Suppose you have a family of young raccoons all from the same litter. These young raccoons begin to follow their mother around at night, learning how to forage for food and interact with other raccoons. One night the mother raccoon leads the brood to the back porch of a man who regularly fed the mother while she was nursing the brood. On this porch the young ones find a container of water in which they play (baby raccoons have a natural love of water), and their mother eats food from a dish set out for her.
So these young ones start to eat from the same dish. During the evening a second mother raccoon comes ambling onto the porch, with her brood of young raccoons. The little ones find the water container and start to play with the other brood. One of the newcomers ask a young'un from the first brood what the place is all about. The first brood raccoon says he hasn't a clue, but the water is fun and the food tastes good, and he expects Mom to explain it all when they all get back to the nest.
Do the noises the man who owns the porch makes when the little ones show up have any meaning to the little ones? They have meaning to the man. And the sense of safety around him is something the babies learn to depend upon, and of course they eventually learn to trust the food and the man and also learn to forage elsewhere when the food is not forthcoming. But the meaning of the sounds continues to escape their understanding.
How do you suppose one of these little ones will describe the sounds and the scene to another raccoon who has never been to the porch? Aside from raccoons not having cogent communications at a level of asking questions and sharing ideas, can you see how the status of the man with the porch is so far beyond the level of life of the raccoons that there cannot be more than a beginning of interaction, until something happens that allows raccoons to rise to the level where they begin to have cogent communication, questioning each other and interacting on a much higher plane of life?
Well, it is a possibly over simplified analogy, but it addresses what one expects from being Born Again, IF --and this is a big if-- IF the newly born again is given continuing instruction in how to access the sounds/Words from God and the changes in life which make life safer and more fulfilling. At some point the newly born again become no longer newly, and begin to dine on the feast of spiritual meat contained in the Words from God but that were not even grasped before being Born Again. Being Born Again is kind of like the phase shift of the raccoons rising to a higher level of life where they start to understand some of the sounds from the man who loves the little ones.
Interesting tale of analogy..
What if “the” raccoon(s) couldnt read, didn’t want to read or had nothing to read or all 3 of them..
or worse had dogma to read..
Limited to the (metaphorical)-Holy Spirit-(then) is “he” limited at all?.. OR maybe especially blessed.?.
Question; can the Holy Spirit work with out a bible?..
or can the bible be an impediment to you in some cases..