Welcome to the Bible Study. I'm Stephen Lawson, president of One Passion Ministries.

And each week I will teach verse by verse through the passage of scripture so that you can better understand the word of God

and put it into practice in your life. Join me now as we look together into this

section of the Bible. Well we've got a great study in store and just to kind of set the landmarks.

We've been going verse by verse through 1st John.

And previous to that we spent four years going through Romans first by

verse and in coming through 1st John we came to chapter 3 where John has given special focus to the new birth to be born of God,

which has raised a lot of questions in people's minds when I made the statement that it is an immediate

work of God that takes place in a moment in time.

It's not an extended process by which you are born again. And then the relationship

to what does it mean to be converted? Because conversion is also something that takes place at a specific moment in time.

So we need to be crystal clear about this for several reasons.

Number one, it affects your, where you are with the Lord.

For you to understand what it is that God did in you so long ago when you were born again. You probably weren't well taught at that point

in the doctrine of regeneration and in the new birth. You may just have been at a youth camp or in your bedroom reading or someplace and you

were brought into the kingdom, but it has been subsequent to that that you've had your mind well taught in regeneration, the doctrine of the new birth.

So we need to understand what is it that happened to me so long ago. And then what is conversion? And so I decided to just tap the

brakes for a moment, pull over the side of the road, and let's just talk about this.

So this is just a short mini-series within a larger series of going through 1st John. I think the doctrine of the new birth may be one of the most,

or is one of the most neglected doctrines in the entire Bible.

And so there's very little teaching on what does it mean to be born again.

And it is so important because

...