I want to read from the first chapter of John's Gospel. These are very famous verses, and you will all know them. It's verses 11, 12 and 13. It's just three verses, and we'll read them through twice. John writes this, He came unto his own and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them give he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them give he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The he that John is talking about there is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came on to his own. He came on to his own people, but they wouldn't receive him. You see in those two verses, 11 and 12, you see humanity divided in two. There's only two types of people in this world. There are those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their saviour, and there are those who reject him. That's all there is in the eyes of God. There's nothing else. But it's verse 13 that I really want to speak on tonight. John talks about a people who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And that's what I want to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what it means to be born of God. When John talks about a people who are born of God, he is talking about a spiritual birth. He's not talking about a physical one. Everyone in here tonight has had a physical birth. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be here. But maybe not everyone in here tonight has had a spiritual birth. A spiritual birth is when God reveals his beloved Son to you. And it happens within your heart. It happens in the realm of your heart. Someone put it like this. They said it's the spiritual revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ within your heart. That's what it means to be born of God. It's the spiritual revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ within your heart. And you see, when it happens, you know that it's happened. Because you're not the same anymore. You're different. The way you view the world is completely different. You know, we live in a land where Catholicism is important to people, and Protestantism is important to people, and Nationalism is important to people, and Unionism is important to people. You see, when this happens to you, when it truly happens to you, Those things aren't important anymore because of the glory of it and because of the greatness of it. So how does it happen? How does it come about? Well, John, first of all, tells us how it doesn't come about. He says it's not of blood. That means that it doesn't run in the family. Because your mommy and daddy were Christians, that doesn't mean you're a Christian. Because your grandparents were Christians, that doesn't mean you're a Christian. It doesn't run in the blood. It doesn't run through a line or a race of people. It's of God. He also adds, nor is it within the will of the flesh. It's not within the will of the flesh. That means it's not within yourself. You don't have the power to bring this about. You know, you meet people sometimes and they say, you know, I have a really strong willpower. It doesn't matter how strong your willpower is. You cannot bring this about. Good works, church attendance, trying to keep the commandments, making pilgrimages to holy places, thinking you can bring this about. It's not within the will of the flesh. John adds something else. He says, nor is it within the will of man. It's not within the will of man. There is no one on this earth can give you this. There are no courses that you can go on. There are no schemes that you can sign up to. And at the end of it, someone will say to you, there you are now. You are now born of God. It's not within the will of man. It comes from God. It is a work of God. from beginning to end. So, how does it happen? How does it come about? Well, that's why I wanted to come here tonight. Because I wanted to tell you how it came about in my own life. Because I wasn't always born of God. In fact, I've lived the majority of my life without God. And the way I came to know the Lord God and the way maybe other people came here who know him is slightly different. I was born in one of the most notorious places of Belfast, in a place called Ballamurphy, on White Rock Road in Ballamurphy. We only lived there for about a year and then my parents moved up into Andersonstown in West Belfast and that's where I grew up and spent all of my life and that's where I still live But when I was old enough to start primary school, my parents brought me along to St John the Baptist Boys School in Finnegan Road North in West Belfast. And one of my abiding memories of that school is what happened outside the gates of the school in 1976 when my three cousins, Joanne, Andrew and John Maguire were all killed outside the school gates. There was a man called Danny Lennon. He was a member of the IRA and he was driving down Finnegee Road North and in the boot of his car he had a rifle that had been broken and he was taking it away to have it fixed. And as he drove down Finnegee Road North a soldier shot him dead. He lost control of the car. The car went up onto the pavement and went down to these children and they were killed outright. My Aunt Anne, she couldn't live without her children and she took her own life not long after that. But that's my abiding memory of St John the Baptist Boys School. Starting secondary school wasn't much better. I started secondary school in 1981. I don't know what 1981 means to you, but 1981 to me was the year of the hunger strikes and West Belfast was in turmoil. Sometimes you would try and get to school and you couldn't get there because there was cars burnt out, there was riots going on. Other times when you were in school they just said, look the school's closed down, it's just too dangerous, you'll all have to go home and we'll let you know when to come back. And you see during that time I used to watch preachers on television and they always seemed to be shouting, they always seemed to be yelling And if there was sectarian trouble anywhere, it would appear that they were in the middle of it. And you see, at that time, you have to remember, I was about 11 years old. And a young mind is being shaped at that age. And I remember watching these preachers on television. And I remember saying to my parents and my friends and other people who I knew, what type of Christians are these? I knew they were Christians because they wore the dog collars. But I couldn't understand what type of Christians they were. And people used to say to me, oh, they're born-again Christians. And you see, at that time, if you had asked me, would you like to become a born-again Christian? I would have said, dear, you're out of your mind. Who in their right mind wants to be like that? And you see, as I was growing up, you see, if anybody spoke to you about born-again Christianity, that was my vision of it. And you were to stay away from it. And if anyone talks to you about it, you just look. I don't want to know about it. I've seen what born-again Christians do, and I've seen how they behave. But I left school when I was 16, and you see like everyone else who I knew, we just lived for the weekends. We used to go out, and we used to go out to nightclubs, and we used to go out to bars, we used to go to parties, and we used to get into all sorts of trouble. And I don't want anybody sort of feeling sorry for me. I loved it. You know, there's pleasure in a life like that. People aren't living like that because there's no pleasure in it. There is pleasure in it. But what I didn't realise was that very slowly I was destroying myself. I just couldn't see it. But there's something wrong in your life when you're out with a whole crowd of people. There could be 20 people out with you in a nightclub or in a bar. and you've got your friends there with you and your family with you and everything else and you're all sitting together. Yet you feel all alone. You just feel all alone. And this used to happen to me a lot. And I used to sit with all these people and I used to think to myself, you know, is this what life's all about? Is this what I was created for? And you see, no matter what state I was in at night, I used to go home and I used to pray. In my mother's house, where my mother lives now, in the back room, had a wee bed in the corner. It didn't matter what state I was in, I used to go home and I used to pray to God. And I used to pray things like, Father, are you there? Will you speak to me? Nothing. I used to pray things like, Father, I have no direction in my life. I feel an emptiness in my life. Will you reveal yourself to me? Nothing. King David said in the Psalms that he cried out to God and God heard him. Well, it would appear that God wasn't hearing me and God wasn't listening to me. And I lived the best part of my life like that for about 10 years. And then I decided to go over and see my brother Jimmy. Jimmy was living out in California. He was living out in San Francisco. And I decided to go out and see Jimmy in San Francisco. And I will never forget my first weeks in San Francisco. Because everything was so clean. And everything was so bright. And everything was so different. And if you don't mind me saying this, and I mean this on all sides, there was no sectarianism. Do you know what it's like to live in a land where there's no sectarianism? There was no sectarianism. I just thought this is great. And you see, when we had time off, me and Jimmy used to go down to the beach. And you had the sun, you had the sand, you had the sea, you had the girls on the beach. And I remember saying to Jimmy, Jimmy, we've cracked it. We have absolutely cracked it. And he said, look at the way we're living. And I decided then, I'm not going back to Belfast. You know, that's over for me. But I wasn't there long. It was only about three weeks and I got into a fight in a bar in San Francisco and I lost a lot of the sight in my left eye during that fight. And it wasn't long after that when I had to come back home to Belfast. And I remember saying to Jimmy when I was over there, I said to him, Jimmy, you see over home, they can stay over there and they can bomb each other and they can hit each other and they can kill each other. But it's over for us, you know, I'm not going back. And here I was, back in Belfast, the place I had swore I wasn't going back to. All that happened in about 1995. It was the middle of the next year, the middle of 1996, that something happened to me that would change my life forever. Because I started to hear a voice. I don't want you getting me wrong. Not an audible voice. Not the way I'm speaking to you now. But it was most definitely a voice. It was a very still voice. And it was a very quiet voice. And that voice was asking me a question. And the question was this. What do you know about Jesus Christ? That was it. What do you know about Jesus Christ? You know, you put these things down to a phase. You put these things down to something that you're going through and it'll go away. But this voice didn't go away. The voice actually got louder and stronger. And really laying on the importance of knowing about the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, how do you find out about Jesus? The Bible. My parents had in their bedroom, in the wardrobe, a big family Bible, a big white Bible. And no one read it. But I knew where it was, because there was a lot of artwork through it. And as a child, I used to go and flick through it and look at all this artwork. So I knew where it was, and I went and I got this Bible out of my parents' wardrobe, and I started to read it. And I thought I was being smart. I thought, you know, I'll stay in the Gospels and I'll just read through these. But I started reading through the Gospels and I couldn't make head nor tail of them. Because this man was talking about birds flying through the air. And he was talking about seeds that had been scattered on the ground. And he even told this story about some poor unfortunate young man who had strayed so far away from his father that he was living like a pig. And I was so spiritually blind that I couldn't even see that that was me. But I read on, and I don't know how I came across it, but I came across Psalm 22. Maybe it's because of Psalm 23, the Lord's my shepherd. But I came across Psalm 22, and I started to read down through it. And there's a verse in Psalm 22, verse 16, it says this, they pierced my hands and my feet. They pierced my hands and my feet. The Lord Jesus Christ is the fisher of men. Well, I can tell you that that's the hook he used on me. I actually kept going back to that verse to make sure that it was still there, and it was still there. You see, I was trying to work out how this man, David, knew about the crucifixion of Christ. Because something was telling me, that same voice was telling me, that's the crucifixion of the Son of God. But I was trying to work it out. Well, that doesn't happen to way later on in the Bible. So how could this man David know about it? You see, I knew nothing about God. I knew nothing about the power of the Holy Spirit. I knew nothing about prophecy. But I knew this. I knew that that verse was talking about the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. There was a lot of things happening at that time. And it was a couple of months after that, a friend of mine phoned me up out of the blue. I hadn't seen him in 10 years. And he just phoned me up out of the blue. And he'd been over living in Scotland and I'd been out in California and the two of us were talking. And he says, look, do you want to meet up and we'll go out for a drink? So we met up in a bar called The Hunting Lodge on the Stewartstown Road. And the two of us had been there and we were sitting, we were having a drink and we were talking about all that had happened in the last 10 years. And then near the end of the night, we started to talk about God and he asked me did I believe in God and I was talking to him about things and then he says Paul I have a wee book in the house that you might like to read and it might help you and it was a wee book called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay and he gave me that book and I was like a wee boy who had found treasure Because this guy Hal Lindsey was explaining all about the prophecies in the Bible. And he even expounded Psalm 22. And he was talking about how this was the crucifixion of Christ. And how David was talking in the Spirit about something that would happen hundreds of years later. And I just kept reading through that book. And before I came to the end of that book, I had come to believe something. If you had asked me before, did I believe it? I would have said, yeah, yeah, I sort of believe that. But I came to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. You know, there's a difference in believing something and being empowered to believe something. I was being empowered to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God. But nothing was to prepare me for what would happen next. Because as you came right to the very end of that book, this man Hal Lindsey said at the end of it, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, would you like to know Him personally? Would you like to know Him personally? And I can tell you that really stopped me dead in my tracks. Because I was thinking, how can anyone know him. You know he died thousands of years ago and he's in Heaven. How could anyone know him in a personal way? And he says if you would like to know him personally here's a little prayer that might help you. And it was a prayer of repentance and it was a prayer of acceptance and it went something like this. Father I come to you in the name of your son the Lord Jesus Christ I'm sorry for my sins but I believe you sent them into the world to die on the cross to take away my sins. I then said Lord Jesus I open my heart to you and I'm asking you to come into my heart and I'm asking you to save my soul. And something happened to me before I had finished that prayer that I could only describe about the two who walked on the road to Emmaus when they said did not our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road. For there was a great burning in my heart. And it was there, and it was then, that I received the Holy Spirit. And I was born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. I was born of God that night. And it really was joy unspeakable, and full of glory. And I can tell you what happened that night. There was no preachers there. There was no priest there. There was no ministers of religion there. We put so much emphasis upon man. There was none of them there. There was just a soul crying out to God. And I remember talking to a man about this one night. And he says to me, Paul, see that night, in that room, he said you had two of the most powerful things in the universe. He said you had the Word of God. and you have the Spirit of God. And he says when they come together that's what brings about the new birth and that's where people are born of God. And do you know where I was when I prayed that prayer? I was on my bed in the corner where I cried out to God for years and years thinking that God wasn't listening to me. God was listening to me but God would decide when I would be born. Now, that's not within the will of the flesh. It wasn't up to me. It's not within the will of man. God would decide when I would come in to his family and when I would come in to his blessings. And you see, if you were to ask me, well, you know, how did God reveal himself to you? Well, does the Apostle Paul not say this in 2 Corinthians? For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone where? Who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. See when God shines that light, that light of his Son, into your heart. You know all about it. And there's nothing like it. And my life has been totally transformed since that. I mean, one of the things is even standing here on a Sunday night, speaking to you good people. I'll tell you how I used to spend a Sunday. I used to be out on Saturday nights, drinking. And then I would get up on Sunday morning, I'd get something to eat and then I'd go to the bar. And I'd stay there and I'd go home in the afternoon to get something to eat and then go back up to the bar again. And when that bar closed, I used to go to a place that wasn't even supposed to be open. And I'd stay there drinking until the early hours of the morning. And then I'd go home again. That's where I spent Sundays. And you see, if someone had have told me then, you know, 15 years from now, you'd be standing up in a church telling people about the Lord Jesus Christ, I'd have laughed at them. But it's not what God does. Doesn't he stretch down his hand and doesn't he lift us up out of the dunghill and sets us upon a rock? That's what he does. Another thing was a friend of mine, David, he got saved just after I got saved. I remember going down to see David and another friend of mine, Rory's, and they were in Rory's house which was just at the bottom of Arsenae Street. and I went down to see them and I went up into the bedroom and there was a whole crowd of them there and they were all sitting smoking dope and I told them what had happened to me and they all started laughing you know it's okay when people are laughing with you it's not so good when people are laughing at you they all started laughing, wise up Paul catch a grip of yourself all the usual stuff and that was it But it was a couple of months later, I was walking up the street and David pulled up outside Rory's house in his car. And he got out of the car and the two of us started talking. And he said to me, where are you going tonight? And I said, I'm going down to the Crescent Church over at University. There's a man called Derek Bingham and he preaches there on a Tuesday night. He has a Bible study there. And David said, right. He says, I'll go with you. I'll go with you. I said, that's alright David, you come along. So David went down with me that night and then David went every Tuesday night and I would come back over to America at times and see him and David was still going and he bought himself a Bible and I could see that David's life was changing. But I never asked him what happened and he never told me what happened. But it was about 8 years later, the two of us were sitting one night talking And he says to me, Paul, do you remember the night when you came down to Rory's and told us how you got saved and we all started laughing at you? And I said, do you remember David? Is that what you're asking me? And I said, I'll never forget it as long as I'm on the planet. But he says, I know, I know. He says, but I can tell you that you see when I got home that night, he says, I wasn't laughing when I got home. He says, when I got home that night, a real fear came over me. He says, because I knew that you were right with God and I wasn't. And he says, and I knew something else. He said, I don't know how I knew it. He says, I knew that you were going to heaven and I was going to hell. And he said, that fear stayed with me until I done what you said you'd done. He says, I asked the Lord Jesus Christ into my heart and into my life. And he says, he saved me in the way that he saved you. Another thing was that my brother, Jimmy, over in America. Jimmy got saved. I just planned back and forwards to see Jimmy and it never sort of mattered when you went over to see him. You know, I remember that the first time after I got saved, going over to see him, I flew over and Jimmy was supposed to pick me up at the airport but he wasn't there. But it wouldn't take a genius to work out where he was. He was round in the bar. So I got a taxi to the apartment and let my stuff off and then walked around to the bar and Jimmy was sitting on a stool at the bar and I sat beside him. And he says to me, Paul see before you say anything. He says, I don't want to hear anything about Jesus. He says, mommy's been on the phone, sisters have been on the phone telling us how you're telling people about Jesus, you're reading the Bible. He says, I don't want to hear anything about it. And I said, Jimmy, if you don't want to hear anything about the Lord Jesus Christ, I'll not tell you anything. And I sat there for about 10 minutes and he says, right, what's all this about? So, I started to explain to him about how I'd get saved. And it didn't happen right away, it took a long time. But Jimmy phoned me one night and he had said about how he was trying to pray and he was trying to be good and he was trying to do this. And I said to him, Jimmy, I want to ask you something seriously. Have you ever asked the Lord Jesus Christ to come into your life and into your heart and to save your soul? And he said, no. And I said, will you do it tonight? Will you promise me you'll do it tonight? He said, I'll pray to you tonight. And the next day the phone rang. And it was Jimmy on the phone. And he's a bit hesitant. He says, Paul, I was praying last night. I was praying in the way you said it. I was praying in Jesus' name. And he says, I had an experience with the Holy Spirit. and I would just praise God because of him. You know, in Jimmy's life, Jimmy was an alcoholic and he was a drug addict and he would tell you all himself. But God just transformed his life. Another thing was that my mum had got cancer and my sisters called round with a cousin of mine And I was actually sitting in the house and I was reading the Bible and they called the door and I brought them in and the Bible was opened on the table. And they said, look, mommy's been diagnosed with cancer. And I says, right, look, I'll come round to the house in a minute and they just want to pray and then I'll come round. And they said, right, they went on round. And I got down on my knees and I prayed and the Lord spoke to me. And if you ask me what way the Lord spoke to me, the way he speaks to all of his children, he spoke through his word. And he said this here, this sickness is not until death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. And I just took that as the Lord speaking. And I went round, and the cancer was removed, and mummy didn't need any more treatment. And about nine years after that, she got saved. She was 70 years old. I got saved in the back room, she got saved in the front room. And it was the same again. There was no preachers or priests or ministers or anything else. Timmy had been sending her over every year a wee daily reading book. And on one of the days she just read the verse, and she read the caption under it, and at the end it said, Would you like to give your heart to Christ? And she prayed, and the Lord saved her. Another thing I'd like to tell you about is a woman who I came to know called Marie Cryer. I never forget Marie. Marie lived in Pembroke up there in West Belfast, just across from where I live at the minute. And Marie started to come along to the church that I go to. I go to Bethany at Finnegan. And Marie started to come along there. And then she asked would myself and my other brother Johnny and David come up one night and speak to you. So we went up and Marie was there and she had a friend with her called Maria. And it was the usual thing. They wanted to know what salvation was all about. They were saying, you know, why can you not just say you're a Catholic? Why can't you just say you're a Protestant? And, you know, that's all under the banner of Christianity. Why did you need to be saved? And so we talked with Marie for a good while that night. And as I was leaving, Marie says to me, you know, Paul says, I was born a Catholic. And she says, I die a Catholic, and I'll be buried a Catholic. And I said, Marie, you've got to get this Catholic-Protestant thing out of your head. You've got to get over that. Because it's not about that. It's about knowing the Lord Jesus Christ in a real way and in a personal way. But she thanked us for coming. And it was, I would say, about a year or so after that, Marie got saved. a Baptist minister who she also knew had led her to the Lord and Maria could see it. The next year, Maria was diagnosed with terminal cancer and it came to the point where she was near the end of her life and I was praying for her in my room and the Lord spoke to me again and again it was from John chapter 11 And he said this, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? And there was just a real peace after that. I knew that her life was in his hands. And Marie died that week. And the elders out of Bethany phoned me up and asked me would I take the service. And I did, I agreed to do it. And about 250 people from Twimber came that day. And I know we have meetings and I know we say the Lord was there. But believe me, he was there that day in a very real way. It doesn't matter how many doors you're up. It doesn't matter how many leaflets you give out. It doesn't matter how much advertising you do. You couldn't get that many people to come and hear a gospel message for the first time who's never heard it before. It's only God can do that. Only the Lord God can do that sort of work. And that's the work that he done. The other thing, and by no means the least, was getting married. I had no intention of getting married. Getting married was never even on the radar for me. But I was just enjoying myself too much and there's no way I would have even thought about it. But I was asked to come down and speak at a church in Manningham one night. And my wife was there, Helen. And Dennis knows her parents. And Helen was there and within three weeks we were engaged. And within the year we were married. And I know what you're thinking, that's scandalous. And it is scandalous. But sometimes that's the way these things happen. And you just go along with it. And we've got three beautiful children, Lauren, Joshua, and Caleb. And there's a man in Bethany. And he always says to me, he's etched it into my memory. He always says to me that the greatest thing after God's salvation is marriage. And he's right. It is a real blessing. But I just want to finish tonight to tell you why I came to the cross at Calvary and why I came to the Son of God. I didn't come to the cross because I understood all the ins and outs of salvation. Because I didn't. I didn't understand all of the theology of it. I have a sort of better idea now. But I didn't understand it then. Nor did I come for the gift of eternal life. I can tell you this here tonight, I didn't even know that eternal life was on offer. It was only reading through the Bible later on that I realized that the Lord gives us eternal life when we are saved. I didn't understand about becoming an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ. I didn't understand about how you're adopted into the family of God and you share in all the blessings of God. I didn't understand any of those things. I came to the cross for one reason and one reason only. It was because ever since I was a wee boy, I knew something about myself. No one needed to tell me this. I knew that I was a sinner. And I knew that I wasn't right with God. And that's all I wanted. All I wanted was to know God and to be right with God. And I carried this burden of sin all of my life. And you see, as I got older, my sins increased. And you see, as my sins increased, my burden increased. And I just couldn't find anywhere to lay it down. But you see, on the night that I got saved, the Holy Spirit brought me to the cross at Calvary. And He showed me two things. He showed me my sin and He showed me my Saviour. And He says, look up there and see that man. That man on the cross is paying the price for your sin. He said, see that burden that you're carrying? Lay it down here. Lay it down at the foot of his cross and go free. And I did. And I can tell you something about the Son of God. See, when the Son sets you free, you're free indeed. You're free from all the trappings of religion. And you're free from all the traditions of men. And there is nothing like it. Now, I don't know everyone in here tonight. Maybe you came along here tonight and you already know all this. You know what it is to have God in your life. And you know what it is to have the Lord Jesus Christ in your life. And you know what it is to have the Holy Spirit dwelling in your heart. But then again, maybe you came here tonight and you don't know it. Could I ask you to come? Come to Him. Come and ask Him to forgive you of your sins. Come be asked Him to relieve you of your burden. Come and ask Him into your heart and ask Him to save your soul. Come and be born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, and nor of the will of man, but come and know what it is to be born of God and to live out your life in the fullness of it, because there's nothing like it. Let's just pray. Father, may we thank you tonight for your son. Father, we thank you for his willingness to come into this world and to die on the cross for our sins. Father, we thank you for the love that he has for each and every one of us. We thank you that your word tells us that Christ died for the ungodly and that Christ died for our sins. And we thank you, Father, for the forgiveness of sin. And we just pray if there's anyone here tonight who doesn't know your son, that they would come to him, and they would know the love that he has for them. We come and pray that they would offer their hearts up to him, and that he would save their souls. We just thank you again, Father, for this meeting. And we just pray your blessing upon this church, Father, not only tonight, but in the years ahead. And we just want to tell you, Father, that we love you, and that we need you. I'm going to thank you again for your beloved son. In the Lord Jesus name. Amen.