Your Flesh Won't Do That

Nobody sees wind. You can't hold it, weigh it, or photograph it. But you know when it's been there. Branches on the ground. A boat leaning hard to port. Leaves turned inside out.

Jesus uses that image in John chapter 3. He's talking to Nicodemus — a ruler, a Pharisee, a man whose whole identity was built on what people could see. And Jesus tells him the most important thing that will ever happen to him is invisible.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." — John 3:8

So is everyone born of the Spirit.

You can't see salvation happen. No ceremony produces it. It's an operation made without hands — Colossians 2:11 says so plainly. God cuts something away. Your soul is separated. You are made alive. And nobody in the room saw a thing.

You can always see the effects.

The proud man who becomes humble. The prayerless woman who can't stop praying. The stubborn, boot-heels-in-the-ground rebel who becomes a servant. Nobody wakes up one morning and manufactures that kind of change. The flesh doesn't produce it. Willpower doesn't sustain it. Self-help doesn't explain it.

The wind bloweth where it listeth.

This is what the world can't account for — a genuinely different person. Not a cleaned-up version. A different one. That's not something you did. That's something God did in you.

Are people seeing any effects?

If not — check the source.

The full sermon goes deeper. Don't stop here.

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/