Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, hey friends, welcome to another edition of the weekday podcast. Super grateful you're here. If you happen to have missed yesterday's episode, swing by weekdaypodcast.com to catch up. As we think about this idea of starting over this week, I wonder if you've ever had one of those moments where you told yourself this is going to be the year that something different happens. Maybe it's a new habit, or new discipline or a new app on your phone, and by February, you're right back where you started, yelling at your GPS like it can hear you. Now most of us have quietly run that experiment more than once. More effort, more willpower. One more system, and the results have been, at best, inconclusive. Nicodemus hits that same wall when Jesus tells him he must be born again. Nicodemus takes that literally. Nicodemus says to him in John 3. 4, how can a man be born when he's old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?
[00:00:54] Now he's not being slow. He's doing what all of us do, trying to figure out how to make this happen through his own effort. Now listen to how Jesus answers him. Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
[00:01:16] There's something Jesus is pointing back to here. A promise from the prophet Ezekiel that one day that God himself would give his people a new heart and a new spirit. Not something they generate, but something that they'd receive.
[00:01:31] Anybody ever plan an outdoor wedding and spend the whole week before refreshing the weather app, hoping it'll change if they check it enough times? You can't negotiate with the weather. You can't outplan it. You just watch what it does. And that's what Jesus is telling a man that is used to being in control of very little except his own righteousness. This one you don't get to engineer, you just get to receive it. So if you've been trying to will your way into a fresh start, more discipline, one more system that's finally going to make it stick, here's a different move to try today. Just one honest sentence said out loud, God, I can't do this myself. That's it. Not a five step plan, just naming that. This one was never yours to build. You cannot outplan the weather and you can't engineer this either.
[00:02:23] So if you can't earn it and you can't engineer it. Is there any way to actually know it's real or that it's working? Well, tomorrow we'll talk about the one clue you actually get to see. Have a great day. We'll see you back here soon.
