John* 3: 3
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God”
Born AGAIN. – April 11, 2025 – reposting my “journey to faith story” today on my 23rd ‘spiritual birthday’, to thank God for his patience, grace, mercy, and for LIFE!
Today I commemorate God’s great mercy, extended to me on April 11, 2002. That was the day that I was born AGAIN. Let me explain. It seems particularly fitting to mark the day, as it falls exactly one week before Good Friday (when the Church remembers Jesus Christ’s death on the cross) and two days before Palm Sunday this year.
Twenty-three years ago today, I had only just returned from the hospital after a brush with death (from sepsis, a systemic blood infection which resulted from a medical misdiagnosis). My formerly fit self was weak and exhausted. I had two very young daughters (then 18 months and 5 years old) who would have been left motherless had I died. I was bewildered, but very grateful to God, and wondering about my eternal destiny had I died then.
Although I had been raised in a Christian home where Church attendance was routine, I had spent my life to that point (I was then in my 30s) with many doubts and questions about Christianity. I had attended church services nearly every week during my childhood, but I was never sure about faith. I wandered away from church attendance and spiritual growth during the university years. Even though I was educated about many earthly topics, having obtained both an undergraduate and graduate degrees, I knew next to nothing about heavenly things. In the years after grad school, I had begun to attend Church, pray, and study the Bible on my own and in groups, but it never really seemed to make any sense. Now I had faced death squarely in the face and honestly had no peace about where I would spend eternity.
Such was my life on April 11, twenty-three years ago. I was thankful to be alive, but was wondering and searching about issues regarding life and death. I picked up the Bible my mother had given me many years prior. As I read John 14, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014&version=NLT the words seemed to come alive inside me for the first time. Jesus said in verse 6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” It was as if Jesus was speaking directly to ME, and as if a bright light shone down from heaven and a heavy weight lifted off my soul. Suddenly, I knew in my own heart of hearts that Jesus Christ was the only way to heaven; and that he really was the Son of God who had died on a cross and risen from the dead to pay the death penalty that my sins deserved. I was shocked to learn that all those stories I’d heard in Church as a child were really TRUE! In an instant, I knew, like I knew, like I knew that my many sins were forgiven, and I’ve never doubted that for one moment from that day to this. Through that sudden revelation of faith, by the Holy Spirit, I was spiritually speaking ‘born AGAIN.’
Eternal life replaced eternal death.
Peace replaced anxiety.
Faith replaced doubt.
AND I’ve never looked back.
How about you? There’s no better day than today to be spiritually ‘reborn’ by putting your faith in Jesus Christ. You cannot earn it. You don’t deserve it. But Jesus is waiting to make today the first day of the rest of your life: your spiritual birthday. He’s as close to you as a simple heartfelt prayer.
1 Peter 1:3-4 (NLT)
3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, 4 and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.
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*The Book of John is found in the New Testament of the Holy Bible. It is one of the four biographies of the life of Jesus Christ found in the Bible, known as the Gospels.
My girls and I “back then”
My girls, my grandson, and I were shopping this week for a wedding dress for my daughter Hannah! What joy to have lived to teach them both about Jesus and see them grow up!
