Early one summer morning Weldon Schlameus was walking in his wooded pasture near San Marcos, Texas. His small ranch, which is located about eight miles from town, is in rough brush country and is home to many small animals as well as a few deer.
Following a small gulch about one hundred yards from the highway, Mr. Schlameus heard the faint bleating of a fawn. As he approached a thick live oak grove he found the fawn beside its dead mother. It looked like the doe had been shot by a lawbreaker, and she had run back into the brush and died from the wound.
Picking up the orphan fawn in his arms, Mr. Schlameus carried it back to his home where their collie dog had a litter of small pups. Wondering how the dog would react to nursing a fawn, Mr. Schlameus held the mother dog while his son showed the little deer where to get its dinner, and the fawn got the idea immediately. The mother dog accepted the stranger without any problem. The fawn grew up with the pups, ate with them, played with them, and always slept near them.
This little deer grew to be a fine spike buck. Although still a pet, playing with the children and the young dogs, each day it wandered farther and farther into the woods. Eventually it joined its wild family, returning to the instincts that it had been born with. It lost all its habits as a pet. When the family occasionally saw it afterward, there was no sign that it had ever been tame.
This fawn had every opportunity to be tame and stay a pet of the Schlameus family. For awhile it forgot about the woods in which it was born. For awhile it was a pet. But it was not a dog or cat—it was a deer. The time came when it returned to the life it had been born into.
In the same way there are children, and older people too, who are pretending to be Christians without being born again. The only way the deer in our story could really live and act like a dog would be if somehow it could be reborn a dog. We know this cannot happen. But the Lord Jesus told a man in the Bible that, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:33Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3). He then explains that being “born again” has to be “of water and of the Spirit.” John 3:55Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John 3:5). The deer could not be a dog, because he was born a deer. God cannot accept us because we are sinners. We are born sinners, we live as sinners, and we would die as sinners if God had not made a way for us to be saved. In His love for us He has shown us how to be “born again.” This gives us the new life that is from God and is entirely different from the life we had when we were born the first time. God gives this new life to anyone who will accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. It is a life that wants to please God and will never die. It is a life that can only be given by Him. He is ready right now to give this new life to anyone who believes on Him. Won’t you ask Him to be your Saviour right now?
ML-02/28/1982