Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Birth (infancy) (08/20/09)
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TITLE: John 3 Reimagined | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sean Harding
08/25/09 -
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Then he saw him, the teacher, he darted out from out of the shadows and spoke to him, his voice came out in a rush in his eagerness to speak to this man. “Teacher” he said “we know you come from God, no one can perform the miracles you do if God is not on their team”
The teacher, a Jewish man in his early thirties looked at the Pharisee and he seemed to ignore his remark, instead he said “I am going to tell you something that is true – you will never see the kingdom of God unless you are born again.”
The Pharisee, his name Nicodemus, was flawed, his flattery forgotten, he imagined himself getting out of bed in the mornings, his hair thinning and gray, his joints stiff with age, of all the remarks this teacher would have said this was the very least likely to him. “What a man is going to climb back into his mother’s womb? He said with an incredulous voice, thinking “you will have to raise my dear old mother from the dead first though.”
The teacher responded with patience, seeming to not notice the obvious sarcasm dripping from Nicodemus’s words. “The truth is no one can enter God’s Kingdom unless he is born twice, once of water, and once of the spirit, so don’t be shocked by the fact you must be born again. Check out the wind, it blows wherever it likes, you hear it, but you can’t tell what direction it’s going in, that is what is like with everyone born of the Spirit”
Nicodemus shook his head and gave a contemptuous snort, “Sure thing, and how can this happen?”
The teacher did not bite at his sarcasm rather he cut right through all the walls Nicodemus had to protect himself, and like a double edged sword sliced through – “you are a teacher of your people, and you just don’t get it!”
Then as Nicodemus began to squirm, the teacher, Jesus, former carpenter from nowhere important, began to give amazing prophetic insight that blew the mind of the Pharisee.
Jesus said – I’m telling you all the facts now, I’m giving you a firsthand eyewitness account, and yet you don’t believe. You don’t believe me when I speak of earthly things, what will change when I speak of heavenly things? You realize no one has ever been to heaven except the person who came from there, the one called the son of man. Just as Moses lifted the snake up in the desert all those years ago, the son of man has to be lifted up so that everyone who trusts in him will have eternal life.”
Nicodemus was drinking the words in, like a man who had wandered through a desert and was in blazing hot sun without water for days – he urged Jesus to go on with his mind.
Jesus said, “God, has loved this world so much that he sent his only son so that anyone who trusts in him won’t perish, but have eternal life, you see God did not send his son into the world to give it a hard time, he sent his son to rescue them though him.”
He then seemed to look right into the very depths of Nicodemus, right into the deep recesses of his heart, and Nicodemus felt the words resonate within him.
“If you trust in the Son, you will be rescued, if you don’t you will be found guilty and be condemned.“
“This is the verdict – People prefer darkness and evil instead of light, light has come into the world but people are afraid of being exposed by the light, but if you live by the truth comes into the light, and what he has done, well it can be seen to be of God.”
Jesus walked by, saying nothing, and yet Nicodemus felt sure he heard the words – “and what about you?”
Then, just like that, Nicodemus was left standing there alone. He turned wandered back into the shadows, took a few deep breaths, and then fell to his knees. Tears poured down his face and he looked up to God and he cried out in a loud anguished voice –
“God, help me to be born, to be born again.”
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