What Does Born Again Actually Mean?

Most people can tell you they believe in Jesus. Fewer can tell you exactly what has to happen for that belief to actually become salvation and the gap between those two things is where a lot of people spend their whole lives.

Two questions everyone eventually has to answer

Mickey Mitchell built the Lifeline around a single scenario: when you die, you're standing at the gates, and St. Peter asks why he should let you in. That's the first question. The second comes right after it. Once you know the answer to the first, how are you supposed to live?

"The Lifeline teaches you how to answer the question, Why should I let you in heaven? We're going to teach you how to answer that question."

Born into sin, then born again

The Bible teaches that everyone is born with a sinful nature, sinful, even in the womb. From that physical birth, a person moves toward what the Bible calls the stake of salvation: a spiritual birth, being born again. Mickey is direct about what that phrase does and doesn't mean:

"You either are a Christian or you're not. You either have him in you or you don't."

Someone becoming a Christian doesn't mean they stop sinning. Nobody reaches full Christlikeness before they die. But everyone who dies after driving the stake goes to heaven. Everyone who dies before it doesn't. That's the whole reason the stake matters more than anything else.

Works and grace: two piles, one impossible standard

Mickey sorts every religious answer to "how do I get to heaven" into two piles. Pile one is works: good behavior, church attendance, giving, service. His standard for why it fails is blunt:

"If there is a person that lives to be 99 years old, and they never sin but one time... he can't make it into heaven."

Pile two is grace: a free gift, received rather than earned.

"I don't know anyone that would not want to receive a free gift if it gives you eternal life."

The three steps and why belief alone isn't enough

Mickey compares driving the stake of salvation to making lemonade: water, lemons, and sugar, each necessary, none of them lemonade on their own. You must believe in the virgin birth, the death on the cross, the resurrection. But belief by itself isn't the finish line.

"Scripture says the demons shudder upon his name... Satan was there when Jesus was crucified. He was there at the virgin birth. He was there at the death, and he was there at the resurrection. So he believes." Believing something is real isn't the same as accepting it.

You must confess to admitting you're a sinner, and choosing to live a life of repentance. You must accept the moment which Mickey calls the "aha moment." A specific point where a person actually receives Christ, rather than simply knowing about him. This is the sugar in the lemonade. Without it, everything else is just tart water.

Nicodemus already knew the Bible. He still didn't get it.

Mickey points to John 3, a religious leader named Nicodemus, someone who knew Scripture better than almost anyone, comes to Jesus and asks how to get into heaven. Jesus tells him: you have to be born again, born of the Spirit, not just of the water like your first birth. "This guy knew the Bible better than anybody else. And he did not get that." Knowing about Scripture and having had the aha moment aren't the same thing. A point that echoes what shows up again in the assurance of salvation story of a lifelong churchgoer who'd never actually driven the stake.

"Fire insurance," and what comes after it

Mickey calls the beginning of the Christian life "fire insurance," only half-joking. From there, a believer can grow into what he calls the blessing wedge, using an image of a child growing up under a father's provision without yet understanding where any of it came from.

The five steps to the river of spiritual growth

Once someone has driven the stake, growth moves through five things, in sequence, like balancing a tire: 1. Live in the Word — actually knowing the Bible, not just owning one. 2. Pray in faith — not performance prayer for others to hear, but time spent the way a child rides along with a parent just to be near them. 3. Fellowship with believers — church, in whatever form fits. 4. Witness to the world — not forcing conversations, but being ready when the door opens. 5. Serve others — "how do you serve an invisible God? By serving each other." Skip the order, Mickey warns, and the wheel wobbles. Bible knowledge without a prayer life or accountable community tends to just make people harder to be around, not more like Christ.

If you're still working out your answer

You don't need to have this all figured out to start. Write down where you actually are, and join the community at The LifeLine Tool Watch Mickey teach the full Lifeline → Born Again Meaning | The LifeLine Tool ---

Full teaching transcript

Mickey: Hello, my name is Mickey Mitchell, and today I'm going to talk about a tool that God gave me many years ago. It's called the Lifeline, and it answers two questions in life that are the most important must-know questions in order to live our life in the way that God would have us to. The first question is, we find ourselves in a car wreck or being shot or dying of a heart attack of however, and we end up dying, and we are standing before the pearly gates, and St. Peter said, hello, Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, why should I let you into heaven? So that's the first question that we want to make sure we know how to answer. So this is the Lifeline, and it teaches you how to answer. Why should I let you in heaven? We're going to teach you how to answer that question. The lifeline is 100% biblical. I have no opinions about this. This is all exactly what the Bible teaches us. So this line represents your physical birth. The Bible says that when we're born, we're born into sin. We have a sinful nature. As a matter of fact, the Bible says we're sinful in our mother's womb. That's what it says. So now that we have AI, and I call her Ahi, is the smartest person that I know. And so my AI is a woman. So I call her Ahi. So I say, Ahi, y'all Ahi this. Ask Ahi about anything that I say to double check it. Nonetheless, you have a sinful nature when you're born out of your mother's womb. Once you're born physically, you'll be going down this line towards what I call the stake of salvation. What the Bible calls the stake of salvation is your spiritual birth. Or it's called being born again, or it's called becoming a Christian. Now the word Christian means Christ within. So you either are a Christian. You're or you're not. Some people say, I used to go to church and used to live a Christian life, so I used to be a Christian, but I'm not anymore. Well, there's no truth to that. You either are a Christian or you're not. You either have him in you or you don't. So once you drive the stake of salvation, you begin growing down this line toward Christ-likeness. But you'll never reach this line of Christ-likeness until your physical death because of your sinful nature. So just because you become a Christian and you have your aha moment and you begin growing down this line doesn't mean you ever lose your sinful nature. We will be sinful until the day we die. But here's the good news, bad news. The good news is anytime we die after we drive the stake of salvation, we go to heaven. That's the good news. The bad news is, and briefly used the red one so everybody can see this, but anytime you die before you drive the stake of salvation, we go to hell. If this is true, and it is, then the most important thing that you can do on this side of heaven or before you die is to learn how to drive the stake of salvation. If you take all the religions in the world. And we're going to put them in this great big sack. So we're going to take all religions in the world. Any way you leave that you're going to get to heaven, we're going to put it in a sack. And we're going to shake the sack up, and we're going to pour it out. And they're going to fall into two piles. Pile one is called works. So if your answer when you got to heaven was, St. Peter, I was a good person, and I went to church every time the doors were open, and I gave 10% of my money, and I didn't lie and didn't steal, that would be works. There may be some that say, you know, I didn't go to church that much, but I was good to people, and I served people. That’s works. Maybe some say, well, I was a part of a church that we gave two years of our lives to, and I got on a bicycle, and I rode it up and down the road, and I gained more people to our church congregation than anybody else. I set records. That's works. I boil it down to this. If there is a person that lives to be 99 years old, and they never sin but one time, they sin one time in 99 years, he can't make it into heaven. So if you can live 99 years, and you can give your money away, and you can serve, and you can be as good a person as you can be, and you sin only one time you can't get to heaven. So works can't get you there. Pile two is a word called grace, means free gift. So if you can be as good a person as can, give your money away, serve, serve, serve, serve, and never go to heaven. But then all you have to do is receive a free gift to get to heaven. That's a piece of cake. I don't know anyone that would not want to receive a free gift if it gives you eternal life. I'm to teach you how to drive the stake of salvation. I'm going to teach you how to do that. There's three steps to driving the stake. One, two, and three. All right. I call it like making lemonade. So in order to make lemonade, you have to have water, lemons, and sugar. All right. So you have to measure the water. You have to measure the lemons, put it in the jug, and then you have to measure the sugar and put it in the jug. And it all becomes one, all mixed up. That's the same way of driving the stake of salvation. The first step is we have to believe in Jesus Christ. That means you have to believe in his virgin birth. You have to believe in his death on cross, and you have to believe in his resurrection. So we have to believe in his virgin birth, his death on the cross and his resurrection. Well, I truly believe that if there's anybody that really would get into history and find out about our Jesus, then they would believe because there's writings apart from the scripture that talks about Jesus's death on the cross. If you get into that, then I believe you'll believe it. So let's just hypothetically check that one off the list. So believing it is a piece of cake. But here's the problem with believing alone. Scripture says the demons shudder upon his name. So in other words, the demons believe in Jesus. They don't just believe in him. They know he's real. Satan was there when Jesus was crucified. He was there at the virgin birth. He was there at the death, and he was there at the resurrection. So he believes. So believing is a piece of it, like the water is a piece of lemonade. Believing is a piece of it, but it's not the final thing. The lemons are, we have to confess we are a sinner, and then we have to live a life of repentance. I've never met a person that didn't say they didn't sin. And again, if you sin one time, you can't go to heaven. But most of us, like myself, sin maybe a hundred times a day. I've never met a person that doesn't want to be a better man or woman tomorrow than they are today. So I checked this one off about as fast as I can get my pen there. So those two items are like water and lemons to lemonade. If we're living, believing in Jesus and learning all about him, and we're confessing that we're a sinner and living a life of repentance, that's like living in tart water. That is really good. But only until you add the sugar to the lemonade do we get lemonade. Only until we add number three to our lifeline do we get salvation. You have to add the sugar to the lemonade to get lemonade. You have to add number three. I call it the aha moment. You have to have a time in your life. That you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. So what it is, as the Bible says, whoever opens the door, I shall enter. So you have to have a time in your life that you're going down this line toward the lifeline, toward the safe salvation, toward your spiritual birth, you're born again in Christianity. But whenever you reach this point, there'll be a day that you go, “ah, I got it. I understand it now.” So we're going to go to John 3:16, and we're going back up John 3:1-10. And there's a great man called Nicodemus. He's a great man of the land. He knew the Bible better than anybody. And so he goes to Jesus and he says, “Hey, Jesus,” he actually calls him master. He says, “master, how is it that I get into heaven?” Now this guy knew the Bible better than anybody else. And he did not get that. And Jesus tells him, “you've got to be born again, just like you're born of the water out of your mother's womb. You've got to be born of the spirit, spiritual birth.” So you've got to be born again. The moment that you are born again, and you drive the stake of salvation, then you're a Christian. So just to pause real quick, all this that I'm showing you is only a tool. And I'm just a man that before I leave here within an hour, I'm going to sin. It's just my nature. So if you're watching this video, and you feel something, that is God doing the work. This is not me. This is not the lifeline. That is God pursuing you. He's got a reason for you being on this earth. And then this is the way that you go figure out the reason you're here. And so whenever you drive the stake of salvation and you become born again, you start a journey. I call that journey, the beginning of that journey, fire insurance. So the moment that you accept Jesus as your savior, you get fire insurance. I say it to be funny, but it's kind of true. You just entered heaven with the seat on fire. You just now got in. Great stuff. You're in heaven now. I call this the blessing wedge. That's the blessing wedge. So whenever you're down here at fire insurance, then there's a little bitty triangle there that God can use you a little bit, but not a whole lot. It's kind of like the young man that's a baby and his dad dies. That baby doesn't know a whole lot about his daddy. He's still a baby. But then as he grows older, he realizes that his life has been made better because his dad was very wealthy. His dad had a lot of things and a lot of blessings from God. And so as he grows down this line, he realizes his life was made better as a result of someone that came before him. That's the Christian life. Once we're down here and we have fire insurance, we can't teach the Bible. We can't go out there and serve someone in order to gain a relationship with them, in order to share Christ with them. You serve them. But why serve them? If you can't lead them to Christ and disciple them. Once you obtain fire insurance, that answers the first question. Hypothetically, let's just say today you drove the stake of salvation as you're listening. God drew you in and God saved you today. So today your answer to this question would be, because on 3/26, I put my faith in Jesus Christ and he paid for all my sins. And so if he can't get me into heaven, cast me into hell, St. Peter, because I don't deserve any of it. The gates fly open and you go into heaven. Praise God. So that would be the answer to this question, because on 3/26/26, I put my faith in Jesus Christ. Now then, what next? Number two is now, how will you live your life in light of the answer? That's the second question. Now draw this in the form of a wheel. Now you can't even start to journey without Christ in the center. I call this the five steps to the river of spiritual growth. So here are the five steps to the river of spiritual growth. One, two, three, four, five. Live in the Word, all right, live in the Word. We have to know our Bible. I love the life application study Bible. That Bible has a concordance in the back. And what I tell people whenever they drive the stake of salvation and they want to get started. And so I tell people, said, take this life application Bible, turn it in the Bible in the back to a concordance. And I'm from the old school. can probably do this on your cell phones now. I don't know how to do it. But nonetheless, I go to the concordance and I start in A and I go to Z and I'll flip through there till I find a word that really means something to me, like anger, like lust, like friendship. All these words, and they'll have 10 or 12 scriptures in there. And then each morning you wake up, go to concordance, look up a word, go to the Bible, and then you'll start learning the Bible through application. Because that morning, something that's heavy on your heart, you'll find that word. You'll go up and the next time that you're out there and you're angry and you may be the boss and you're wanting to just chew somebody out. And then all of a sudden you'll remember, ah, the Bible tells me to handle people in all loneliness and unity of the spirit. So then you end up taking your hat off. You still address issues, but you don't address it with cursing and making them feel worse. You address it in the way that should in order to build the body up. So that's living in the Word. So you have to live in the Word. You've to know the Bible. Pray in faith. The Bible says when Christ lives in you and you're living in the Word and He's alive and well, you go into a closet somewhere and you're developing a relationship with our Jesus. This Jesus that lives inside of you, you want to stop just learning about Him. You want to get to know Him. You want Him to be a part of your life. So you pray in faith. You get in a room somewhere. You don't practice your prayers so you can go out in public and pray publicly. And nothing wrong with that. But there's a time for that. But you need to be led by the Spirit for that. I tell it like this. Whenever I had my little children, my little daughter, I just loved my daughter. Then I had my little boy and my next little boy. And as I am their father, I want them to go with me all the time. And what I would do is I would tell them, hey, we'll go get a milkshake. I'd do whatever I could to get them to go with me. Well, they like going with me. So when I woke up in the mornings, and I'm even going to go to work sometimes, they say, Dad, can I go with you? Absolutely. Get in my truck and let's go. Well, God wants us to get in His truck and go. God wants us with Him. So the deal is, whenever we're praying, we're sitting in His truck. We're saying, oh, Lord, God. Let's just, let's just get to know each other today. In your prayer life, you're not going to bring up anything that surprises him. You're not going to say, God, I forgot about that, but could you do this? You're not going to surprise him. He already knows more about you than you know yourself. What he wants you to do is just spend time with him. Say, God, this is heavy on my heart. Could you help me with the relationship there? I just messed up. Gosh, I feel so guilty. Would you take that off of me, Lord? I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. So pray in faith. Number three, fellowship with believers. The best place for that is at church. The church is full of believers. And so I don't want to knock any denomination out there, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists. What you do is you go find you a church that you fit, that you enjoy. And then once you start learning about church history and where it came from and how it evolved, God will start revealing to you where you align yourself. I can't force this on you. All I can do is show you a tool and God does the work and he draws you in. And then whenever you get your aha moment, he's going to use you for his glory. So number four is witness to the world. There's a great saint that once said, you should share Christ with everybody you come in contact with. And if you have to speak, then do so. Witnessing to the world is not all about sharing the lifeline. It's not all about telling somebody about Jesus. It's about when Christ lives in you and you know your scripture and you're praying in faith and you have people that you fellowship with that they're praying for you and you're praying for them, then Christ is alive and well in you. At that point, you go and love people. You sit in airports, you sit in airplanes, you sit in a barbershop, and you have conversations. And sometimes when God's name is brought up and then God gives you the green light, when he gives you the green light, at that point, the spirit goes to work and you're able to tell them about Jesus Christ's love and then cool things happen. Whenever you go out there as an immature Christian and you want to just tell everybody about Jesus, everybody about Jesus, then all of a sudden you might get humiliated because you went out on your power and not on the power of the Holy Spirit. So witnessing to the world, serve others. How do you serve an invisible God? By serving each other. So whenever we're doing these five steps in sequence, it's like balancing a tire on your car. Whenever your car gets out of balance, it starts wobbling. Whenever we're living in the Word, strong prayer life. Fellowship with believers, witnessing to the world, and serving others, our life seems to just flow in balance. And I use this example. I've been into a lot of Bible studies where there's intellects in there that know the Bible inside and out. They can quote Scripture and do everything. And a lot of times, they are not in sequence with this. And a lot of times, they're just in the Bible study throwing out stuff all the time, just being, you know, knowledge puffs up. And so, whenever you do that, nobody wants to hear what you've to say. You can know the Bible inside and out and memorize the Scripture from cover to cover. But until you develop a prayer life, and you've got believers in your life that you are accountable to, and you're witnessing and serving, when you're doing that in sequence, you never open your mouth until God gives you the green light. And whatever He does, if you know the Scriptures, cool things happen. If you don't know the Scriptures, but you just have a life of it, cool things happen. When God's at work, cool things happen. So what happens is, we want this wheel to start down this line toward Christ-likeness. So before we go to heaven, before we die a physical death, we want to be as close to Christ-likeness as we can so He can give us all this. You can teach the Bible, you can serve others and lead people to Christ, can feed others and lead people to Christ. All the gifts. You can make money so that you can experience the gift of giving, so on and so forth. Everything that God has for you, you get to experience. So that's the lifeline. Why should I let you in heaven? Because Jesus Christ died on the cross, was raised from the dead, and because I accepted him, I believe, I confess, and I accepted him, then I get to go to heaven. But I certainly don't deserve it. Now then, after you drive the stake of salvation through the five steps of the river of spiritual growth, whenever I start these, I start going down this line and God starts revealing to you why you were born on this earth in the first place. Thank you very much.