Joan Boney ... apostle/prophet
I was speaking with a Baptist woman and telling her about my friend David who just stepped onto the porch of his house and "something happened", he was changed ... David said all of a sudden he was "different".
I know a woman who was a drunkard. She was "changed", "all of a sudden". She told her husband she was going to quit drinking. She wanted to hear people speak about God. Very different from what she had been before she was changed.
She was changed ... and then wanted to hear the word of God.
Some people are changed by hearing the word of God ... But this woman was changed first and then wanted to hear the word of God.
God simply made something from nothing ... just as the heaven and the earth were created ...
Hebrews 11:3... Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
The Baptist woman I was speaking with didn't understand that God can create from nothing ... from no previous teaching ...
But God can do this.
God simply speaks and the creation is formed and it might even be formed when there are no previous materials. This is how God created the heaven and the earth. We, who are born again, understand this "by faith".
Certainly in many cases, that new creation is created by hearing the word of God.
But God is not limited to doing it this way.
One woman I know of had been wild and crazy all her life. She had a medical background and was very intelligent. She went into hospital for operation. The night before the operation, a "nurse" came into her room. Nurse said to her, "You're not going to be the same after this operation." Peggy replied, "I know." (medical background)
Nurse said: "No ... you are not going to be the same. The people you like now, are people you will no longer be able to be around." (Peggy was lesbian.)
After the operation, Peggy was totally changed. She could no longer stand being around lesbians. She went to church group and began learning Bible.
She went back to the hospital after the operation to find that "nurse". There was no such person working at that hospital. ? angel ?
One of the primary things that happens after we are born again is change ... real change!
After we are born again, we are a new creation.
Certainly we grow in God in the coming months and years. But first there is a change. That person we once were is gone. A new person takes the place of the old inside us. Then as we learn Bible, we are continually recreated in the image of the Word as we choose to do the word after we are born again.