HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 20, 2025 – We born-again believers are the rarest of rare breeds. Even though, as Jesus promises, God will give his Holy Spirit to anyone who asks in sincerity and in truth, most people – including self-identifying Christians – have given God’s offer a hard pass. Sure, they want the peace and the joy that come with being a card-carrying member of the prophesied remnant (who wouldn’t?), but they don’t want the persecutions. They don’t want the afflictions. They don’t want the poverty. They don’t want to give up all the things they would naturally and without effort give up as a believer.

And they don’t want the whispers.

Jesus well knew those whispers, even from his own family. On one occasion, his mother and sisters came to ‘rescue’ him in Capernaum as if he were suffering a mental illness episode, and his brother James goaded him for not publicly revealing himself as a prophet. First-born males at that time were traditionally afforded a position of honor, respect, and privilege within the family, but Jesus, from these two brief glimpses into his home life, appeared to have foregone the familial deference. He had instead become an object of pity and ridicule, foreshadowing what we all experience as born-again believers amidst unbelievers.

Tie me to a stake and burn me, but I would never not want to be born-again, I would never not want God’s Spirit in me, no matter the cost. There is no temptation or threat that would make me turn my back on God and deny Jesus and return to the earthly hell of living without God’s Spirit. I’ve done my time as an atheist, and I’m forever done with it. Offer me all the wealth and power in the world, and that still wouldn’t be enough. Offer me beauty sufficient to launch ships and bring down nations, and even that wouldn’t turn my head. I already have all the wealth and power that has any value, through the abiding presence of God’s Holy Spirit, and I’m holding out for the promised perfected beauty that comes with my place in Heaven and lasts not for a time or a lifetime, but forever.

There is no temptation and no threat that would make me not want to be born-again. And I know I’m not alone in knowing this. I know that you, my brothers and sisters reading this, feel the same. I know that your grounding in God is not skin deep, is not for upvotes and likes, is not just for the time being until (what appears to be) a better offer comes along or the price of being a Jesus follower becomes too high or too inconvenient. I’ve seen the superficial believers fall away to other beliefs as easily as someone picks the pie rather than the pudding in a cafeteria line-up. But we don’t pick God; he picks us. We are the pie in the cafeteria line-up, the apple pie, the apple pie of God’s eye.

You will not know what it means to be truly alive until you’re born-again. We are one of a city, two of a family, as rare as hen’s teeth and for many just as mythical: “Who are these born-again believers that you speak of? Bring them to me! I wish to examine them!” The curious and curiouser approach me cautiously, as you would a rare bird borne by a storm far from its native habitat. They’re afraid to startle me into flight and so weigh their every word. We talk about the weather. We talk about the past. We talk about the weather again while they search my face for clues to a mystery they’re certain I must be hiding. I watch them searching, though I hide nothing. They cannot see what they cannot see.

It’s not my doing. It’s God’s.

**********

There is no threat or temptation that would make me not want to be born-again. I have thrown down this gauntlet. I have stated my position: It will not change.

“Jesus is King!” God is my everything.

I patiently await your response.