Stronghold Beliefs Part 9 Series

Stronghold Beliefs Part 9

Scriptures: 2 Peter 1:20-21, John 3:1-7, John 14:12

As I closed my message last Sunday, I told you that this morning will be the ninth and final message in my series on Strongholds Beliefs. I also told you that the last message will be about what it means to be born again and why we need to not only know its meaning, but why we need to actually believe it. I am saying it this way because we only “act” on things that we truly believe. If we know and truly understand what it means to be born again and we believe that we are, I’m sure many of us would then act on that belief. As I thought about how to make this real for us, I tried to think of something, an analogy of some sort, that would help us see how understanding what it means to be born again is crucial to how we are supposed to live as sons and daughters of God. But I couldn’t think of an analogy that would be even close to appropriate. I couldn’t think of an analogy that wouldn’t in some way diminish the powerful truth about what happens when we are born again. Before Jesus puts the words “born” and “again” together in John 3, the term “born again” had not been used anywhere in the Bible so I cannot minimize the importance of understanding it’s meaning. In fact, the term “born again” is only used three times, twice in John 3:3 and 7 and once in I Peter 1:23. We will look at these verses in a few minutes.

Now before getting into the message, I want you to know that it will be impossible for me to talk about what it means to be born again in one message. So, this morning’s message will focus on two or three key points about what it means to be born again and in a couple of weeks we will take a much closer look at who we are as born again sons and daughters of God in much more detail. At that time we will answer questions like: “Why does a person need to be born again?” “How does a person get born again?” “What happens when a person gets born again?” “Can a person be born again and remain the same?” “How is the person who is born again different from the person who is not born again?” “Does being born again mean the person is a ‘disciple’ of Jesus?” Some of these questions I will lightly answer this morning, but I will go into much more detail when I do the series on it. I believe through that series we are going to see ourselves, who we truly are, in such a way that we will begin to see ourselves as our Heavenly Father sees us and, I want you to really hear this, we will see what the devil sees when he looks at us.

There is some confusion around being a “born again” Christian and, in America, those claiming to be born again Christians are declining according to a major religious survey recently completed. Researcher George Barna said, “….it may be that many born again Christians, the ones who have asked Christ to forgive them and who trust Him alone for their salvation, have a real mixed bag of theological beliefs. Those beliefs have had an unfortunate impact on their political views and lifestyle choices. Granted, we are all sinners and fall way short of the perfection of God, but maybe we are so seduced by the secular culture in which we live that we have lost touch with biblical truth. The theological and behavioral profile of born again Christians painted by the survey is very disturbing and has some severe, long-term negative consequences for American culture.”

So what did this American Culture and Faith Institute survey find? The results, drawn from a monthly nationwide survey this year that interviewed over 9,200 American adults, found that just 31% of adults identify as born again, following a trend of decline since 2010. The researchers believe that the decline in born again Christians is largely due to attitudes toward evangelism and salvation. Only 21% of adults affirm that they have a strong personal responsibility to share the Gospel with people who hold different views. What is even more disturbing is the fact that adults are about equally likely to believe that eternal salvation can be earned through personal goodness or good deeds (25%) as believe salvation cannot be earned (20%). Fifty-five percent of Protestants and only 19 percent of Catholics said that eternal salvation is based solely upon their redemption by Christ – and these are believers who have accepted Christ as their Savior! A noteworthy shift in the last two decades, ACFI pointed out, is that 38% of Christians now do not identify as Protestant or Catholic, which was “virtually unheard of a quarter-century ago.” In the past Protestant was a term that described “all” Christians who were not Catholic so it’s very interesting that apparently there is a new segment of believers who view themselves as neither Protestant or Catholic.