John 3:3,7 NLT
[3] Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
[7] “…don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ “
Ephesians 1:13,14 NLT
[13] And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. [14] The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.
Here is a riddle that actually popped into my head as a way to prepare me for the significance of the spiritual truth that blew my mind away. “How do you fit a square peg into a round hole?” Believe it or not, this is actually a simplistic but yet precise illustration to what happened to me when I believed that Jesus died for my sins.
You see, the square peg was me and I so wanted to go through the round hole very much like the way I desire to be in Heaven. But a square peg can never go through the round hole unless it can become a round peg. In John 3, Jesus said that ‘You must be born again’ or else ‘you cannot see the Kingdom of God.’ To keep this short, let me already reveal that the one who is ‘born again’ is the round peg. So, if the square peg wanted to go through the round hole, how does it become a round peg? Or in this case, how does one become born again?
In my last post, I have said that because of sin I can never earn my way into Heaven. Guess what, there is no way the square peg can transform itself into a round peg. So, what can the poor square peg do? Enter God… and rightly so. For only God can take a square peg like myself and make me new… make me born again. How? When I believed, God placed His Spirit in me (Ephesians 1:13). I’ve been born anew where once I was once without His Spirit and now I am indwelt by Him. As the Bible says, I am a new creation. And by the way, I have and still am REJOICING this truth, even in my present condition as a quadriplegic. Halleluhiah! But my story doesn’t stop there. In my next posting, I’ll show you how my Spirit filled life sustains my continued joy.
Until the next post,
Johann Q
NLT – New Living Translation
Johann Quisumbing 