⁸ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”

⁵ Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb,^[a] so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.

¹¹ No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit.

² Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting.

⁹ Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, O breath, from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.’”

¹³ They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

³¹ After this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness.

Parable of the Growing Seed

²⁶ Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷ Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. ²⁸ The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. ²⁹ And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”

²⁹ Since we know that Christ is righteous, we also know that all who do what is right are God’s children.