John 3:1-9
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus About Being Reborn
1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
When I read about Jesus saying we need to be born again, I I believe, it is a process...For me it is a slow process...I am and want to be more like Jesus, but that is a very difficult thing to do...We all have our likes and our dislikes in life, and some of the things we dislike might be necessary to change to be more like Him...Plus things do wrong on earth in our eyes and that delays this process of being born again...So change and being reborn in this sense is very difficult...And I wonder why God has made it difficult for those who are trying to work through this process...So I must turn often to Jesus and pray to Him for His help, with many things, even more than this process of being reborn...This includes the problems and troubles I have in life...And I wonder why God gives us so much free will, and why He doesn't give us each a very, very strong Holy Spirit...And these troubles maybe a personal illness or a problem in the health of one you love...And in these situations, we might question God...
C. S. Lewis wrote this in Mere Christianity, “When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly...When troubles come along—illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation—he is disappointed...These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now?...Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before...It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.”...
So the goal when we get there, is one we can only imagine, because we do not have the slightest notion of being with Him and His Son will be like...