I am posting quotes from the wonderful book by Billy Graham, Just As I Am, which reinforce points I offer in my book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story:

One of the New Testament’s most compelling images of spiritual conversion is found in the phrase born again or new birth. . . . Jesus used it in His interview with the religious leader Nicodemus: “I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3). We each need what Jesus was teaching: a spiritual rebirth or renewed from within, by the power of God. . . . a spiritual rebirth is something only God can do. . . . God Himself takes up residence in our lives through His Holy Spirit. He begins to change us from within and gives us a whole new reason for living.

God created us in His image. He created us and loves us so that we may live in harmony and fellowship with Him.

He yearns to forgive us and bring us back to Himself. He wants to fill our lives with meaning and purpose right now. Then He wants us to spend all eternity with Him in Heaven, free forever from the pain and sorrow and death of this world.

On July 9, 2020 I posted a blog entitled, “The Redeeming Power of God’s Dual Revelation.” In his Commentary on the Book of Acts F. F. Bruce made the following comments concerning God’s general revelation in HIs creations:

…[God] “overlooked” the times of ignorance before the full revelation of His will appeared [in Jesus Christ]. Yet the ignorance should not have been so great as it actually was, for the way in which God ordered the seasons, so as to give food to all flesh, ought to have made men mindful of Him and of His claims upon their worship. In Rom. 1:19* Paul also emphasizes that if men had paid heed to the works of God in creation, they might even in them have found tokens of His “everlasting power and divinity”.

*…since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1: 19-20)

I am posting a final quote from Shawn Bolz's book relevant to points I make in my books and blogs for our good and God’s glory:

“…we are all given access to the will of God and connection to God through the Holy Spirit. Jesus restored our connection with God! We no longer need a proxy through which we commune with our loving Creator. Jesus built a bridge that crosses the chasm of our sin to connect us directly with the Father’s love….We now have Jesus and His Spirit of truth, revelation, wisdom, and knowledge living inside of us.”

Shawn Bolz has authored a book on modern prophecy, on hearing God’s voice. God restored our capacity to interact with the voice of God by His grace through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hearing from the indwelling Holy Spirit is the major focus of my books and my blogs on this website. It is a dualist interaction actualized in our time via the neural synaptic networks of the human brain. I wish to share several quotations from his book, Modern Prophets: A Toolkit for Everyone on Hearing God’s Voice , which parallel points I have made in these forums.

Nothing in our Christian experience is quite as wonderful as getting to know God and hearing His heart in real time. The God of all the universe wired us on an intellectual, neurological, biological, emotional and, of course, spiritual level to hear from him and to know Him. As we pursue Him through His Word, we will have experiences with Him. These experiences always confirm His nature, His Word, and His will.

God is a relator. He made you for connection and His strongest desire is for relationship with you! He cares about every aspect of His creation, and through His Spirit, He is restoring His original plan and design to humanity. This can only truly happen, though, if we hear Him!

What is in the heart of God is made possible through HIs voice. An awesome thing about God’s voice is that His children recognize it: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27, NKJV)

In Jesus Christ we have faith in the incarnate, crucified and risen God. In the incarnation we learn of the love of God for His creation; in the crucifixion we learn of the judgment of God upon all flesh; and in the resurrection we learn of God’s will for a new world. There could be no greater error than to tear these three elements apart; for each of them comprise the whole. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows of other men, of things, and of himself. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with this origin….The knowledge of good and evil is … separation from God. Only against God can man know good and evil….In the knowledge of good and evil man does not understand himself in the reality of the destiny appointed in his origin, but rather in his own possibilities, his possibility of being good or evil. He knows himself … as something apart from God, outside God.

I am posting an excerpt from readings by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

All suffering must lead the Christian to the strengthening of his faith and not to defection. While the flesh shuns suffering and rejects it, the Christian sees his suffering as the suffering of Christ in him, For he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He bore God’s wrath on sin. He died in the flesh, and so we also die in the flesh, because he lives in us….So for the Christian suffering becomes a protest against the devil, a recognition of his own sin, the righteous judgement of God, the death of his old man, and communion with Jesus Christ.

That the process of sanctification is deemed a “mystery” is addressed in both of my books. I hope that the neurophysiological process of sanctification created and guided by our Savior is clarified. God wants mankind to increase in knowledge and understanding by applying advances in scientific knowledge coupled with proper Scriptural exegesis to such a “mystery.” I am posting on my blog this last excerpt taken from my second book, a quotation from Colossians 1: 21-27:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation - if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant….I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness - the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

In an interview of Roger F. Olson, Ph.D. by Lee Strobel, Dr. Olson commented on the reality of miracles in our time. I included his quote in my second book:

No question…I continue to believe that God speaks to his people today, although I concede that sometimes I find myself feeling pretty alone on this….Often Christians object to the legitimacy of these ‘God things’ because they say people don’t need God to speak anymore. After all, they insist, the canon of Scripture is complete, and today God chooses to speak through preachers to communicate messages based on those biblical teachings. Personally, I find that absurd…If God was gracious enough to give personal guidance, comfort, and correction to individuals and groups ‘back then,’ why would he stop?

Alvin Plantinga was cited in my book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, stating that classical science does not claim that the universe is causally closed. His statement is entirely consistent with special divine action in the world. Just as God, who is immaterial and Spirit, can act in the physical universe, so too can the immaterial minds of human beings. There is no objection to special divine action or for human free action, dualistically conceived.