When I was a young man living in Northern Ireland, I was often invited to be born again. I was seventeen years old and carried a quiet ache of not knowing who I was or where I was going, only a strong desire to belong somewhere, to be claimed by a life that felt meaningful. The invitation held out a ready-made community and a clear identity, and yet something in me remained unconvinced—not resistant, but unable to say yes to a promise that felt offered from the outside in. Now, almost sixty years later, I find myself living alone but not lonely, no longer searching for belonging yet deeply at home in my own life, discovering from within what those early words were pointing toward all along. In the stillness of these years, I find myself living the born again experience that is shared in these writings, not as an event to be joined or a label to be claimed, but as a quiet and ongoing transformation of Being itself.

There is a born again experience that is deeply meaningful to many people, and I do not doubt its sincerity, yet it is not the experience invited by the Master when he says, “Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” What I encountered instead was the version proclaimed by preachers such as the late Billy Graham or, in my own country, the late Ian Paisley, where being born again was presented as a single decisive act: to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. I tried that path sincerely, repeating the words, making the declaration, hoping the promise would take root, yet nothing in me changed. There was no revelation, no inward awakening, no shift in the texture of Being itself, only the uneasy sense that I had spoken words without touching truth. Rather than bringing me home, the experience left me more isolated, carrying a promise that had not been fulfilled, and so I walked away still searching—not for better language or stronger belief, but for something my heart could genuinely recognize and embrace.

o what, then, does the Master invite when he declares that “ye must be born again”? Clearly, this cannot be taken literally, nor can it be reduced to belief by assertion or the repetition of correct words. To be born again, as the Master invites, is an awakening into revelation—the unveiling of your true identity as a holy son or daughter of God. The key here is not belief, but experience; not knowledge accumulated about God, but KNOWING graced from within. To be born again is to be given the certainty that arises when the reality pointed to by the word God is no longer an idea but a lived Presence, directly recognized and inwardly confirmed.

Within this grace, something dies—not the body, not the personality, but what Paul the Apostle calls the natural man, the man of earth who believes himself to be nothing more than a separate and self-sustaining self. This dying is not an end but a birth, a crossing into the KNOWING that you are more than the story you have lived or the identity you have defended. To be born again is to recognize, as Paul did, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,” not as a theological statement or devotional language, but as a revealed truth that transforms the ground of Being itself.

To be born again, in the experience of this writer, brings with it a different kind of loneliness. You are no longer a believer in the familiar sense, and this makes it difficult—often impossible—to belong to a belief community without quietly denying the truth of what you have been graced to KNOW. What has been revealed cannot be reduced again to shared language, agreed positions, or collective certainty. This is challenging, especially in a world where belonging is so often purchased at the cost of interior honesty.

Now, at seventy-five years of age, the question of belonging no longer carries the urgency it once did. The ache for acceptance has softened, and in its place there is a spacious freedom. I find myself graced with the ability to share these invitations and these revelations without needing to defend them, persuade others, or seek agreement. There is a deep joy in this, and a quiet delight, not in being right, but in being faithful to what has been given, and allowing it to speak for itself in the stillness of Being.

If I hold one wish for all who read these words, it is simply this: that you may KNOW what it is to be born again in Spirit. Such KNOWING opens the way into the life more abundant, where your living becomes an outpouring of Divine intention for the highest good of all, not through effort or striving, but through alignment with what is already true. From this place, the ancient prayer—“Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”—is no longer a hope directed upward, but a lived reality expressed through ordinary days and faithful presence.

These reflections form part of The Heaven Within series, offered as quiet invitations rather than conclusions. If you wish to continue, you may find the other writings by scrolling to the top sidebar when reading on a desktop, or by continuing downward if you are reading on a mobile device.