God's Will and the Meaning of Being Born Again

When people ask what God truly wants from their lives, they often imagine a long list of rules to keep or duties to perform. Yet the heart of God's will is far more personal than that. From the very beginning, God has longed not for distant servants but for beloved children who know Him and walk with Him in trust. His will is that we should be made new from the inside, that the same love and life found in Him would take root in us and reshape who we are.

This is why Scripture speaks of being born again. One night a respected teacher named Nicodemus came to Jesus, confident in his learning and his careful religious life. Jesus told him plainly that no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. Nicodemus was puzzled, asking how a grown person could possibly enter his mother's womb a second time. But Jesus was not speaking of physical birth at all. He was describing a spiritual beginning, a new life given by God's own Spirit.

The need for this new birth flows from an honest look at the human condition. We are not merely people who occasionally make mistakes; we carry within us a bent toward selfishness that no amount of self-improvement can finally cure. The good things we do cannot erase the deeper problem of a heart turned away from God. This is the gentle but searching truth that the Bible holds before us, not to shame us, but to point us toward the only remedy that reaches deep enough.

That remedy is the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. God did not wait for us to climb up to Him; He came down to us. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the barrier of sin was broken, and the way home was opened wide. The cross is not a symbol of defeat but the very place where God's mercy met our need. In Christ, forgiveness is offered freely, and with that forgiveness comes the gift of a fresh start that we could never manufacture on our own.

Being born again, then, is not something we achieve by effort but something we receive by faith. It begins when we turn from going our own way and trust ourselves to Jesus, inviting Him to be both Savior and Lord. In that moment the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within, planting new desires, new affections, and a new capacity to love God and others. The old self does not vanish in an instant, but a genuine and living change has truly begun.

This new life shows itself not in perfection but in direction. A person who has been born again still stumbles, yet finds a growing hunger for God, a softening toward what is right, and a willingness to be corrected and shaped. Like a seed quietly growing in good soil, the life of God within us matures over time, bearing the fruit of patience, kindness, honesty, and love. We are not asked to produce this fruit by gritted teeth, but to remain close to the One who is its source.

Understood this way, God's will and our rebirth are bound together as one beautiful purpose. His will is not a burden laid upon us but an invitation extended to us, the invitation to become fully alive in Him. He desires that none should be lost and that all should come to this new life. What He asks of us is not that we first make ourselves worthy, but that we come honestly, just as we are, and let Him do the work that only He can do.

If you have never taken that step, the door stands open today. You do not need the right words or a perfect understanding; you need only a willing heart. Tell God honestly that you want the new life He offers, ask Him to forgive you and make you new, and trust that He hears. This is the will of God for you, and the reason He calls every one of us to be reborn: that we might know Him, belong to Him, and live in the joy of being truly His.