A NEW BEGINNING

     Knowing Jesus Christ is a spiritual awakening, which is precisely the way the Lord explained it to a man by the name of Nicodemus in the third chapter of the Gospel of John.  Jesus said, "You must be born again," which also means born anew or born from above.  Nicodemus was a priest and he did not know this new birth.
    Jesus died on the cross to redeem the penalty of sin and to restore our relationship with God, and when we accept Him for salvation our sins are forgiven and our spirit is awakened into newness of life.
    Salvation is therefore a gift of God because of His love for us, by His grace and mercy.  All we need to do is simply accept His gift by accepting Christ.  There is nothing we can do to either work or earn our way to heaven; for if we could do that, then Christ would not have had to die on the cross.
     On the day of Pentecost, 120 believers of Christ were in a room.  They were praying.  That is when they received the gift of the Holy Spirit, who would empower them to walk in newness of life as well as to enable them to do for the Lord the task they could not do by themselves.
     For us, the only time we will be granted forgiveness of our sins is when we pray.  In this time of prayer, God forgives us and also gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit.  This does not mean, however, that we will be perfect and incapable of doing anything wrong because we will make errors.  But we also know that we can continually ask God to forgive us for our mistakes and He will.
     The new birth in Jesus Christ is the greatest experience I have ever had.  I have had more peace than I have ever known.  He has opened my mind to understand things than I never understood before.  In this time, too, I have made many blunders and foolish decisions. 
     Knowing Christ is all about a new beginning:  a new life that God has planned for us.
     Nicodemus the priest became a disciple of Christ and thereafter followed Him instead of following religion.