”Though I don´t believe in God, He does believe in me!”  my neighbor fended me off.  And then she sanctimoniously quoted the apostle before I parted with her, “My grace is sufficient for thee!”

She was wrong.  “God believes in me, even if I don´t believe in Him” is a common saying among religious people in this country.  Maybe it is in your country too.  But they are wrong, nay sadly deceived, while putting a good face on it.

I remember that one of the first things we looked into, a young man and I, after he had turned to Christ as his personal Savior and Lord, was the fact that many religious churchgoers are not Christians at all.  That was in America, the nation of an enormous religious machinery.  They are religious all right, but don´t know what it is to be born again.

We read John 2:23-25 about the “many” who believed in Jesus and yet He did not believe in them.  “Jesus didn´t commit Himself to them”, it says.  In Greek the word “commit” is the same word for “believe”.  Isn´t that strange?  There was seemingly a big number who confessed faith in Christ, but the Lord was not a bit happy with that kind of a response, “for He knew what was in man”.  He could see that no change was there in the hearts of those “believers”.

Then last night I happened to listen to an old sermon from 1979 by Billy Graham.  Now, there are probably a lot of things about B.G. I just don´t understand and may even be grieved about, but on the solemn question of being born again, he was very clear.  He, too, looked up John 2:23-25 and warned his big congregation against self-deception.  Going to church is not enough, being outwardly a “nice” person is not enough either, and on and on he went.  As I listened to him I felt  I was not alone when warning my people, my religious people.

John 2:23-25 doesn´t stop there.  It goes on in chapter 3 to tell us of the religious Nicodemus´ encounter with Christ “by night” where the message “You must be born again” was brought home to him with power.  The issue was not wrapped up in soft or diplomatic platitudes.  A true servant of God never does that. “The preacher who has no zeal has no faith”, Spurgeon said.

A friend in Norway once said, “When as a young man I listened to the message of being born again, I understood at least that I was lost!”  Something similar said my hostess, Frau Lex, the owner of a hotel in Germany, when she listened to Billy Graham´s simple message in Dortmund, “You must be born again!” -  “Das muss ich haben!” (I´ve got to have that!) she said to herself, and praise God she got it.  It was evident that I talked to a true sister in Christ, transformed His Spirit and born again.

Billy is now an old man turning 93 in November.  May the Lord raise up others at grass-roots level  who are faithful to the “You must be born again”-message. My grandfather warned our extremely religious family against religious self-delusion.  Woe unto me, if I don´t follow his example, even if it´s a lonely path.

Say it simple, say it often and let it burn!”

Oct. 22, 2011 - jn