to eat plus additional fruit to be used for the production of future life. And in addition to that, there is fruit left over to bless the one whose dirt has produced it. All life is thusly designed to multiply and grow stronger in presence and influence by the planting of seeds into good ground (John 12:24).
How You Got Born Again
It amazes me that there are whole church denominations that pay little to no attention to the “requirement” of being born again. They think they come into the Kingdom of God just by announcing that they’re Christians or by becoming members of a church or by virtue of their infant dedication/christening some place or other. I’m not the one to judge but I AM able to read and the Word plainly says in John 3:3-5 that unless folks are born again, they cannot SEE or ENTER the Kingdom of God/Heaven. The fact is, people know within their own spirits whether or not they’re born again because the Holy Spirit confirms it within us, Spirit to spirit (Romans 8:16). The obvious question at that point should be, how do people get born again?
Well, there was a seed involved and there was some ground. No life can begin without a seed and in this case the seed was/is the Word of God (1 Peter 1:23). Yes, it is a mystery how it all works but I know from my own case that out of curiosity, I had begun to wonder about the validity of the Bible during the months leading up to the night I was finally born again. Was any of it true? Could it be trusted? Of course, there are plenty of testimonies of people getting born again having never to their knowledge heard anything from a Bible. But somehow when they cried out in desperation for help and comfort from the only One who can provide such things, a Word-seed got through all the noise from the world and found some soil in which it could die and produce new life. It takes a seed planted into good dirt to produce new life. That’s how things work in the Kingdom of God and that’s how people get born again. Moreover, in the Kingdom of God the seed will ALWAYS come to those who pursue and reach out for it. I know this because the Word of God clearly says so.
When you get genuinely born again, you’re no longer in bondage to sin which means it no longer has the power to control you (Romans 6:6, Colossians 1:13). In other words, you’re no longer defenseless even though defending yourself isn’t always so easy. You don’t want to sin and you try not to sin because there’s something within you that wants to get better and produce fruit for the One who has shown you mercy, the One who has given you another chance. Your life changes, your way of acting changes, your speaking changes, your values change, the people you want to be around change, what you will want to look at will change. In a short time, you will look back on where you used to be and plainly see that you have changed for the better. Your ground is way better than it used to be!
After You Were Born Again
So, let’s define your ground/soil/dirt as being that inner part of you we often refer to as the soulish part that consists of the non-physical things that define you as an individual: your mind, your will, your emotions, your personality and your conscience. On the occasion you were born again, you received into your ground everything you needed to start producing fruit for the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, part of our work after being born again is to be directed at making that dirt of ours increasingly productive. Indeed, that inner person of yours must undergo transformation (Romans 12:1-2) so that your dirt will be able to yield future bumper crops. You have become a caretaker of your own soil working in the same capacity that Adam had in the original Garden (Genesis 2:15) only in your case, Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Harvest (Matthew 9:38) and you work for Him.
More specifically, that dirt of yours needs protecting and cultivating. To make that happen, you pursue and receive more Word-seeds into your soil where they “die” and produce fruit for the Kingdom. In this case, “die” means that when those seeds come in contact with good soil, they undergo a change and together the seeds and the soil produce new life. Productive contact between the two occurs when the Word-seed is UNDERSTOOD. I must take ownership of the Word-seed with my understanding thus enabling it to interact with my personal dirt to produce fruit for the Lord. It is His Word and it’s His Holy Spirit within me teaching me all things so that I can get the understanding that I need to produce more and better fruit. And by the way, it’s His fruit because in the process of its production, I need to voluntarily die to self and give up my claim to it.
Friend, the Word of God is eternal (John 1:1) but when it is sown into the inner person of a true believer, that particular kind of seed actually explodes with new life and capability. All it needs is some really good dirt and a bit of watering so that just like the farmer in the Bible, the seed sprouts and grows, we know not how but it does indeed sprout and grow. It is a wonderful mystery about the Kingdom of God that is revealed by faith (Mark 4:26-27) and one thing I know about the people who read this newsletter is that they have some really good dirt!
(With special thanks to Pastor Duane Sheriff whose teaching inspired this article)
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