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PICKING FROM A PECK OF PAPAL PETERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 4, 2025 – Pardon me if I’m not supposed to notice, but aren’t there an awful lot of papabile Peters in the 2025 conclave? I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with Malachy’s prophecy of “Peter the Roman” being the 112th (*see note below) and final pope, and it’s likely all just a coincidence. Nothing to see here, folks; move along. But still, I can’t help but notice all the Peters surging to the forefront of the betting odds… and what are the odds of THAT?
I wrote two and a half months ago, when Bergoglio was still warming Peter’s seat (or better said, lukewarming it), that the next pope will likely be a Peter. It could be someone who was christened Peter at birth, or it could be someone who takes the name of Peter after being crowned pope (I say “crowned”, but they don’t actually do that anymore to Caesars, I mean popes, at least not publicly). No pope has yet to take the name of Peter, allegedly out of deference to the original Peter. If someone who wasn’t christened Peter at birth becomes the next pope and takes the name of Peter, well, it might not yet be time to head for the hills, but you could consider sleeping with your running shoes on.
Here, in ranked order, is the latest list of the men most likely to be crowned pope in the 2025 conclave, according to a global betting site. Note that “Peter” can be spelled differently, depending on the language.
- Pier Parolin
- Luis Antonio Tagle
- Mateo Zuppi
- Peter Turkson
- Robert Sarah
- Pierbattista Pizzaballa
- Peter Erdo
Of these top seven contenders, four are Peters. I would wager that this many Peters on the papal short-list has never happened before.
What are we to make of it? Just a “coincidence”? Or is the Peter the Roman prophecy being force-fed into the pope-picking process because the scripted end is upon us?
Me, I’m rolling for Peter Pizzaballa becoming the next Big Cheese, solely because his name makes me hungry for pizza. That, and because Pizzaballa is currently the head honcho (Head Cheese? lol groan) of the Catholics in the very place where scripture tells us Peter actually was the head honcho for a time – Jerusalem. So, if the next pope is an Italian named Peter who already sits in the historically and scripturally designated seat of Peter in Jerusalem, then I’d say all the boxes (pizza boxes?) are checked for Malachy’s “Peter the Roman” prophecy coming to life. And it would be just the icing on the cake (or dare I suggest, extra cheese on the pie?) if all this happened now, at the 2025 conclave, given that humanity has recently been handed its eviction notice due to the allegedly impending polar shift that’s going to wipe most of us out in as little as 4 to 6 years.
The 2025 conclave starts in three days. Let’s see what happens.
In the meantime, for your viewing and listening pleasure, here’s a little ditty serenading pizza at a bakery in Peter Pizzaballa’s hometown of Bergamo, Italy. Enjoy!
ll fornaio pizza Bergamo Italy #shorts – YouTube
(* The next pope will be the112th from the time the prophecy was issued, if you count the Bergoglio papacy as invalid, as numerous priests have done and have been excommunicated for their efforts.)
WHO’S DIRECTING YOUR PLANS?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 2, 2025 – We all have plans. Lots of them. From the time we wake up in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night, we’re making plans: Work plans. Meal plans. Shopping plans. Travel plans. Sometimes we even make plans to make time to make plans.
And yet, with all our planning, who’s directing us? Are we inspired by God’s Spirit or by our own will and impulse? Do we do what we do because we think we should do it (because someone has told us we should do it)? Or do we do what we do because God has advised us, one on one, to do it?
Who exactly is directing our plans?
The day I was born-again, I started reading the Bible. Better said, I started eating and drinking and absorbing God’s Word. I was spiritually ravenous. Like a newborn at the teat, I sucked and slurped and couldn’t get enough. And yet, there were some parts of God’s Word that were hard to swallow at the time. They stuck with me because they seemed to stick out. And every time I would read through the Bible, I would trip over them.
One of those parts is in James’ letter:
“Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James: 4:13-17)
It seemed to me at the time that James was being a stickler. What did it matter if we prefaced our plans with “If the Lord will”? Surely God would support all our efforts to do good in his name and that of his precious son? Surely nothing that we did in his or Jesus’ name would go to waste? Surely everything we did with our heart in the right place would be duly noted and weighed in our favor? Surely it couldn’t be considered “evil” or “sin” if we did what we did with good intentions?
You would think. At least that’s what the world tells us: “His heart was in the right place”, “he had good intentions”, “he meant right”. I mean, wasn’t it James himself who told Jesus to get out there and do things to prove to the world that he was the Messiah (only to be knocked back by Jesus with that very same advice James would later give to us in his letter)? The world’s way of doing things is to do something because it seems like it should be done, or to jump in head-first and worry about the details later. Duty and compulsion. That’s the world’s way.
But is it God’s way?
Scripture very plainly says we’re to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing. We’re always to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing. We can’t assume tomorrow, let alone next year: We can’t even assume the rest of today. We always need to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing.
Years ago, I tried to start a Bible study. I did everything I thought I needed to do to prepare for it, but no-one showed up. Day after day I waited in the appointed meeting room at the appointed time, but no-one showed up. Even the people who’d contacted me to tell me they were coming were no-shows. Eventually I gave up and realized that God didn’t want me to do the Bible study, at least not at that time. It was a very humbling experience for me, but also a profound teaching moment.
If God isn’t in it, it has no value. If God isn’t personally directing your steps, you’re better off standing still and remaining silent. How many of us make wild and empty gestures thinking we’re doing the right thing – “the Christian thing” – but how many of us will instead end up like King Saul, who also thought he was doing the right thing by sparing the choicest livestock for later sacrifice, even though God had specifically told him to kill everyone and everything and take nothing with him?
Make sure your offers of sacrifice are God-directed and not self-directed. There is no such thing as “a Christian thing to do”: There is only what God wills and what he doesn’t will. All our plans, whether directly in service to God or in our more mundane daily rounds, need to be inspired and directed by God. If they’re not, they’re not worth doing, and they might (like Saul) even get us condemned.
James was absolutely right in saying that we need to defer to God in making our plans. He wasn’t being a stickler; he was stating the scripture-based obvious. Some of us just take a little longer than others to get it.
LET US PRAY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 2, 2025 – Do we pray for success or for God’s will to be done?
Because sometimes God’s will is that we fail. Sometimes God’s will is that we suffer. Sometimes God’s will is that we lose and that we die, or that our loved ones fail, suffer, lose, and die.
The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is a wild goose chase, as only God can give us those things, and not by our pursuing them. We get them only by doing God’s will.
When people ask me to pray for them, I pray for God’s will to be done. Some people don’t like that. They insist that I pray for their health or their healing or their success in a venture, or whatever it is they’ve specifically asked me to pray for. But what if their spiritual well-being can only come from their worldly failure? What if God’s will is the opposite of what they want? What if they need to suffer in order to heal in the only way that really matters?
We cannot and should never pray against God. We must and only pray for God’s will to be done. If the old adage cautions us to be careful in what we wish for, how much more careful should we be in what we pray for?
Last fall, I spent a few months attending various church services around Halifax. I was struck by amount of time the ministers spent praying for the worldly success of this or that parishioner, this or that politician, this or that dignitary. The laundry lists of prayer requests were long and tedious and centered mostly on physical healings and money-earning ventures. Not one request was about spiritual healing. Not one request asked that God’s will be done. It was all just “make them feel better” or “give them money”. Granted, this was the worldly church, but still.
“A people of none understanding.”
Sometimes God’s will is that we be allowed to fail and hit rock bottom. I know this from personal experience, because had I not failed and hit rock bottom, I would never have been reborn. The worldly church doesn’t focus on the need for some to hit rock bottom in order to heal, but we born-again believers need to focus on it. We need to highlight spiritual healing and well-being rather than physical or financial well-being. And the way to spiritual healing is almost always through worldly failure.
I will pray for you, if you ask me, but I will pray that God’s will be done and that you accept whatever God wills. I cannot and will not pray any other way.
ENEMIES AND FRENEMIES
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 27, 2025 – I wrote earlier about how God blesses those who look after his children. They don’t even have to be believers, those people; they just have to do right by us. The people who do God’s will without realizing they’re doing God’s will are immensely rewarded for good, both in this life and in the next. This is how important it is to do right by God’s children.
But what I’m writing about today is the other kind of people – the ones who purposely harm God’s children. If you’re born-again, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t mean the people God permits to come into our lives and hassle us to a certain degree by following us around and demanding our attention. Jesus had to deal with those people, as did the disciples, and as do we, if we’re genuinely born-again. It’s part of our job to learn how to deal with them. But they’re not what I’m writing about today.
Today I’m writing about the people who purposely target and work against us, aiming to bring us down spiritually. For their efforts, they earn an entirely different type of reward than those who either consciously or consciously help us. By “purposely target and work against us”, I mean people like Judas Iscariot or Herod or the temple elders and chief priests who conspired to kill Jesus. I mean satanists and witches. I mean the powers-that-be in secret and not-so-secret societies. That’s the level of nasty I’m talking about. If we don’t have fake friends (“frenemies”) and outright enemies like these in our lives already, we will some day; that’s a guarantee. It’s actually a badge of honor to be targeted by these people. It means our witness is perceived as a threat to Satan’s plans.
And how should we interact with our own personal Judases? We should treat them the way Jesus treated Judas Iscariot – just like everyone else. Even though they target us while feigning to be friendly, we should never target them (except with prayers, in private). We should never “out” them. We should never attack them. We should never condemn them. They’re already condemning themselves by their choices, so there’s no point in our doing it: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.”
Our own personal Judases require an especially light touch and certain kindnesses that God will direct us to extend. We should never be spiritually color-blind to our Judases by pretending they aren’t what they are, but we should also never be hostile to them. We’re being tested on how we treat them, once we know who and what they are. For explicit details on how to treat your frenemies, refer to Jesus’ treatment of Judas Iscariot. That’s our gold standard.
As for how to interact with our own personal temple elders and chief priests – well, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Jesus never held back on them, and neither should we. But at the same time, Jesus didn’t go looking for a fight; he only ever defended his position when the fight came to him. He never went on the attack. If they accused him of something, he unraveled their lies. If they baited him, he refused to bite.
With our own personal temple elders and chief priests, as with our own personal Judases, we need to follow Jesus’ example to the letter. That means we defend our position when we’re attacked, we set the record straight when we’re falsely accused, but we never – NEVER – start the fight. Call them out for the hypocrites they are, certainly, like Jesus did, but for educational purposes only. We need to know who our enemies are. They need to be identified.
Like our Judases, our own personal temple elders and chief priests come into our lives as tests. They’re being used to measure our response to provocations, so we’d better respond appropriately. By “appropriately”, I mean the way God wants us to respond. I mean the way Jesus responded. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be polite or even on the level with them. Jesus on many an occasion famously breached the line between civility and hostility with his tormentors, even getting called out for it by the assorted powers-that-be, but he didn’t dial it back. He didn’t allow them to silence him or even to lower his voice. Sometimes, when it’s called for, and with God’s approval and guidance, ya gotta let loose, ya gotta call a spade a spade, even while holding your own cards close to your chest. In this, as in everything, Jesus is our example.
The world is a spiritually hostile environment for born-again believers. We can’t sugar-coat that reality and we’re not meant to sugar-coat it. Even in the worldly church we have more enemies and frenemies than friends. Still, God protects us constantly and powerfully, which is part and parcel of being born-again. Everyone is under God’s protection to a certain extent, but we’re especially protected not only because we’re God’s children but because we need the extra protection while we’re still here on Earth. We’re constantly being targeted, and if it weren’t for God surrounding us like an impenetrable spiritual firewall, we wouldn’t survive a minute. Jesus could only survive as long as he did because God was so powerfully with him, protecting him like a 24-hour highly trained elite security detail that no-one and nothing could get past. We have the same security detail surrounding us, if we’re genuinely born again, because if we are genuinely born-again, we need the protection.
I’m sending out this guidance for born-again believers, not the general public or people in the worldly church who are not genuinely born-again. This is not and never was an evangelical outreach site. We, the prophesied remnant, are a set-aside people, a peculiar people – a spiritually targeted people – and we need to look out for each other. That’s what this blog aims to do.
We’re surrounded by people who hate us, mock us, smile to our faces and then tear us down behind our back. We are despised, misunderstood, loathed, pitied, shunned, and that by our frenemies. Our enemies just want us spiritually dead.
Don’t respond to them like the world responds. Love your enemies and frenemies even as you see them for what they are. Pray for the ones God guides you to pray for and bless the ones God guides to bless, but leave the rest alone. They’re not our business. Our whole business and full job description is “Do God’s Will”, like it was for Jesus during his ministry years.
As for those who are not born-again but still help us in ways God enables them to help us, they will be generously, generously blessed.
SEED
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 24, 2025 – They dream of us, the kind of dreams you don’t tell your spouse or your significant other or even your therapist. (And never your mentor.) Dreams so raw, they rush in a fever as soon as they wake to look us up. But we have nothing to do with those dreams; they aren’t from us. We aren’t responsible for them. We haven’t sent them. God uses us as we’ve given him permission to use us, in some cases begged him to use us, and so he makes use of us. Some of our best work for the Kingdom is done entirely without our knowledge and solely because we begged God to use us.
After the first dreams comes the obsession. Not for all, but for some. Flashbacks that progress to a slow reaching out and then a quick pulling back when they find who we’ve become. Then the headshaking and sneering and dismissal, but still the thoughts. Always the thoughts. Back of the mind, front of the mind. Seed planted. And, for some, more dreams.
The first heart-pounding contact tests the waters. They don’t tell their spouse or significant other or therapist about that, either. Sometimes we engage and sometimes we don’t, depending on what God advises. Sometimes it’s best just to stay out of it completely and let God use us as we’ve given him permission to use us. God knows exactly what to do at precisely the right time, when and where to plant seed. We don’t. We’ll likely only make a mess of it.
Did you know that we’re being tested by those dreams, too? Not just the dreamers – we dreamees are also being tested. We’re being tested in how we respond. Which is why we need to defer to God and not take matters into our own hands. We must never forge ahead thinking we’ll wing it and that we can handle it and that we have everything under control, because we can’t handle it and don’t have anything under control. The forces working against us, though nowhere near as strong as God, are still degrees of magnitude more powerful than us. We cannot deal with them on our own, and to believe that we can is a trap.
I’ve been caught in that trap, many a time, and had to learn not to take the bait. I had to learn to defer to God, always defer to God. We’ve not sent the dreams, but they’ll come looking for us. How we handle them is a testament to who we’ve become.
Some of our best work is done entirely without us.
WHAT MAKES A SAINT A SAINT?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 22, 2025 – I was on the Vatican’s website recently and noticed something odd: On the Home page, about halfway down, there’s a Parade of Popes in chronological order (according to their reign as the so-called Supreme Pontiff, successor of Peter). Each “float” in the parade shows a picture of a pope from the shoulders up. Some of the pictures have halos drawn around the heads, signifying that these popes have been “sainted” by the designated papal authority.
As we know (since we know God as our Father and so we know the Truth), all genuinely born-again believers are saints. We were saints from the instant that God’s Holy Spirit entered into us, making us both holy and saints at the same time. And we’ll remain holy saints for the rest of our days on Earth, unless we do something so spiritually nasty that God has no choice but to withdraw his Spirit from us forever (may none of us ever do that spiritually nasty thing, amen).
Catholic doctrine, on the other hand, holds that you can only be sainted after you’ve been dead for a while and it’s been proven via scrupulous investigation by the relevant Catholic authorities that you’ve been a conduit for certain supernatural occurrences (e.g., healings, bi-locations, stigmata, fulfilled prophecies, etc.). The only problem with this laborious verification process for sainthood is that people who are conduits for demons can also perform healings, bilocate, manifest stigmata, and make prophetic utterances that come true. The demons, needless to say, can easily fool Catholic authorities and have been doing so for centuries.
So, what makes a saint a saint? Is it: a) post-mortem after-the-fact evidence based on the witness of a worldly authority with a dubious track record, or b) the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in a regenerated soul? Obviously, I’m going with the second option. And while I don’t go around thinking of myself as a holy saint, I am one. I’m holy and I’m a saint, not based on anything I’ve done or anything a worldly authority has imputed to me – I’m holy and a saint purely by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit with me.
All genuinely born-again believers are holy saints, and there’s not one soul in God’s Kingdom on Earth (a.k.a. the Church) that’s not been sainted. In fact, sainthood and holiness are the prerequisites for membership in God’s Church, just as they are for entrance into God’s Kingdom in Heaven.
I haven’t drawn a halo around any of my pictures yet (maybe I should? lol) or manufactured any dishes or spoons with my saintly image on them. Still, even without a visible halo or trinkets, I’m a verified saint. All genuine born-again believers are.
Just ask God.
Y’AIN’T NUTHIN’ IF Y’AIN’T GOT SOUL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 15, 2025 – Years ago, I used to fly back and forth between New York City and Amsterdam on People’s Airline ($99 one way; byob, baby!). Every now and then when I arrived back in New York, I would pass groups of men sitting on the floor in the arrivals area. The first few times I saw them, I didn’t really think twice about it; New York being New York, there was never a shortage of oddities to behold. But one time my curiosity got the better of me, so I asked a passing flight attendant why the men were sitting there. What he told me has stuck with me all these years: He said they were waiting for their souls to arrive.
Being an atheist at the time, I didn’t believe in souls, so I laughed it off as ridiculous. The attendant explained further that sometimes they’d sit there for days until they were certain their souls had caught up with them. What I didn’t realize, in glancing at these men in passing, is that they would become one of those scenes that would haunt me for the rest of my life: I can still see them sitting motionless on the cold hard floor, not talking or eating, their heads bowed, waiting.
Just waiting.
As a born-again believer, I do now unquestioningly believe in souls, and I think about those men and what their days-long silent protest at the airport hoped to accomplish. I hesitate to say they didn’t achieve their goal. I understand how jet lag can disorient you well beyond normal fatigue, but they must have understood jet lag, too, and could distinguish between it and a tardy soul. Surely it wasn’t just jet lag that drove them to do what they did?
I’ve tried researching this phenomenon online and have come up empty. Nothing’s been uploaded to the internet about people who wait at the airport for their souls to arrive. Could the flight attendant have been pulling my leg? Or was this an Olde Worlde tradition that has since passed into oblivion? It reminds me of the stories of North American natives who, back in the day, would refuse to have their pictures taken, as they equated picture-taking with soul-stealing.
Somewhat related in spirit if not in mode is a guy I know in Germany who knows a guy who won’t travel farther in a day than he can comfortably walk (~20 miles). If he goes on a 60-mile journey by car or train, he does it over three days, stopping every 20 miles to spend the night at a local hotel. He’s quite religious about this. I used to laugh at him, but now I think he might be onto something.
What about you? Does any of this resonate with you? Do you think we’re moving around too much and too fast, lured by cheap travel options and the pressure to do more and go farther in less time? How is this affecting your soul? As the Bible attests, we used to measure distance by how far people could walk in a day, but now we peg distance to car travel time. “Just five minutes to the mall!” really means a two-hour walk, and usually along a busy highway. When we frame travel distance by car rather than by foot, what affect does it have on our perception of time? Does it bias us against taking the more leisurely travel options or against taking the scenic route? And if it does bias our decisions, what are we missing out on? How are we hurting our souls in the process?
Did those “crazy” guys sitting on the floor at the airport actually have it right?
A soul is a terrible thing to abuse. If we’re discombobulating our souls by our travel modes, we need to radically consider slowing things down.
HOLY NIGHT
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 12, 2025 – If we follow God’s directive for the timing of the Passover (which we need to do as born-again believers), it starts tonight. That means the act of remembrance that Jesus directed us to do in remembrance of him should be done tonight, without fail. When Constantine corralled a group of elites into creating a religion called “Roman Catholicism” in the early 300s AD, he purposely changed the timing of the Passover so that it wouldn’t coincide with the timing of the real Passover, or what he snidely referred to as “the Jews’ Passover”. He didn’t want Catholicism to reflect anything done by the Jews. And so Constantine purposely changed the timing that Jesus asked us to perform the act of remembrance, and it is this changed timing – fake timing – that most Christians adhere to today.
As born-again believers, we need to do exactly what Jesus directed us to do, and what he directed us to do was to keep the Passover as God directed, not as Constantine directed. We need to keep the so-called Jews’ Passover, and that starts tonight.
We keep the Passover because Jesus directed us to keep it, but he also directed us to keep it in a very specific way. We’re to offer up unleavened bread as a token of Jesus’ sacrificial body and wine as a token of Jesus’ atoning blood. How we choose to keep the Passover beyond that is up to us, but it must, by a directive straight from Jesus (who got it straight from God), include the act of remembrance that Jesus showed us. And it must happen on the first night of the Jews’ Passover.
As born-again believers, we’re holy by virtue of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us, a Spirit given to us by God at our rebirth that signifies our spiritual adoption by God. When God gave us his Spirit, we became his children. The abiding presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us separates us from everyone else, the way it separated the children of Israel from the heathens around them during their final days in Egypt and their 40 years of wandering in the desert.
We are holy by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us, but tonight is the holiest of holies as far as nights go, because tonight we do as Jesus directed: we do it exactly at the time he directed, and we do it exactly in the way he directed. Nowhere else in the gospels does Jesus give us a directive that is so specific in its timing and content. And because the directive is time- and content-specific, it needs to be done exactly as written.
We need to keep the Passover tonight in remembrance of Jesus, as he directed us to do, and we also need to keep it in remembrance of the first Passover, when God, as he’d promised, “passed over” the children of Israel, leaving them unharmed while killing the first-born of every other human and beast in Egypt, sparing none.
This is a profoundly holy night, by directive of both God and Jesus, and it must be kept as such.
PASSOVER 2025: THE FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD AND A CALL TO FASTING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 10, 2025 – Here’s your annual heads-up that Passover is coming soon (it starts at sundown on Saturday, April 12th), followed by the weeklong Feast of Unleavened Bread. So if you haven’t yet thought about what you’re going to eat as a bread substitute next week (anything with a leavening agent is a no-no), now’s the time to brainstorm.
You can even make your own unleavened bread with just flour, water, and salt:
How you choose to commemorate the Passover ritual on Saturday night is up to you, but commemorating it how Jesus showed us to commemorate it in the gospels is a good start.
And for those of you who feel called to do it, fasting to mark the time that Jesus was taken away from us (this year, commemorated from mid-afternoon Sunday to early morning Tuesday) will be greatly blessed by God. When the scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus:
“Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?”
Jesus tells them:
“Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.” (Luke 5:33-35)
This is a 40-hour fast over three days to commemorate “those days” that Jesus was taken away from us, from the time of his death mid-afternoon on the first day of the Passover (this year, it falls on Sunday, April 13th) to the time he was seen resurrected by Mary early in the morning on the third day (this year, it falls on Tuesday, April 15th). This is not a reenactment of the crucifixion and resurrection; it’s a commemoration. How deep you want to go for your fast (zero food/water; water only; unleavened bread and water; soup, juice, and water; etc.) is up to you.
Forty hours is not a long fast, but again, this call to fasting is meant only for those who feel called to do it. There’s no obligation, keeping in mind that any fasting not done free-willingly has no spiritual value, whereas fasting done free-willingly is mightily blessed by God.
May your Passover be mightily blessed!
ONE OF A CITY
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.
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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.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 