She reveals that her family were both deeply dysfunctional & somewhat colorful in their outlook on life. Her father was a highly intelligent man, but he was an alcoholic. Rarely sober, he became a dishonest & destructive person. Her mother was a "free spirit", who fought against the idea of domestic life & institutions, & did not want the responsibility to raise a family. As a result, the children learned to fend themselves. The fed themselves, dressed themselves, & looked out for each other. Jeannette speaks about the time when her sister Lori, got her 1st pair of glasses. The nurse at school tested her vision & told her mother that Lori was incredibly short-sighted. At first, her mother refused to buy her glasses, but the nurse said that without them, she would not be allowed to continue at school. When Lori finally received her glasses, she looked around in amazement. She immediately ran outside & started to marvel at the sight of the trees & the individual leaves on each of the branches. Jeannette asked her what she was looking at. Lori started to cry; she cried because of the beauty of what she was seeing, & she cried because of all that she had been missing up until that day.
-Jeannette Wall, In The Glass Castle: a Memoir
Our spiritual eyes are opened & we start to see the world in a completely new way.
Just as we had to go through physical birth to enter the world, we also need to experience spiritual birth to enter the kingdom of heaven.
New birth can only take place when we accept Christ in our hearts as our only Lord & Savior.
The Holy Spirit is the One who brings about new birth; through our faith, He births the spiritual life of a new person in us.
Physical birth is only the first step in life & should lead us toward the next: the birth of our spiritual nature. Only when this happens do we attain the right to become children of God.
That is when our spiritual eyes are opened & we can clearly see the kingdom of heaven.
Paul had made it his mission & passion in life to find everyone who followed Jesus & put them in prison.
*Acts 9:3-5
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied.
Paul was completely blind when he got up from this encounter - he had no idea whether he would ever be able to see again.
3 days later, however, God sent Ananias to come & pray for him. Once Ananias had prayed, Paul recovered his sight.
This is a clear example of what happens in the life of a believer when they encounter a true light - Jesus Christ.
He is so pure & so holy in nature that when someone sees Him, His light causes all darkness to leave.
The person becomes blind to sin & their spiritual eyes are opened to a world they had never known before.
Once, when Paul was sharing the gospel with a proconsul, a false prophet confronted him in an attempt to keep the governor from the faith.
Paul was able to see that there were evil spirits operating through the fake prophets; he rebuked them so that the proconsul could come to faith.
*Acts 13:4-12
The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper. They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, "You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun." Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.
Without having experienced the new birth, Paul would have found it impossible to understand what was happening, & much less, to have known how to deal with the situation.
New birth was immediate in Paul & the change in him was dramatic.
Everything he had been, his priorities & his reason for living, changed completely after a genuine encounter with Jesus.
The biggest changes I have experiences since coming to know Jesus are that I have experienced opening my eyes to a world that had never known before, felt that my heart cleansed & the Holy Spirit coming in.
REMEMBER:
NEW BIRTH WILL OPEN MY SPIRITUAL EYES.
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