How to be “Born Again”
How to be “Born Again”
September 12, 2024
A former coworker asked me that question, and quite frankly, I had never thought about it in detail. So, I had no answer at the time. Still, I have been living it, starting over 50 years ago, but never have assessed the process in a defined way.
Perhaps it cannot be defined clinically, since life is a journey, and people come from different places and arrive at their destinations at different times and in different ways… With that in mind, here is my attempt to answer that essential question; “How do I become born again?”
There is a saying, “There are many paths to God,” but that is simply not true. At the same time, maybe the inverse is true.
Yes, people start life’s journey from many different places — both in reality and also figuratively speaking. So, if one were to draw a map of all those journeys, the lines would look like a complex maze — like a big plate of spaghetti! However, the actual path to knowing God begins to narrow significantly as one turns to follow their chosen route. Then, individuals have to force their way through the crowd until they can find a parking space and soon join in the festivities…
There is only one way to God that many people have actually discovered, which doesn’t fall apart in the real world.
Now, this was a popular Christian song of the early 1970’s, and it happened to be on the radio around the time God became real in my life. Ocean — Put Your Hand In The Hand (1971) (Original Live Audio)
From listening to it, the starting point for becoming born again is reaching out, or to put it figuratively, to start to look up. At the same time, it is essential to be both totally sincere in your quest and completely honest with yourself in assessing Truth.
Honest questions to God will always get honest answers. If a person is just trying to deceive themselves, he or she will get — how should I put it? — they will only get a sympathetic “blank stare” from God.
Now, also just preceding the time of this song, the Hippies already had had a funeral to end their transcendental movement, I think because it was very much in decline and had not achieved their idealistic goals. (Drug addiction was certainly a major reason for its death.) So, they decided to bury it with the intent that it would never be resurrected…
Yet, many young people were still left seeking answers to life’s biggest questions. Most were still seeking answers in the context of peace and love.
During those years many began turning to God and finding Jesus to be their rescue and provision for those answers we were seeking. Oh, of course, many sought any answer they could grab at and went down many avenues ending in disappointment and were left as disillusioned as ever. Some of those same people turned from their disappointments and finally turned to God and Jesus of the Bible and were pleasantly surprised to find how fulfilling and delighted that choice became.
Let me point out that many Christian songs, both very new and very old, are actually testimonies of what God has done in the composers’ lives through Jesus. From “Amazing Grace” to “Talking to Jesus” people who have been “born again” are sharing their real life experiences in their encounters with God. These compositions are not just wishful thinking, not aspirational, but genuine and useful.
My point is that within the verses, one can get an expanded sense of how to become born again.
So far, my answers to the question of “how to be born again” has been:
- Reach out to God with sincerity. Build confidence in your quest by listening to other people’s testimonies.
- Build confidence in your quest by listening to other people’s testimonies.
…Wait a second!
My apologies…
As I’ve been stumbling through this explanation, I just realized I forgot to pose the very essential Basis Question: “Why bother?”
If a person has no motivation or aspiration to seek, let’s say, “transcendent answers” or “inspired goals” that go far beyond the materialistic ones — that is, things like a status vehicle, a luxurious mansion, a more influential power position in employment or political office, or whatever, the question “why bother?” answers itself: Don’t bother yourself at all.
I’m not advising that anyone should make that lackadaisical choice.
Quite the opposite.
Please, do bother.
Still and all, this essay is really only for those who still are seeking answers and changes in their lives. It isn’t an attempt to inspire or to convert pessimistic naysayers. Then such folk would accuse me of being a meddler or for being one of “those judgmental Christians.”
I am neither.
How and what you choose is your business. You have just as much right to free choice as I do. So, let’s just leave it there.
Back to filling in #3.
3. Recognizing requisite need.
Does anyone recognize a need in their lives to fill a persistent emptiness within? Well, if God created Mankind — which I know He did — that emptiness can only be filled by God in order for His work to become complete.
You see, we are made for that purpose, to have a personal relationship with God, to have companionship and interaction with God, the Creator of the Universe and everything in it — and that arrangement being just like it was with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
An amazing thought, isn’t it?
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”
Which brings me to #4. (which I am perhaps making more complex and time consuming than it needs to be…)
At some point, (and I know that this section is quite a mouthful and I hope not an obstacle pile of sand…)
- after some self reflection, and
- when a person comes to realize that all the negative consequences in their lives are the results of their own personal choices, and
- they cannot continue to blame others or God for any particular circumstances in their life, (except, of course, for physical and mental abuses and ensuing traumas), and
- they choose to take responsibility for now having an opportunity to choose a new direction for their life, and
- they realize Jesus came to save them from themselves, their circumstances, their hurts imposed by others, and even the harm they themselves have caused to others…
In any event — and for simplification — when anyone sincerely calls on Jesus to forgive them and to come into their life, they will actually receive not only forgiveness but also a newness of life. Then, a new internal life begins where the Bible quotes Jesus saying, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” — Matthew 11:29, New International Version.
You will receive a new work that begins with changes internally as you work out the kinks in your old fallen nature and put on the new Christ-like nature God has always intended for each of us to have…
Also, there is this assurance: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” — John 3:17, NIV.
I hope I have given some clarity in how to be born again. Like in natural human birth, it’s a whole new experience, and how to move in it, how to walk and talk in it, must be learned. So, if you want that new life, start by prayerfully reading the New Testament — that is, start talking to Jesus about this new birth and how to obtain it and to live in it. The choices are still yours…
“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find {what you are looking for}. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
“You parents — if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him?” — Matthew 7:7–11, New Living Translation, my amplification { }.
