9. Born from Above – The Need for Milk before Meat. “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. The earth produces the crops on its own. First …
8. Born from Above – The Seed of God for New Life. “God’s Seed” in 1 John 3:9 – (Greek word “sperma“) – The seed of divine life introduced into a believer by the Father through the Holy Spirit; the provision of a new family name and identity; the miraculous infusion of the Father’s DNA, a new spiritual …
7. Born from Above – Welcomed into the Family. MYSTERY: (Greek, Musterion); a sacred secret hidden in the heart of God until the appointed time of revelation; a truth that can only be known by divine disclosure; spiritual insights into God’s way of thinking and planning; hidden truths revealed by God that are beyond human intellect …
6. Born from Above – To Know in the Biblical Sense. “The Israelites, groaning in their slavery, cried out for help and from the depths of their slavery their cry came up to God. God heard their groaning; God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew them.” (Exodus 2:25). “Yahweh …
5. Born from Above – The Spiritual Union. “I am inside My Father, and you are inside Me, and I am inside you.” (John 14:20). MYSTERY: (Greek, Musterion); a sacred secret hidden in the heart of God until the appointed time of revelation; a truth that can only be known by divine disclosure; spiritual insights into God’s …
1. Born from Above – The Fertile Spirit. “There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish leader of the Pharisees. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus in a private setting. ‘Rabbi,’ he said, ‘we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are clear evidence that …
4. Born from Above – Match-Making before Relations. “The Jewish wedding is a unique illustration of the Messiah’s relationship with His followers.” (Dr. David Stern, Professor of Messianic Judaism, translator of the Complete Jewish Study Bible). According to Dr. Stern, the esteemed writer, professor, and interpreter of the New Testament from the Messianic perspective, he states that the …
3. Born from Above – God’s Sacred Jailbreak. Because of Christ, we have been delivered from death to life, from hopeless captivity to expansive freedom. The remarkable, and anonymous, Psalm 107 offers several vignettes of what has been called “God’s Great Works of Deliverance.” We find people in all kinds of trouble in this psalm, …
2. Born from Above: A Heavenly Conversation. “As the Scriptures say, ‘A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one, becoming one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church.” (Ephesians 5:31-32). MYSTERY: Greek word, mysterion, used 28 …
Dwelling in God’s Heart – The Bosom of the Lord. “I am inside My Father, and you are inside Me, and I am inside you.” (John 14:20). During the Biblical era, the heart was seen as the center of the body, so the reasoning was that therefore the heart was the center, the core, of every …
Christian Prisoners Offer Words of Wisdom and Faith. “There was a fiddler who played so beautifully that everybody danced. A deaf man who could not hear music considered them all insane. Those who are with Jesus in suffering hear this music to which others are deaf. They dance and do not care if they are …
Grace and The Prison of Self-Sufficiency. The problem with self-sufficiency is that one is under the delusion that God is unnecessary, and thus simple pride is keeping him or her from the position of weakness, which is when God’s power and presence is most evident. Weakness is God’s gift to keep us from becoming self-sufficient. …