John 3:7
Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
Birth is the beginning of life. To be born again is to begin to live anew. We must have a new nature, new principles, new affections, new aims.
By our first birth we were corrupted by sin. Thus we must be made new creatures. We must be entirely different from what we were before. We cannot be the same. We can look to nature for an example of the process.
A small tree rises from the soil and the farmer sees that it is a crabapple. The farmer knows that the crabapple is healthy but it will never bear good fruit. So the farmer grafts a golden delicious apple tree into the crabapple tree. The new tree is now capable of bearing good fruit. The roots, however, are still of the crabapple. The roots will continue to produce crabapple shoots. If the farmer does not prune the crabapple shoots, the new tree will not reach its potential for producing golden delicious apples.
So it is with us. We were grafted into the body of Christ and given a new life by Our Savior. The Holy Spirit indwells us to make sure that we are pruning away all of the sin from our old lives. Unless we submit to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we will not reach the fullness that Almighty God planned for us.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for grafting us into Your kingdom through the sacrificial work of Your Son. We rejoice that You have sent the Holy Spirit to help us to overcome the sin that we inherited and continues to rise up against us as we seek to live as new men and women in Christ. We pray, Father, that You will provide the inspiration that we need to submit to the Holy Spirit and the strength that we need to stand against the enemy who comes to steal our fruit. Through Your grace, may we see a full harvest from our lives.
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