Maybe this will help Marie. It's from Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology. I notice he uses regeneration in two senses.
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The relative order of calling and regeneration. This is perhaps best understood if we note the following stages:
(1) Logically, the external call in the preaching of the Word (except in the case of children) generally precedes or coincides with the operation of the Holy Spirit, by which the new life is produced in the soul of man.
(2)Then by a creative word God generates the new life, changing the inner disposition of the soul, illuminating the mind, rousing the feelings, and renewing the will. In this act of God the ear is implanted that enables man to hear the call of God to the salvation of his soul. This is regeneration in the most resticted sense of the word. In it man is entirely passive.
(3) Having received the spiritual ear, the call of God in the Gospel is now heard by the sinner, and is brought home effectively to the heart. The desire to resist has been changed to a desire to obey and the sinner yields to the persuasive influence of the Word through the operation of the Holy Spirit. This is the effectual calling through the instumentality of the word of preaching, effectively applied by the Spirit of God.
(4) This effectual calling, finally, secures, through the truth as a means, the first holy exercises of the new disposition that is born in the soul. The new life begins to manifest itself; the implanted life issues in the new birth. This is the completion of the work of regeneration in the broader sense of the word, and the point at which it turns into conversion.