Today, I'm 30. Of course, my conventional age is 30 in hexadecimal. But now I can celebrate being 30 for another reason. It was 30-years ago that I first made a decision to follow Jesus. Despite the sometimes awful modern connotations of "Born-Again Christianity" - that is precisely what Jesus described to Nicodemus - the pharisee.
Nicodemus has been a kind of hero to me since that day 30 yeas ago when I read about him. Supposedly as part of the Jewish religious elite he ought to have known about God. But when faced with Jesus he knew that here was a man who *really* knew - someone who spoke with authority. And Nicodemus was curious enough, and intrigued enough to go and seek out this most remarkable carpenter one night, because he couldn't just ignore those questions nagging him. Despite what his fellow pharisees might have thought of this outrageous Jesus, Nicodemus had to find out for himself.
And Nicodemus was the reason I came to Jesus too.
(You can read about him in John's Gospel: chapter 3.)
Jesus wanted his followers to worship God, not him. He said we should pray to his Father in heaven. Matt 6:9. Jesus preached about the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of Jesus. Jesus is the king of the kingdom, but it belongs to God, whose name is Jehovah.
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