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Over at ChristianDevs.com achild asks this question: "How did you turn to Christ?"
Some call it reborn, or born again of the spirit, or the 2nd birth, or saved (my least favorite - didn't He save us ~2000 years ago?).
Neither me nor my wife could care less about God when we had our baby (nor were we married at the time). Fast forward to now. My now wife (same woman) has no idea if she is "saved" or not. Test the spirits by their fruits right? I think she is. She doesn't. Anyway, it's between her and God, in the end, as it is with all of us. In the meantime we continue to grow, and God continues to do His perfect will.
In the Bible you see mostly examples of people coming to Christ. You see Christ call on some disciples who seem to choose to do so, though I don't think there's any case ever of Christ telling someone (including earth) to do something and it not obeying. Then you have Paul, who didn't seem to have much choice. He was called and that was that. I mean he still wanted to when put in the position he was put in. But God essentially made him want to, in my opinion (and I don't think this is a bad thing! It's... rather amazing and I'm sure Paul thanked God for it all the time!)
Then we have church denominations. Some believe purely in predetermination to the point that only God chooses, you don't choose. Some believe purely in free will where we HAVE to make the choice, and once we do we're good to go. Some believe in a bit more complicated versions: You make the choice you ask God in one way or another to "save me" and honestly so with all your heart, and he'll answer, though it may not be right then (he may have a lot of "cruft" to chip at first). But to with being born again comes a revelation of God. In other words: you'll know it!
I talk with some people, and they don't know when they were "saved". They essentially have been following Christ all their life. They claim they can't point to any specific day it happened, though they tend to have some day that they realized that they were saved. Ie Free will.
Other people, and I fall into this category, we're just going about their daily sinful lives when BAM all of sudden your eyes and your ears are opened, and you can see and you can hear. And the hunger, the thirsting for knowledge and wisdom and understanding of God - His Word describes it perfectly, as a newborn baby yearning for milk. But this sort of salvation seems to be a bit rarer. Now, I honestly can't fathome how I could not have turned to God after this. Ie predestination.
And this leads to confusion. At first I thought you HAD to be "saved" in the manner that I was to be born again. But it was out of ignorance and because I knew no other way. I just assumed that was it because it happened to me. This may be why my wife feels she isn't saved, though we've talked about it a lot since then.
Now the question at hand is this: How were you born again? What led to your being able to hear and see for the first time?
Patrick: My personal opinion is that there isn't a conflict, or difference, between the two ways described above. They are instead steps. God offers a call to salvation--predistination, if you will, out of time and space--but we have to accept this grace--free will.
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