When Jesus says, “You must be born again” he is referring to regeneration, not a specific kind of conversion experience. Thus says the Lord GOD: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” This is regeneration, the beginning of a new man, one who is able to be sanctified by faith with every good work. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Everything old has passed away; behold, everything has become new.”

“Born-again” Christians take this command of Jesus to be born again, but confuse regeneration with the story of the prodigal son. In that sense, being “born-again” is for the one who wanders farthest away. But should we be proud of that? We are burdened with secrets we should not know. We look with amazement at the patient endurance of those who guarded their faith from childhood. We fear more than anything the parable of the seed with no root, that sprouts magnificently and then withers, because by God’s grace we are sprouting magnificently. But, God gives us faith that we will persevere. And what does God say to the older son? “‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” So we rejoice that God has taken us back, that He has been waiting and watching for us, but we must not be elitist. Rather, we say “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” and then rejoice that God calls us, “Son.”

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you.Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

You guys are all into that born again thing, which is great. We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you just have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy too…[And he paused in the awkward silence.] But I guess that’s why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest.

Rich Mullins

I could not have said it any better than this 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0wKdLq-QKc

but I would like to add scripture…

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 10:38-40

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Matthew 16:23-25

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 16:24-26 (it’s in there twice- must be important!)

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.
Matthew 19:28-30

And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.
Luke 8:13-15

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:25-27

But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.
Luke 16:24-26

“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.
Luke 21:33-35

Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.
John 4:35-37

Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.
John 13:37-38

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:12-14

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.  John 15:18-20

The Christian message will always be a paradox, because it involves the infinite God breaking into the plane of finite history to save us, His people. It was not a hologram of the salvation won for us in another dimension, shown to us for our sake- no, salvation was won in this world, in human form, by God reconciling the world to himself. From “A History of the Christian Church”:

An obvious distinction soon was apparent. The disciples had known Christ on earth. They now knew Him by His gifts in His exaltation. They had known Him after the flesh; they now knew Him after the Spirit… To superficial consideration, at least, these two aspects were not easy of adjustment. The Jesus of history lived in a definite land, under human conditions of space and time. The Christ of experience is Lord of all His servants, is manifested as the Spirit at the same moment in places most diverse, is omnipresent and omniscient… These attributes and powers of the Christ of experience are very like divine, it is evident; they inevitably raised the question of Christ’s relation to the father as it had not been raised thus far, and in a mind of far subtler powers and greater training and education than that of any of the earlier disciples, that of Paul… Though Paul never in set terms called Christ God, he taught Christ’s unity in character with God. He “knew no sin”; He is the full manifestation of the love of God, which is greater than any human love and the motive spring of the Christian life in us. It is plain, therefore, that though Paul often calls Christ man, he gives Him an absolutely unique position, and classes Him with God. 

The temptation, however, has always been to emphasize either Jesus’ divinity or His humanity at the expense of the other. 

Emphasizing Jesus’ humanity were the second century Ebionites. 

To them, Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, who so completely fulfilled the Jewish law that God chose Him to be the messiah… as a reward, God chose the “flesh,” i.e., Jesus, “as a partner with the Holy Spirit”; but this recompense is not peculiar to Him. He is but the forerunner “for all flesh, which is found undefiled and unspotted, wherein the Holy Spirit dwelt, shall receive a reward.”

Alternately, the docetic tendency to deny Christ’s humanity began with gnosticism in the same century.

These views denied His real humanity and His actual death. He had not come “in the flesh,” but in a ghost-like Docetic appearance… That earthly life of humiliation was so contrasted with His pre-existent and post-existent glory, that the simplest solution of the Christological problem may well have seemed to to some the denial of the reality of His earthly life all together. Christ did, indeed, appear. He taught His disciples; but all the time as a heavenly being, not one of flesh and blood. 

Why do I think this is so important to understand? The paradox of God entering time in Jesus Christ, who was fully God and fully man, is not the final paradox. 

The scriptures are God’s word written by human hands. They are human words, written in history, but are illumined by the Holy Spirit to be God’s revelation. Fully God, and fully man. To deny its humanity, its finitude and its errors, is to lapse into doceticism. A good example is Matthew 27:9, which says “Then was fulfilled what had been spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah” which was actually from Zechariah. I, personally, love the faithfulness of everyone who, for 20 centuries, hasn’t yet corrected what seems like an obvious error because I know they have been faithful in other things as well. But that can’t bother us, because the bible is more than words; it is illumined by the Holy Spirit to be an infallible witness to the good news of salvation. Likewise, the tendency to uphold the King James Version as the word of God, and other translations as something less, does not yet understand the humanity of the word and the essential role of the Spirit. On the other hand, to deny the relevance of the bible as a relic of Hebrew and Greek culture as is to deny the divinity of the bible, an ebionitic tendency common in Liberalism.

We Christians, too, are painfully aware of the paradox as it applies to us. We are fully human, but we are temples of the Holy Spirit. “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” An ebionitc tendency would deny the Spirit (for example, its help in sanctification in this life) and that we are a communion of saints. A docetic tendency would forget that we are still human. We will never achieve sanctification until, like a seed, we die and are raised in incorruption. We forget that we can be easily deceived by experiences. A docetic tendency might also think we are on our way to becoming gods, like the Mormons. 

It affects our theology as well. Theology is the product of our human minds illumined or converted by the Spirit. If we give up on being able to comprehend God, we lapse into mysticism (doecetism, since we ignore theology’s humanity, the rational component). However, if we think we can come to know God through first principles and natural philosophy we lapse into rationalism and deny that God must first open our eyes and convert our sinful nature. This is a form of ebionitism because we deny the divine aspect of theology. Our rationality will always be flawed by sin until the Spirit enlightens us. 

My dear Wormwood,

   So you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Subgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
   Humans are amphibians— half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for as to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation— the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.

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And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. - 1 Kings 19:11-12

Is it so hard to believe that the Holy Spirit can in fact be a still quiet voice?

God’s condescension has always been a stumbling block. The Jews expected a King who would restore Israel- it’s hard to see that, at first glance, in Jesus on the cross. It’s hard to accept that the cross is the glory of the Lord spoken of in Isaiah. Something so great in us- it’s hard to accept that we might only perceive it by faith. Something that could easily overwhelm us- and often does- it’s hard to accept that we might have to listen carefully to hear Him. 

David du Plessi admonishes his fellow Pentecostals that we are in dangerous heresy when we speak of “shaking, trembling, falling, dancing, clapping, shouting, and such actions as manifestations of the Holy Spirit. These are purely human reactions to the power of the Holy Spirit and frequently hinder more than help to bring forth genuine manifestations.”

The Spirit of God may cause shaking, but the Spirit is not in the shaking. The Spirit may cause trembling, but the Spirit is not in the trembling. He may cause dancing and clapping and shouting, but He is not in the dancing, clapping, or shouting. And after the falling rocks, the sound of a still quiet voice.