It’s so important to keep in mind
that the greatest miracle in this Gospel age is the miracle of what we commonly
call The New Birth.
Jesus Christ told the religious
leader, Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (or: “You must be born from
above”). But Nicodemus didn’t get
it. We’re all programmed – if I may put
it that way – to think in terms of what we do in order to be made
acceptable to God. So, Nicodemus is
perplexed. “How can a person be born
when he is old? Can he enter a second
time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
“How can I do this?”, he asks Jesus.
To which Jesus responds by saying “You
can’t!” We must be born again (or
born from above) by a work that only the Holy Spirit – the third person of the
Godhead can do. And we simply can’t
control the Holy Spirit. “The wind blows
where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes
from or where it goes. So it is with
everyone who is born of the Holy Spirit.”
It’s God’s sovereign work to take dead hearts and make them alive; to
take hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh; to take people
enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the Devil and free them to become
citizens of heaven, Holy Spirit filled men, women, boys and girls, and
followers of God by a faith union with Jesus Christ.
That’s a miracle! And never forget that it’s the greatest
miracle in this Gospel age.
We can’t control that work (any more
than any other miracle can be controlled by human beings) – the Holy Spirit,
like the winds, blows where He wishes, but we hear and see His work (just like
we hear the wind and see its effects) in lives that are changed from within as
God grants them new hearts.
And those changed lives – like any miracle –
testify to the power of God that He brings about by the Gospel – all the Good
News that flows from the person and the work of Jesus Christ. These changed lives – very often dramatically changed lives
– make us look, listen, ask questions,
and encourage us that the Lord Jesus really is alive and at work doing
exactly what He said He would do: “Save
His people from their sins”.
In our day, I don’t know of any more
amazing example of this miraculous power of God by the Gospel than the work
that God did (and continues to do) in Rosaria Butterfield. So many have read of that miraculous work in
Rosaria’s first book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian
Faith.” Her second book Openness
Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an
Unlikely Convert is full of rich, insightful comments on sexual issues in relation to
the Christian’s union with Jesus Christ.
If you’re wanting some truly clear and biblical analysis of things like
same-sex marriage, sexual orientation, and gender identity, you’ll find it in Openness
Unhindered – Rosaria Butterfield’s second book.
But it’s her third book The
Gospel Comes with a House Key that’s real dynamite – as if her first two
books weren’t! In that volume (I’ve
called it – without any exaggeration – one of the most powerful books I have
read next to the Bible itself), Rosaria Butterfield explains and demonstrates
how the Gospel not only opens our hearts, but also opens our homes. Or it should! It’s not only a call to exercise “radical
ordinary hospitality”, as Rosaria puts it, but to see that hospitality as, in
God’s hands, “a daily way …to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors (part of)
the family of God.”
As we think of ministering in what
is often called a “post-Christian culture”, I don’t believe that any “method”
(if I may put it that way) is more important than this: Radical, ordinary hospitality. It comes when God opens your heart to
opening your home. And, as we’ve
developed this theme on previous Visits to the Pastor’s Study, we’ve come to
realize that this is nothing more than showing others the hospitality of God –
by which he saves us by bringing us into His own house.
In
a moment, I’m going to let Rosaria Butterfield tell you the remarkable story of
how God opened her heart by the Gospel (and by the means of hospitality!). But I want her to go further and show us what
it looks like when those opened hearts begin to open their homes. Remember that she was an English professor –
she knows how to tell a story! But the
purpose of this edition of A Visit to the Pastor’s Study isn’t just for
you to hear a story about one person’s journey from Open Heart to Open Home – but we want to
encourage you to experience your own journey on the same path. Get ready to be challenged to think and to
act! (And, incidentally, keep listening
and you’ll hear how you can get a free copy of Rosaria Butterfields’s
outstanding book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key.)
Rosaria Butterfield,
thanks for making time for us in your busy schedule, and welcome to A
Visit to the Pastor’s Study…
Here’s a link to the
full program:
Yours
in our hospitable God,
Pastor Bill