Your Spiritual Birthday

Your Spiritual Birthday

The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.

John 3:8

Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

2 Corinthians 5:17

I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!

John 9:25

Some people can give the exact date they became a Christian. Perhaps you are one of those people, and maybe you have the date written in your Bible as your spiritual birthday. But other people have a hard time pinpointing a specific day when they went from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive. But just because they can’t nail down the date doesn’t mean they haven’t been born again.

We know that God does something inside us that gives us new spiritual life. But exactly how that happens is a mystery to us. When God gives us this new life, it is an instantaneous event. It happens only once. At one moment we are spiritually dead, and then at the next moment we have new spiritual life from God. But we don’t always know when this instantaneous change occurs.

For many people, their new spiritual life starts at a definable time when they realize they are separated from God and they turn to Jesus. For some people it happens when they’re alone in their rooms, and for others it happens in a crowded stadium or in a church. For children who grow up in a home where Jesus is taught about and loved or for those who attend a Bible study and gradually grow in their understanding of the gospel, there may not be a dramatic event. But there will be an instantaneous change. The change will become evident over time in the way they live and think, and in the way they want to please God. It may not be definable, but it will be unmistakable.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

When did your new spiritual life begin? Can you pinpoint a date that this happened?

If you can’t identify a date you were saved, how can you know for sure that God has given you new life?

What does God do to cause us to turn to him?