John 3:7 – “You must be born again.”
What a strange concept Jesus introduced. To be born again. His students were so confused taking his words so literally. “How can someone be born when they are old?” Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Perhaps you’ve heard it described like this – to die to self. To rid yourself of your old ways and be made new in Christ. This morning, consider this. Being born again as a believer in Christ is to receive a spiritual makeover. You change the way you see yourself. This is when God comes in and repairs your self-image and perception. Oh yes, this is something TD Jakes has been teaching me. When you’re born again, you begin to understand you’re more than a conqueror. You begin to carry yourself differently. You don’t back down from a challenge because you know who you really are.
Do you know who you really are? Have you had that spiritual makeover and changed the way you see yourself? Do you truly see yourself as the person God created you to be? DO YOU SEE YOURSELF CORRECTLY? You’ve got to know who you are. Don’t you know you have treasure down in you?
If you could only get a vision for what God wants to do in your life. A vision for who he is making you. A vision for who you truly are. I’m telling you this vision is more valuable than any amount of money. You don’t need more money to level up in life, you need a vision for who God is making you. A vision for who you can become if you won’t give up. A vision for how every challenge and struggle is building and sculpting you into the finest, most precious version of YOU.
If you can just get this vision, you will see that what God wants to do is so much bigger than anything you’ve been through or are going through now. You can stop wallowing in all that went wrong, all the people who left, everything they said, and how much you lost. Yes, that can stop right now because what God is doing is so much bigger than any of that you don’t have room for both in your life. You choose – what has happened to you or what God is going to do now. Which will you cling to?
Don’t you see how God is leading you down a path to make you stronger? Don’t you see how God is using every setback as a set up for your ultimate good? See yourself stepping into the life your heavenly father has available to you. See yourself becoming all he had in mind when he created you. See yourself being born again. Shedding any guilt, shame, anger, bad habits, old ways and old thoughts which are no longer serving you. Standing now as a new being. This is your spiritual makeover. You can now see yourself differently than ever before. God has been repairing your self-image. It’s time to see what he has seen in you from the very beginning.
You are on a journey to living up to your potential. And maybe that journey is going to be quite long because the space between how you have been living and how you COULD be living is great. Maybe the space between who you thought you were before and who God is telling you are now is wide. But here’s the great thing about that space, that distance between who you are now and who you can become … God can fill that space. An open space in your life is an invitation for God to come and dwell and do his mighty work.
This space is good. What we typically do is we cram our lives with so much stuff, so many distractions, so many excuses of busy that we crowd God right out. When there’s no space in our lives for God to dwell, we don’t feel his presence. We don’t benefit from his guidance. Maybe this is why you’ve felt distant and without his direction. You’ve been filling the space with “busy”.
Now God is saying, embrace the space between where you are and where you want to be. Open up the space between who you are now and who you can truly become – this is where He can work.
Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” We struggle when we cannot see. Get a vision for what God wants to do in your life. A vision for who he is making you.
And if you struggle with a bigger vision for yourself, then perhaps your vision of God is distorted. If you’ve put our great big God in a box, it’s hard to understand all he is able to do in your life. You put things in the “impossible” category because you don’t believe God is able. I promise you this, he is able to do more than you ever imagined. He can pull of a miracle in your life – in your marriage – in your family – in your future – in your today. Get a clear vision of who your God truly is, of his power and everlasting love for YOU, then you can see who he is making you to be.