Spiritual Rebirth

Gal 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you

Travail in birth UNTIL Christ be formed in you.

This is an amazing verse. People love to believe that when they accept Christ as their Savior that life from there on in will be wonderful but the truth is Satan begins to attack us and He does so in ways that we don't even imagine. Some people believe that they can recognize all of Satan's ways, they look at the blatant outrageous acts and point the finger of identification at Satan. People forget to look at the small things and notice the evil one in them, yet it will be with the small things that he will gain most of his victims.

When a woman travails in birth it is a very PAINFUL process. Paul knew this, most people do know that giving birth is an extremely painful thing to do. Paul is telling those who look to him that He is going through the painful process of Spiritual birth with them until Christ is formed in them. The PAINFUL process of travailing in birth and that birth resulting in Christ being formed in them.

We NEED Christ formed in us, don't we? Seriously. We look to Christ and in looking to Him we long to be like Him, don't we? The more we are like Him the better, He is love!

Eph 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

Col 3:13 Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

1Pe 4:1 Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin

Walk in love as Christ has loved us.
Forbear one another.
Forgive one another as Christ forgave us.
Christ suffered in the flesh- we need to suffer in the flesh-when we suffer in the flesh we are ceasing from sin.

But tell people to suffer in the flesh today and they jump all over you because if you think it's appropriate to suffer in the flesh then you must not believe grace is by faith and not of works- you're working to be saved. They are WRONG!

When Christ suffered was He saved by his suffering?
Christ was saved by the Father, not by His suffering and yet He did suffer.
Christ was sinless, Christ did not break a single law of God's, a law He created with the Father before He took on flesh and was begotten as the Son.
Christ suffered for not breaking the laws.

Remember Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness? Did Christ suffer when He chose to obey God rather than listen to Satan and fall to His tempting ways? Yes. People don't want to think about that though. They think because He was God on earth that He was kept from suffering in the small ways, or in all the ways we suffered but He suffered tremendously.

So should we suffer?
Do we suffer?
What should we suffer?

Some people believe in purposely, physically inflicting pain upon themselves as if this was what was meant. It's not.

We are being reborn and this is happening while we've been born physically already. This is a spiritual rebirth and unlike a physical birth this isn't something that happens after nine months of gestation and a long hard labor. This spiritual birth is a progressive birthing, a gestation time that is undetermined.

It's hard for us to comprehend that we can be spiritually gestating, but we are, we truly are and the completion of that birthing results in our having Christ formed in us. This gestation isn't us spiritually in a warm, wet womb protected from so much and allowed to form oblivious to our surroundings. We are aware, and certainly NOT in a protected state at least not physically protected but our Savior protects our eternity.

More on this tomorrow by the grace of our Lord and Savior, all through His love!

Amen.