- Jul 13, 2004
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Have you ever thought about abandoning your claims on God?
That really is what Jesus is speaking about when he speaks about being born again. Abandoning our claims on God.
Being born from above. Being born of water and the spirit. You must be born from above, says Jesus. Something you must do. Yet, it's as if we can't do it. Can you be born? Are you in charge of your birth? No, says Jesus.
This is something the spirit does and it's all mysterious. You must do it and yet you can't. Here is a call from Jesus to leave all our striving, all our effort aside. Everything from this birth, the beginning of our birth onwards, that we would lay as a claim on God: the kind of claim in which we say "do this for me God because I've done this for you." Jesus says, "lay it aside as if you were a baby once again." Lay it all aside and be still before God who alone has the keys to the kingdom and can open it up for you to enter and for you to see.
Have you felt such powerlessness as that which comes when you lay aside every claim you have that you want to lift up to God and simply are being still before God?
How many of you have received a speeding at one time or another?
I've received one. In fact, that's my claim when I get to heaven. I've only received one and it was unfair!
But that's how you feel, isn't it, if you've received one? It's always unfair, isn't it? You see that light going on behind you and you say, "Oh no. What's happened?" and the excuses begin to rise up within you. "I'm driving a different car.
I was talking to someone. I just didn't notice" and you're over the speed limit and they stop you.
When I was stopped, I wanted to get out of the car and explain myself but just as I opened the door, the speaker comes from the car behind, "Stay in the car." You say, "Yes, sir. I'll stay in the car and I'm not going to move." You feel powerless at that moment.
You want to say everything you can to defend yourself. But you can't. You don't have anything to stand on, and a good officer will listen to all of that and then just ignore it and go on with what needs to be done. Whatever our claim or justification may be.
In a sense, that kind of helplessness puts us in the position of a baby, and we don't like that. We've lived our lives. We've done our best and they've caught us in this one thing.
And yet, like a baby, we need to lay aside all our claims before God and be still. Whatever it means, being born again touches on that. Being born from above touches on abandoning our claims on God, and being still like a baby, just born, with God at work.
You need to be born again but you don't do it. God does it for you.
