Summary: Why is spiritual birth necessary? God’s Word says that unless a person be born again, they cannot see the Kingdom of God. So, the question before us today is this: How can you tell if you have been spiritually born again from above?

John Wesley was a very religious man. For those of you who don’t know it, John Wesley was our founder … along with his brother, Charles.

As I said … John Wesley was a very religious man from a very religious family. His father was an ordained Anglican priest. His brothers Samuel and Charles were also ordained Anglican or Episcopalian priests. And John himself was also an ordained priest of the Church of England … classically trained at Oxford University.

John was the 15th of 19 children. Let me repeat that. John was 15th of 19 children … all from the same mother, Susanna. Family life for the Wesleys was rigidly structured with exact times for prayer, Bible reading and Bible study, meals, and sleep. John’s mother, Susanna, home-schooled the children, teaching them religion as well as manners. They learned to be quiet, obedient, and hard-working. Every child … including the girls … were taught how to read and write as soon as they could walk. All of them were expected to become proficient in Latin and Greek, as well as memorize major portions of the New Testament. Susanna Wesley would examine each child before the mid-day and evening prayers. The children were not allowed to eat between meals and were interviewed singularly by their mother one evening each week for the purpose of intensive spiritual instruction … so you can see where John Wesley got his strict devotion to religious practices.

After reading William Law’s book, “Christian Perfection,” and “A Serious Call to a Devout Man and Holy Life,” Wesley said that he had a more sublime view of the Law of God and resolved to keep it … inwardly and outwardly and as sacredly as possible … believing that he could find salvation through a rigid and resolved determination to follow God’s Law.

John Wesley’s brother, Charles, followed his brother to Oxford University where they started a group “for the purpose of study and the pursuit of a devout Christian life.” Members of the group met every day from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. to pray, to read the psalms, and study the New Testament in Greek.

Let that sink in. They met EVERYDAY … Monday through Sunday … from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. to pray, read the psalms, and study the New Testament … in Greek!

They prayed every waking hour, can you believe that? During every hour that they were awake, they would take a minute or two and stop whatever they were doing and pray. They started out every day by asking God to give them a special virtue … such as wisdom or patience or generosity. They fasted every Wednesday and every Friday from waking until 3 p.m. … and then they took the money that they would have spent on food and gave it to the poor. They preached … they educated … they paid off the debt of prisoners in debtor prisons … cared for the sick … and set up free pharmacies.

Whew! Amen?

Because of their strict religious practices, they were mocked and branded as “religious fanatics” by their classmates, who called them “Bible worms” and [pause] ... “Methodists.” Now you know how we got our name … “Methodists.” While it was meant as a term of derision and ridicule, the group … especially John Wesley … adopted it and wore it as a badge of honor. I’m glad that Wesley chose the title “Methodists” instead of “Bible Worms,” aren’t you?

Wesley faithfully .. and I do mean faithfully … recorded his daily activities in a diary … writing down which resolutions and which laws he failed to keep or broke. He ranked his “hourly” … “hourly” … “temper of devotion” … his religiosity … on a scale of 1 to 9. “Let’s see, at 9 a.m. I was feeling, oh, strong in my devotion … so I’ll give myself a 7. At 3 p.m. … not so strong … I’ll give myself a 4.”

And yet … for all this religious activity and devotion … Wesley couldn’t shake the feeling that something was … well … missing.

Nicodemus was a very religious man. Verse 1 says that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a “leader of the Jews.” Later on we find out that he was a member of the 71 sages who served on the Sanhedrin … a very powerful group of Jewish men who controlled the religious welfare and direction of the entire Jewish nation. Whatever they decided or commanded was done.

Nicodemus was someone that Saul of Tarsus would have looked up to … a Hebrew born of Hebrews … a devout descendant of Abraham through Isaac, through Jacob, from the tribe of Levi. He could probably quote his lineage from memory if asked. He was not only a “Hebrew born of Hebrews” but “as to the Law, a Pharisee … as to righteousness under the Law, blameless” (Philippines 3:5-6).

The name or title “Pharisee” means “separated” or “set apart” … in other words, they would describe themselves as “holy.” They were numerically a small Jewish sect of several thousand professing members but they were extremely influential because they were highly educated in the Old Testament and the oral tradition of the Jews. They were held in high regard in Israel and were sought out as teachers and interpreters of the Law. They were often asked to settle disputes among the people … evolving in what we now call “rabbinim” or “rabbis.”

We tend to vilify them in the modern church but many of them were good, devout Jews who were sincere in their strict observance of the Law and their determination to hold the line on every moral issue. Young John Wesley would have fit right in with them, amen?

As a recognized leader in the Pharisaic community , Nicodemus probably had all 613 laws … or most of the them … memorized or knew exactly where they could be found in the scriptures. He knew the moral laws forwards and backwards. He knew the dietary laws … the civil laws … the criminal laws … by heart. For decades, Nicodemus taught these laws and enforced them. If the law wasn’t clear enough, the Pharisees made other laws to go with it. They hung laws upon laws that never, ever came from the heart of God.

In his book, “The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,” historian Alder Edersheim gives examples of the kinds of stipulations that the Pharisees placed on the Law to ensure that there was no wiggle room and no grace for those who violated the Law. For instance, according to the Pharisees, you were not allowed to look in a mirror on the Sabbath because you might see a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it out … and plucking out a hair was considered “work” … something that you weren’t supposed to do on the Sabbath. If you had a sore throat, you could swallow vinegar on the Sabbath but you couldn’t gargle because … you guessed it! Pouring yourself a glass of vinegar and swallowing it were not considered “work” … but gargling was.

Just like the Apostle Paul, Nicodemus strived to be as legally faultless as possible his entire life. If you had a checklist of all the requirements for being a Jew’s Jew, you could look at Nicodemus and check off almost every box and he would pass the test. And yet … for all his religious activity and devotion, Nicodemus couldn’t shake the feeling that something was … well … missing.

Both Nicodemus and Wesley went on a quest to solve the mystery of their confusion and unrest. It seemed that the more they tried to follow the Law, however, the further from God they felt.

John Wesley tried to follow the demanding example of the Christian aesthetics and mystics … studying the scriptures, performing his religious duties diligently, depriving himself so that he would have alms to give to the poor. He became obsessed in his pursuit of holiness of heart and life … which led him to accept an invitation to become the resident priest in the newly founded Savannah parish in Georgia. He … and his brother, Charles … saw it as an opportunity to revive “primitive Christianity” by evangelizing to a primitive people in a pristine environment. Without going into detail, it was a complete and utter and embarrassing disaster, and the Wesley brothers had to boarded a ship and head home a year later.

Something happened on their sea voyage over to Georgia that further deepened Wesley’s spiritual despair. At one point, a violent storm ravaged the ship and broke the main mast. Wesley … along with most of the other passengers … hid below deck … terrified that the ship was going to sink and that he was going to die. As he cowered and prayed in his bunk, he heard a strange sound. Between the gusts of rain and the crash of waves against the ship, he heard the sound of people singing … not in the hold of the ship but from the deck of the ship itself. Was he hallucinating? Who in their right minds would be on the deck of a ship in the middle of raging storm singing hymns? Surely not the crew. Who then? When the storm stopped, Wesley went on deck and met the singers. It was a group of 26 German Protestants who called themselves “Moravians.”

Wesley was blown away. “How?” he asked their leader. “How could you sing God’s praises during a perilous storm at sea?” The simplicity and truth of their Bishop, David Nitschman stunned Wesley. “We sang,” Bishop Nitschman said, “because we knew that God would either answer our prayers and bring us through the storm or bring us home to be with Him.” Their faith and trust and confidence in the face of death … and his absolute terror and lack of faith … convinced Wesley that these people possessed a faith and an inner strength that he lacked but had so desperately been searching for … and so, he began attending meetings of the Moravians in Georgia and when he got back to London in the hopes of learning and acquiring the secret of their great and unshakeable faith.

Nicodemus’ quest led him to seek the guidance of a very unlikely teacher … a rabbi from Nazareth named Yeshua. Jesus was the exact opposite of Nicodemus. Jesus was untrained … was not the disciple of any rabbi as far as Nicodemus knew. Jesus didn’t come from a noble or recognized family. You had to go all the way back to David to find anyone famous in Jesus’ family tree. He was a virtual nobody from a hick town in Galilee. And yet …

For all His lack of training … for all His lack of formal education … God seemed to be using this uneducated layperson with a questionable background to perform miracles not seen in Israel for over 400 years. And His teaching … inspired!

What did this “Yeshua” have that he didn’t? And so Nicodemus goes to see Jesus … to meet with Jesus face-to-face … and speak to Him personally.

Verse 2 says that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. There has been a lot of discussion over the centuries about this. Some believe that Nicodemus visited Jesus under cover of night to protect his reputation and standing with the Pharisees and the Temple authorities and the Jewish community at large. Maybe. Maybe he knew tht it was the best time … and probably the only time … that he could catch Jesus alone and have a deep one-on-one theological conversation with Him. Maybe he wanted to be open and vulnerable with Jesus and didn’t want to do it in front of a crowd who saw him as a person of great power and responsibility. Or maybe he was hoping that Jesus could shine some “light” into his spiritual confusion.

If you look back at the end of Chapter 2, what had Jesus just done? He had cleansed the Temple. When He was in Jerusalem for the Passover festival, says the Apostle John, “many believed in His name because they saw the signs that He was doing” (John 2:23). Nicodemus may have been at the Temple or seen Him perform miracles in Jerusalem and wanted to speak privately with Jesus about what those miracles meant.

Nicodemus starts out with the typical flowery greeting that was common at the time. “Rabbi … we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God” (John 3:2). You see, here’s the thing. A lot of scholars and pastors have speculated about the origin and motivation behind Nicodemus’ gushing introduction. Was he there to find out if Jesus was the long-awaited messiah? Was he there because he was simply curious? Was he there because he wanted what Jesus had … a connection to God unlike any he had seen before? All of the above? Maybe Jesus would show him how to have the same power and ability to perform miracles that Jesus had.

Jesus lets us know … not so much as to what was on Nicodemus’ mind … as to what was in Nicodemus’ heart … what was troubling Nicodemus’ soul … something that even Nicodemus may not have been consciously aware of. As the Apostle John points out: Jesus didn’t need anyone to testify about themselves because Jesus “knew all people … [and] knew what was in everyone” (John 2:24) … what was in their hearts … what was in their souls … which is why Jesus’ response to Nicodemus’ flattering introduction seems to come out of left field. “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus says to Nicodemus, “no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3).

With all his religious training and experience … with all his prosperity … with all his accomplishments … with all of his standing at the Temple and within the Jewish community … Nicodemus couldn’t see what Jesus saw immediately … that Nicodemus was dead! Spiritually dead. And Nicodemus’ response proves Jesus’ point. Nicodemus’ response is based completely on human … not spiritual … understanding. “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” he asks (John 3:4).

Jesus tries to explain it to him. “Very truly, I tell you … no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit [capital S]. What was born of the flesh is flesh … and what was born of the Spirit [capital S] is spirit” (John 3:5-6).

The Greek word that John uses for “again” … “you must be born again” (John 3:3) … has a double meaning. It means “again” in the sense that Nicodemus used it … to be born “again” physically … to be born a second time … but it also means “from above” … which is how you’ll see it translated in some of your Bibles.

Stay with me on this. Jesus told Nicodemus that no one could “see” the Kingdom of God without being born again … without being spiritually born from above. The kingdom that David built was a physical kingdom … made out of physical materials … one built with human hands … one that could be seen with human eyes.

In the minds of the Jews, the Messiah would be a physical person who would overthrow the physical nations that were oppressing Israel and then that person would build what? An earthly kingdom … a physical kingdom that would rule over this physical world and all of its people for generations.

Jesus was trying to explain that He came to build a spiritual kingdom … one that Nicodemus could not see because he was looking for it with physical eyes … human eyes … just like he couldn’t see the wind with his physical eyes … just as he couldn’t see the problem that was troubling his heart and soul with human eyes. The solution to what was troubling him wasn’t to be found in the physical or human realm but in the realm of the Spirit … with a capital “S.” In order for him to see spiritual realities, he would have to have spiritual eyes … and in order to get spiritual eyes, guess what? He would have to be given spiritual eyes. And to get spiritual eyes, he would have to be born spiritually. Are you with me so far?

Now … you are physically here, right? How did you get here … physically? Well … we all know about the “birds and bees” I hope. But “YOU” … YOU didn’t cause you to be born, did you? You didn’t decide one day to bring yourself into existence, did you? Someone … some birds and some bees … had to bring “YOU” into being … to cause you to exist. By the same token, we can’t cause ourselves to be spiritually born either. Boy, I hope I haven’t lost you, have I?

In verse 31, Jesus uses the same word for “again” and “from above” that He used in verses 3 and 7 … but here it is translated “from above”: “The One who comes from above all” (John 3:31; italics mine). Hum … who could that be? Who is the “One from above all”? Anyone care to guess?

Yep … it’s pretty obviously Jesus, amen? Jesus, the “One from above,” is above all. And then Jesus explains the difference between physical and spiritual birth. “The one who is of the earth” … physical people like you and me … “belong to the earth and speaks of earthly things” (John 3:31). “The One who comes from Heaven” … the One who descended from Heaven … “is above all” (John 3:31). “He” … referring to Himself, “testifies to what He has seen and heard, yet no one accepts His testimony. Whoever has accepted His testimony has certified this, that God is true” (John 3:32-33). Think about this for moment. Can any of you here describe Heaven? No … because none of us have been there … yet. The only way we’ll get to Heaven is to die and “ascend” to Heaven. Jesus, on the other hand, can describe Heaven because He has “descended” from Heaven … from the spiritual realm … to the physical realm of the earth.

Stay with me … we’re almost there!

“He” … Jesus … “whom God has sent speaks the words of God” (John 3:34).

You ready? Here’s where it all comes together for Nicodemus and for us.

“He whom God has sent speaks the words of God. For He” … Jesus … “gives the Spirit” … with a capital “S” … “without measure” (John 3:34).

BAM!!

Let me repeat that. “He whom God has sent speaks the words of God. For He gives the Spirit without measure” (John 3:34).

“Whoever believes in the Son,” says Jesus, “has eternal life” (John 3:36). Are our physical bodies “eternal”? No. So … how can Jesus give us “eternal” life? To answer that we have to go all the way back to the beginning of John’s gospel to find out how. In Chapter 1, John says that Jesus “was in the world, and the world came into being through Him; yet the world did not know Him. He came to what was His own, and His own people did not accept Him.” (John 1:10-11). Listen closely now: “But to all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

Boom … there it is!

“Children of God” are born how? “… not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man” (John 1:13). If the “children of God” are not born of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, how are the “children of God” born? No one, said Jesus, could see the Kingdom of God without being born how? “… from above” (John 3:3).

Stay with me.

Nicodemus hasn’t been born “from above” … yet … so how can he “see” … how can he “know” … how can he understand the unease, the restlessness, the emptiness that he’s feeling because it is “spiritual”? He has to first “see” … to know … to understand that his help, his hope, his cure is spiritual and then he will know to seek his help, his hope, his cure from the One … with a capital “O” … who descended from Heaven … who came “from above,” amen?

Understand?

According to the Book of Genesis, we were created in God’s image. Well … God is a triune being, right? Father … Son … and Holy Spirit. So it follows that we too are triune creatures, amen? Made up of body, soul, and spirit. God took physical material and He created a physical body for us because we need a physical body to interact with the physical world … to live and thrive in a physical world … a world that God created … and then, into our physical bodies, God breathed life into us … and that breath of life was God’s “Ruah” … God’s Spirit.

God created our bodies from the things of this earth for our spirits to live in and when Spirit … with a capital “S” … and body come together … it creates the “soul.” The “soul” is the union between the physical body and God’s Spirit … with a capital “S.”

What Jesus is trying to explain to Nicodemus is this: Every person born into this world is physically alive but being physically alive is not being totally alive. Until God breathes His Spirit into us, we are spiritually unborn … which means that some of you here this morning … and whole lot of people out there … are only two-thirds alive … or, to put it another way … still one-third unborn. We are not born with the ability to spiritually relate to God or His Kingdom. It is only when we are reborn … when we are spiritually born “from above” … that we can “see” and enter the spiritual Kingdom of God.

“How can these things be?” Nicodemus wonders (John 3:9). “What is born of the flesh is flesh,” says Jesus … now pay attention to this … listen closely … “What is born of the flesh is flesh,” says Jesus, “and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). Did you catch it? I know you didn’t unless you were looking in your Bible. “… what is born of the Spirit” … with a capital “S” … is “spirit” … with a lowercase “s.” And that difference … Spirit with a capital “S” and spirit with a lowercase “s” makes all the difference in the world, my friends.

What Nicodemus and what John Wesley and what a whole lot of people fail to understand is that when it comes to the things of the Spirit, there is nothing that the flesh can do, amen? All your hard work … all your study … all your sacrifices … your birthright … none of it will get you into the Kingdom of God because all of these things are of the flesh and the Kingdom of God is of the Spirit. The only way to enter the Kingdom of God, says Jesus, is by “water and the spirit” (John 3:5).

Scholars and commentators are not in agreement as to exactly what Jesus meant by that. Some think it refers to baptism by water … followed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Others believe that the water represents physical birth followed by a second birth by the Holy Spirit. Either way, what’s clear to me is that we need something more than just a physical birth, amen? We need both a physical and a spiritual birth in order to see and enter the Kingdom of God.

What Jesus says next about our spiritual birth is both poetic and mysterious. In a beautiful, powerful play on words that works in both the Greek and Hebrew, Jesus says: “The wind blows wherever it chooses and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). The word for “wind” and “Spirit” is “ruah” in Hebrew and “pneuma” in Greek … and both “ruah” and “pneuma” signify the “wind” or “breath” of God.

Let’s take a moment to think about what Jesus just said. He used a physical object … the wind … to explain how the Spirit … the breath of God … works. We can not “see” the wind nor can we control it, amen? Nor can we “see” the Spirit, the breath of God or control it either. The Spirit of God … the “Ruah” … the breath of God … blows wherever He chooses.

Here’s the thing, however. We cannot “see” the wind but we know that the wind exists because we can hear it and feel it … we feel it when it brushes our skin, right? But we also feel it when we breath in and breath out. The wind … the air … is all around us … and thank God. Without it we would die rather quickly, amen? The air around us is free. We don’t have to pay for it. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to make it. It comes from God. The wind may blow where it chooses … we may not be able to tell where it came from or where it is going, as Jesus says … but, thank God, we know that that it is there … that it is all around us … and we are reminded of it several thousand times a day when we breath in and when we breath out, amen?

Jesus is saying that God’s Spirit is like the wind. We can’t see it but we know that it is there because we can feel the effects of it. When we open our minds, when we open our thoughts, when we open our hearts to the reality of God’s Spirit, we discover that it’s everywhere … as close and as prevalent as the air that we breathe in and out a thousand times a day.

John Wesley discovered this truth most unexpectedly one evening. Typical Wesley, he wrote about it in his diary, of course. Impressed by the peace of heart and mind that the Moravians seemed to possess, Wesley, as Wesley was driven to do, started attending their meetings in the hopes of “unlocking” the secret of their faith and inner strength. What happened is that God breathed His Spirit into John Wesley’s heart on the evening of May 24th, 1738.

John spent the morning of the 24th listening to the choir at St. Paul’s Cathedral sing Psalm 130. In Psalm 130, the psalmist cries out to God: “If you, O Lord, should mark my iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3). Certainly not John Wesley, who, as I mentioned earlier, kept a written record of all of his iniquities on a daily basis. He was still depressed that evening when he attended a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate street where he heard a reading of Martin Luther’s preface to the epistle to the Romans. Something happened to him as he started walking home. He was reborn from above. I’ll let him tell you about it in his own words.

About a quarter before nine, while [Martin Luther] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone, for salvation … and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death” (www.britannica.com/biography/John-Wesley#ref121836).

John Wesley could not do a thing to cause his spiritual re-birth. He was coming home from his thousandth Bible study when the Light … with a capital “L” … broke into his spiritual darkness. He went from trying to change himself from the outside in to letting God change him from the inside out.

Nicodemus and John Wesley thought that they could somehow reach up to God by their many good works and accomplishments … through their devotion and adherence to the Law of God … but that only showed them just how far from God they really were … but that, too, was the grace … the Ruah … the breath of God blowing through their lives.

Before we can understand what God’s grace is about, we must first be made aware of our total spiritual bankruptcy before God, amen? The Law revealed the truth to Nicodemus … that we are totally lost and beyond any human help. The Law revealed this truth to John Wesley, which caused his heart to be troubled and restless.

What Jesus was trying to tell Nicodemus is that earthly wisdom and understanding are incapable of understanding spiritual realities. For all their learning, Nicodemus and Wesley were incapable of understanding basic spiritual truths. This transformation into the life of the Kingdom is not something that we can attain or obtain on our own. Our human efforts will never get us there.

When Nicodemus asked Jesus how this rebirth was possible, Jesus responded: “You are a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:10). If a great religious leader like Nicodemus wasn’t able to understand these things, where did the rest of Israel stand? If John Wesley … with all his devotion and in-depth study of scripture … couldn’t understand spiritual truth, where do we stand?

• Without God, we are all spiritually bankrupt.

• Without God, we are all morally bankrupt.

• Without God, we are all emotionally bankrupt.

• Without God, we are all intellectually bankrupt.

• Without God, we are totally lost and without hope.

But God’s grace does not leave us lost. Jesus wanted Nicodemus to know … Jesus wants us to know … that in spite of our total bankruptcy … there is hope … a hope that comes from above … a hope that comes from God … and that hope is … Jesus.

John Wesley’s heart and life were changed that night on Aldersgate street. For Nicodemus, it took a little longer. He came in darkness … and he left in darkness. But later in the gospel, we see Nicodemus standing up for Jesus when Jesus was being challenged by the Pharisees. We see Nicodemus go from being a secret admirer of Jesus to a fearless upholder of justice on Jesus’ behalf. When Jesus’ inner circle of disciples all but desert Him on the cross, it was Nicodemus who took Jesus’ body down off the cross and helped Joseph of Arimathea prepare His body for burial … making his love and devotion for Jesus public. Yeah … I believe that it is safe to say that Nicodemus was “born again from above,” wouldn’t you?

How does spiritual birth happen? By the Spirit … quickening, convicting, assuring, counseling. By the Word … bringing Light into our darkness. By Jesus … who descended and was lifted up. By God … sending His Word, His Spirit, His Son.

Why is spiritual birth necessary? God’s Word says that unless a person be born again, they cannot see the Kingdom of God. So, the question before us today is this: How can you tell if you have been spiritually born again from above?

The mind thinks in a new way. It considers God first and the things of God as being the most important things in the world. The heart feels differently about things. The things of this world and the things of the flesh lose their attraction and the things of the Spirit become the things that we love most. The soul comes to life. It goes from being cold and lifeless to being bright and warm and alive … filled with the image and Presence of God. The conscious is awakened and responsive to the touch and voice of God. Judgment is made sound. Our will is subjugated to the will of God. Nothing is the same … all things have changed.

If you put your trust in anything but the Lord Jesus Christ and what He did for you on the cross, my friend, then you are trusting in the wrong thing or the wrong person and you are going to end up very disappointed.

God wants to give you spiritual life. He wants to give you eternal life. He wants to bring you into His Kingdom … and all He asks is that you put your trust in Jesus Christ and what He did for us on the cross. Do that and you will live with Him forever.

Sound simple? Then what’s stopping you? If you are willing to do that, then Jesus will indeed breathe new life into your unborn spirit and you will be born again because you will have been born from above.

Let us pray:

Holy Spirit of God … invisible like the wind. We do not see You moving among us … in us … but we see the effects. Come into our hearts so that we may be born and renewed from above. Open our minds so that we may perceive Your Kingdom. Open our eyes to the truth of the cross … a symbol of our spiritual healing … so that we may believe … and in believing not die but have eternal life through Him who in Your love for us descended from Heaven that we might ascend and be with Your forever.

In the name of Jesus, who died our death on the cross, we pray. And would all who seek the eternal Kingdom of God join with me in making it so by saying “amen.”