Comments by Joan Boney:
Romans 9:8 They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.
Some people are taken to church as babies. They grow up in the church setting. They assume themselves to be Christians.
Then one day some of them are born again as God by HIS Spirit speaks to them and changes them into a totally different person.
After this experience with God, they are Christians, though they thought themselves to be Christians before this. Now they know they were not really Christians though they lived at their church group.
Now they are "new creatures", changed by God.
II Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Each of us who are born again by God, through an experience where God revealed HIMSELF to us and changed us and gave us HIS Holy Spirit to live inside us and lead us and guide us, are Christians.
Now we depend on God. Before we learned by our own minds.
2 Timothy 3:7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
The natural man can't understand the things of God.
I Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
If you have never had this change authored by God, fall down and beg God to have mercy on you. Perhaps HE will.
Pam Padgett did this when her junior high classmate was killed on a motorcycle and she realized a person her age could die.
She was raised in the Catholic church and schools, but somehow she knew she would not be saved unless God saved her. So she pleaded with God to save her.
After that, she realized there was something of God "in her".
When she read the following she knew what it was that had come into her from God.
I Corinthians 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
I Corinthians 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
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Jesus says: Ye must be born again. John 3:7
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