You Must Be Born Again!

I recently was speaking at a conference and had a couple approach me seeking my counsel. They related how their son had fallen far away from the Lord. He had become a Christian when he was a child and had been baptized. However, since his teen years, he had wholeheartedly embraced the values and attitudes of the world and had not looked back. Now he was an adult and he had no time for God. He did not go to church or want to talk about his faith with his parents. They had pleaded with him that he should act like the Christian he was but to no avail. They asked me what more they could do to encourage their son to return to his Christian roots.

I tried to be as compassionate as I could, but I felt compelled to ask them, “What makes you so sure he is a Christian?” They explained again how he had prayed the sinner’s prayer as a child and subsequently been baptized. I asked, “After twenty years of living like an unbeliever, don’t you suspect his childhood prayer didn’t take?” These sincere parents desperately wanted to believe that despite the fact their child was living his life, year after year, as an unbeliever, that because he had said a prayer as a child, he would still find himself in heaven when he died. But they had not been doing their son any favors.

The fact is that you do not become a Christian when you ask Jesus to come into your heart. You become a Christian when you are born again. Praying a prayer is not enough. God must also choose to answer your prayer! God sees our heart when we pray. He knows if we are sincere. He knows if we are praying, believing. He knows if we are only coming to him because our teenage friends are making a similar decision. Just because we say a prayer does not mean God automatically does what we ask. The problem with many self-professing Christians today is that they cling to their childhood prayer even when all the evidence of their present life suggests they were never born again.

When the apostle John wanted to give assurance to people that they had eternal life, he did not point them back to their past and ask them to recall the date and location of where they said a prayer. He pointed them to the evidence in their life from that week. Are you walking in darkness? Then you do not have fellowship with Christ (1 John 1:6). Do you hate your brother? Then you are not walking in the light (1 John 2:9). Do you love the things of the world? Then God’s love is not in you (1 John 2:15). Do you habitually sin? Then you don’t know God (1 John 3:6). Are you keeping God’s commandments? Then you are His child (1 John 3-5). Do you practice righteousness? Then you are a child of God (1 John 3:10). Are you overcoming the world’s temptations? Then God resides within you (1 John 4:4). Do you love others as God does? Then you know God (1 John 4:7).

I don’t believe in planting doubts in every church member’s heart about whether they are Christians or not. But I think it behooves us to look for evidence that we are born again. I believe the reason the modern church has lost so much of its spiritual power is because it is filled with people who mistakenly believe they are Christians. Jesus warned that in the final judgment many people would discover that they had never been born again (Matthew 7:21-23). He didn’t say there would be a handful of people who somehow slipped through the cracks and remained deceived about their spiritual condition. There would be many.

I see evidence of this in churches all the time. Church leaders callously fire their pastor with no notice over a trumped up, petty charge such as, “we just think it is time for you to move on” and have no qualms of conscience about the ungodly way they are behaving. Or people cheat in their business or on their spouse and yet have no sense of guilt or remorse. Or churches split and members become so angry and bitter toward one another that they resort to fistfights in the parking lot. Yet these people believe that despite their unChrist-like behavior, that their mansion in heaven is already prepared and awaiting their arrival.

Jesus said we could tell a true believer by the fruit of their life (Matthew 7:15-20). Just as an apple will produce apples, not oranges, so someone who is born of God will act like a child of God. If people consistently act like an unbeliever year after year, it is not far-fetched to conclude that, despite what they claim to have done years before, they are in fact, an unbeliever. Perhaps we would see revival come to America once more if we began to treat self-professing Christians who practiced unrighteousness like someone who still needs to have a genuine, life-changing encounter with the living God.

Reading

I am presently in the process of updating and expanding our book, Spiritual Leadership: Moving people on to God’s Agenda. This past month I took time to read through several leadership books including: The Way of the Shepherd by Kevin Leman, How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni. Each was helpful. The Way of the Shepherd demonstrates how leaders need to shepherd their people even when leading in the marketplace. Although it is a business book, pastors would greatly benefit from reading this book as well. Far too many pastors have lost the shepherd’s heart. Jim Collins explains why companies that once were great can quickly fall into mediocrity or even oblivion. The first stage of decline he outlines is called, “Hubris born of success.” Success can often harm companies and people far more than failure can. While he never mentions him, I sensed Collins was trying to refute the significant charges that Phil Rosenzweig leveled against him and his theories in The Halo Effect. If you have read other books by Patrick Lencioni, particularly, Death by Meeting and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, you know that he is an interesting and insightful commentator on leadership. As always, I encourage pastors and church leaders (and for that matter, parents), to be regularly reading books on leadership. This is a time when those God places in leadership positions should be exerting the maximum influence upon those they lead.

Posted by Richard Blackaby at 8:29 am