The Purpose Of Being Born Again
by James Stewart

I don’t know if David took any dancing lessons, but the Bible says he danced with all his might for the Lord. I heard some people here tonight singing with all their might. That just makes me feel good all over. I know we’re not all opera singers and that’s not why the Lord saved us. The Lord saved us to put us in the kingdom of God. Praise the Lord, lets just worship God together. There is a wonderful spirit of God here. Praise the Lord, that is what we want. We want to worship God. We are not here to glorify talent. We are here  to praise the Lord. I don’t care what your age is, you need to get up here and praise the Lord.

I thank God for what he is doing. It is going to be wonderful  when we get to heaven. I thank God for what he is doing for me.’ Don’t get worried about things, just keep praying. The devil is determined to worry us, but we are determined too. We get those pains and all our troubles, but we are just going to keep on praising the Lord and keep believing the Lord. We are not going to allow the devil to get us down.

The purpose of being born again is not simply to be saved from sin. I thank God for the wonderful experience of being born again and if you have been born again you will never forget what happened to you. You can’t forget when the Lord forgave you of your sins. You can’t forget when you were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you felt that wonderful presence of his forgiveness that washed over you. You will never forget when he filled you with his Spirit and you spoke in that wonderful heavenly language. You will never forget that.That is still not the only reason why we were born again. If we think the only reason we have been born again is to save us from sin and to get us ready for the coming of the Lord, we have missed an important message in our lives. Let me illustrate it like this, salvation is your ticket to soar into the world of the spirits and to participate now and throughout eternity in the plan that God ordained for our lives from the beginning. Salvation is your ticket. It is a miracle that God gives us as ordinary people the glorious experience of transcending the world we live in and soaring in the word of the spirit.

We need to allow the spirit to work through us. He wants us to do that. When you start feeling a little nervous and when you begin to have a few little problems and you wonder what’s going on, don’t worry about it you will make a few mistakes.

As you begin to soar in the spirit the devil will come along and he will try to break one of your wings, he will try to pull some of your feathers out, but don’t worry there is a wonderful healer who takes care of his people who knows just exactly what we need and heis going to be with us.

God has a plan for us for eternity and we are learning how to yield to his spirit, we are learning how to soar in the spirit, we are learning how to use this ticket he has given to us. It is just the beginning. You have no idea what eternity is going to be like.

Ephesians 2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved). God did something for us when we were dead in sins and I thank God for this. What did he do? He hath quickened us together with Christ. That means we were dead in sins as he says in the first part of this chapter, but now we are made alive with Christ by grace ye are saved that is your ticket. Praise the Lord, your saved. Thank God I am saved from sin, thank God I am saved from the world, thank God I am saved from the devil. Thank God by the power of Jesus Christ that hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. There are times when you just begin to worship the Lord and you are lifted above your troubles and above your problems and your and glorifying the Lord in heavenly places. That in the ages to come he has a plan for us. Throughout ages after ages the Lord Jesus Christ is going to be showing all his creation the mighty11 power of his grace as he shows off his bride. Jesus Christ loves us. He has dressed us up in his own beautiful garments and throughout eternity he is going to tell the angels and all of his creation. I don’t know what all he has created out there in universe after universe and I am not going to get into that because I have my own opinions, but I am sure there are all kinds of created beings that we don’t know anything about and throughout eternity he is going to be showing off his bride and say look this is my bride that I redeemed by my own blood and washed from sin, isn’t she beautiful.

For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourself is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. We are his workmanship. He is the one who not only saved us, but he is working on us. He is molding us, shaping us, cutting off some things that  aren’t just pleasing to him and working on us, into good works. There he wants us to do right we can’t do ourselves.

We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus are things that he wants us to do now, works here and now in this world, good works that We can only do as his Spirit works through us and makes us to be that perfect person intended for us to be before he ever created the world. He has you in his plan. God hath ordained us that we should walk in his footsteps and that time is now. Walk now, work now, walk in the spirit now and let the gifts of the spirit work through us now. Love one another now, give now, be faithful now, do his work now, witness now, reach out now. This is our training ground for eternity.

These are the works of the spirit and he is working through us in the spirit to defeat and immobilize the power of Satan. He is determined and his word has declared it that he will segregate all of Satan�s kingdom and bring it under his dominion and he will rule supremely over all. He has purposed to work through us to achieve this glorious plan. He doesn’t intend for us to be on the defense with the devil and just wait in trembling horror and fear for the devil to come and lash out at us again. He expects us to take the offense and get out there and wade in the devils territory in the name of Jesus and be his witness, be his ambassador, to do his work. Jesus Christ will ultimately destroy the power of Satan, destroy his kingdom and bring under his heel all the kingdoms of this world. The Scripture says, “For the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever and we shall rule and reign with him. That is his purpose. Praise God, he wants to work through us now to beat the devil. When someone is nasty to us and somebody hurts us and when somebody does something to discourage us he doesn’t want us to fix our attention on that person, he wants us to see what is behind what that person is doing and recognize the power of Satan and deal with that power and rebuke it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and not sit down in our sorrows and in our troubles and feel sorry for ourselves. Say Jesus I may be struggling but here is my hand. I may be sinking beneath the waves but I believe you can pick me up just as you did Peter. I want to walk with you hand in hand arm in arm. I want to do what you have called me to do. I want to defeat Satan’s power. That’s why the Lord is bringing us all back when he comes back from the Battle of Armageddon. That’s the final triumph over all the kingdoms in the world when God brings us back with him. He wants us to participate in the ultimate conquest of the devil and to bring righteousness and peace and the glory of his kingdom to this earth and to the whole universe. Praise God, your not going to stand on the mountain on the day when he fights the battle of Armigedden and whip out your sword or your gun, your going to have a body liken to his glorious body and the same glory that is radiating from the Lord Jesus Christ will radiate from you and that glory will shine across the valley of Megeto and all you will do is sit there with him on those shining horses and the glory of that presence will subgigate the army of the anti-Christ and of the devil and bind his power. That is going to be a far cry from the struggle you go through now and the pain you go through now and the sorrow you go through now. Someday you won’t have to say
a word, someday you won’t have to do a thing, just say in the name of Jesus and the kingdoms of the world will fall.

Do you know a non-participating Christian is frustrated? A Christian who is not growing, a Christian who isn’t moving in the spirit is a frustrated person. They are frustrated because they lack a sense of purpose. All they are doing is waving their ticket. They don’t have a real sense of purpose. Some people are so afraid to explore the realm of the spirit and to begin to fulfill their potentials. I want to encourage you tonight to develop what the spirit has placed in your heart.

When the world looks at us they may think we don’t have anything or that we will never have anything and that we are hopeless because we believe that the word of God has promised us. We are not hopeless as people think we are. We may be a little slow and it may take us a little while to get going, but he has promised us to do all things through Christ. Paul said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me. When you start out to explore you are going to make somebody very angry.

The Lord is the strength of my life of whom shall I be afraid. If you will fight the devil and walk with God in the name of Jesus there is a day coming when he is going to lift your head above all of your enemies and there will be no more cancer or heart diseases and there will be no more devil, there will be no more sorrow. You will be lifted up above all your enemies forever.

The devil is a liar, and the second thing is that when he gets a good thing going he gets carried away. He just can’t seem to help himself. When he gets you down he gets excited and he is so thrilled about it he just keeps kicking, but he always goes too far. If you will be sensitive to the Spirit you will know when this happens. I what it feels like when the devil goes too far. I thought God was finished with me and that God wanted to take me and I was ready to meet the Lord and I didn’t have any sin in my life that I knew anything
about and I said Lord if that is y our will then your will be down, but the devil just can’t quit when he has a good thing going, he just doesn’t know when to quit. He had me believing it until that night he came to me and said I am going to kill you and I saw Job standing back there looking at me and I said, “Wait a minute, you said you were going to destroy Job, you lied to God about Job and your lying to me. You can’t kill me, God can take my life but you can’t kill me and I don’t know when God is going to take me, I have no idea he hasn’t told me, but I know one thing the devil is not going to kill me. I know that for sure because he
is a liar, and he is the father of lies. He made me believe all that stuff until he went too far and kicked me once too many times like he has done a lot of people. I want you to know that is the way he works. but don’t be afraid of the devil. You walk out there in Jesus name. He saved me by his grace and I intend by his grace to walk with him and to serve him on this earth and in the world to come. I don’t intend to be a fool. I may not be very smart but by Gods grace I am not going to quit and I am not going to turn from God or rebel against his word and I am not going to have my own way just to please myself and do what I want to do. I am going to keep my nose in the Bible by the grace of God and I am going to pray and seek the face of the Lord. I am going to hear his voice and walk with him. Praise God, he is coming back to take me out of the world and where he is there I will be forever.