HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 12, 2026 – As many of you know, I was reborn from atheism. No-one preached to me; I didn’t struggle with giving up vices or wondering whether one doctrine was superior to another: I simply submitted to God not even knowing it was God I was submitting to, and he healed me. By “healed”, I mean he exorcised all the demons that were in me and replaced them with his Holy Spirit.

I was reborn before I knew I was reborn. I was a believer even before I knew what I believed. My belief didn’t result from indoctrination but from the sudden inrush of God’s Holy Spirit into my soul, where it’s been ever since. I was a believer the instant I was reborn; I was reborn and instantly believed. The two—rebirth and belief—are inseparable, as belief expresses the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in a soul. Without that abiding presence, there is no God-given belief, only a desire to believe or an “I think I believe” or a belief that waxes and wanes with life’s circumstances.

I mention this because the two terms “rebirth” and “conversion” are often used interchangeably, including by me. Yet what is meant by these terms can be something entirely different. Rebirth is what I touched on above, whereas conversion can mean rebirth or it can mean a change—sudden or gradual—from one state to another, from one frame of mind to another, from one lifestyle to another, without God’s violent intervention. In conversions without rebirth, alcoholics embrace sobriety, Lotharios swear off women, and party girls vow chastity, all while subsuming their newfound “righteous living” under a Christian framework. These and similar changes, though commendable, are self-imposed and self-directed rather than God-imposed and God-directed, which means they’re difficult to sustain and typically end in failure, even with ongoing support from a congregation or other helping hand.

A massive portion of the worldly church is made up of such converts. Unfortunately, they struggle with their faith as much as with their day-to-day lives. Not having God and Jesus as their counsellors, they lean on friends, mentors, spouses, colleagues, doctors, life coaches, etc., gaining a form of worldly wisdom but not the wisdom that comes from above. They share the same desires and problems as the world, and they respond to those desires and problems in the same way as the world. Eventually, usually during a crisis (like the death of a child or other major loss), some converts relapse and leave Christianity altogether.

On the other hand, some non-reborn converts harden in place and neither grow nor shrink, like the scribes and Pharisees, lawyers and Sadducees mentioned in scripture. They either build ministries themselves or become ministers and priests in established Christian strongholds, wholly devoted to their denominations and creeds rather than to God and his Word. They serve “the church” instead of serving God and approach their faith as a job rather than a relationship with God and Jesus through God’s Holy Spirit. And while they may be faithful in doing their job—some are enormously faithful in their jobs—they have little joy in the doing of it and are constantly battling temptation.

I do not mean to belittle anyone here, including myself. I’m merely pointing out the difference between conversion that results from rebirth and conversion that does not. As I mentioned at the outset, the terms “rebirth” and “conversion” are used interchangeably, which can lead to confusion. A convert who is not reborn lowers his or her chances of remaining a Christian, whereas a convert who is reborn dare not lose the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, because there’s no way to get it back, and the exit of God’s Spirit from a soul guarantees eternal damnation.

The stakes are infinitely higher for a reborn convert than for a non-reborn convert, just as life circumstances and source of belief are entirely different. At his ascension, Jesus warned his disciples not to be “witnesses” of the Gospel until they’d received God’s Holy Spirit, which they then did ten days later at Pentecost. Rebirth conversion is sudden, violent, glorious, ecstatic, and undeniably real. It also lasts a lifetime, except in very rare cases. Non-rebirth conversions are nothing like that and often end in failure or greatly diminished faith.

Rebirth is conversion, but conversion is not always rebirth. As bornagain believers, we need to be acutely aware of these differences when we interact with the worldly church and with the world.