FHE – Natural Man, Spiritual Rebirth

Jesus said, “Ye must be born again.”

Alma said, “have ye spiritually been born of God?”

King Benjamin said, “the natural man is an enemy to God” (Mosiah 3:19)

And behold, when that time cometh, none shall be found blameless before God, except it be little children, only through repentance and faith on the name of the Lord God Omnipotent. (vs. 21)

Draw a simple diagram:

We came from heaven, we are here now as natural men and women, we want to come back to heaven.

We’re already here: Selfish, mean, violent, and prideful. This is the natural man. We suffer from center-of-the-universe syndrome. Look at me.

Where do we want to go? Back Home.

How do we get there? We cross the bridge of Faith (We exercise faith in Jesus Christ.)

  • Faith in the words of the prophets.
  • Repentance.  (Tread lightly on this, sometime we commit sin that is wrong. But sometime we make mistakes, because of things we didn’t know were wrong at the time we did them, or sometimes we’ve done nothing wrong at all, but we feel like we have because we’re the victim of someone else’s sins. But we still feel really bad, and trapped like there is no way to fix what was broken. That’s not really sin, and so we don’t really need to repent of that. But the problem here is that it can keep us from feeling God’s love. So what is the answer?
  • Christ is the answer for it all.

How do we know if we’ve be born again?

  • No more desire to do evil.
  • Your hearts are changed.
  • You only want to do good and think good thoughts.

Here’s the kicker: After 8 years old, there is no age limit for when you can begin to exercise faith in Christ.  You can decide to begin to cross that bridge at any age.

Once we’ve crossed over, then we begin the real work and real purpose of our existence: Character development.  Perhaps that is a lesson for another time…

 

 

 

 

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