Everyone Who Believes

We look at part of John 3:16, "Everyone who Believes". We take a look at what it means to believe and who we believe in. We see that there is a completeness and a perfection to this scripture that can bring us peace and healing on our journey to learn to be loved. 

Transcript

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This is the Learn to be Loved podcast. My name is Shannon, and thank you for listening today. We're going to continue our journey. We are on a journey. to learn how to be loved and this is episode six and we are still looking at one of the most famous verses john 3 16 for god so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Now we have looked at the nature and the character of God that Jesus came to show us who the Father was. And we've looked at that nature and that character is love. And God loved us with his nature. And he loved the world. We looked at the word world, how it has a unique meaning that yes it's the cosmos it's everything but it's more personal than that it actually is an adornment it is a something that God clothes himself with and this ties into how later on we learned that God himself lives within us and He clothes himself with us and lives life through us and with us. And we see how God gave his son. He didn't just send his son, but he gave the most precious thing that he could give himself. He committed himself. Jesus came from the Trinity as God to live himself. as a man. Jesus became the second Adam that undid what the first Adam had done. Jesus brought man and God back together again in unity. This is only possible through Jesus Christ. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that we can bring or add to this equation. We cannot add to or help or facilitate our own salvation, but it's only through Jesus Christ, and it's only through seeing the true nature of the Father that Jesus came to show us a nature of love Now this week we are going to look at the word whosoever or everyone, some translations state. It says everyone who believes in him. So this word whosoever or everyone, it literally means all or whole or everything, anyone. There's a completeness here in this word. It's a word of perfection, a perfection of some, not a partial some, but a whole. See, I used to believe that salvation was dependent upon my behavior. If I behaved poorly, then I moved myself outside of God's hand and outside of salvation. But if I became repentant and became better in my actions, then I moved myself back inside of the tent of salvation. But that is absolutely, absolutely not true. Here we have a picture of love and perfection. Love is complete. Love does not fail. Love does not let you down. Love does not leave you or forsake you, but love completes you. So God comes to live, to clothe himself with us, and he stays there. No matter what our actions are, he calls us righteous, even though we may not be. act that way because our salvation is not based upon an agreement that we have with the father it's based upon an agreement that the father and the son have made with each other jesus came as god from god to reconcile us back to himself And that reconciliation is complete, it is whole, it is perfect, and it cannot be undone. So what does it mean to believe? Now, many times we think, oh, we just give a mental assent to it. Yes, I acknowledge that that's true. But that's not what... the word believe means here. That's not the idea. The word believe means to put trust in, to believe, to have faith in, to be firmly persuaded, to rely upon, to have confidence in, to enjoy confidence, to have faith with and in Jesus. He's the one that we have faith in. See, I want to ask you today, what have you put your faith in? Have you put your faith in the Bible? Have you put your faith in your church? Have you put your faith in your pastor? Have you put your faith in a teaching or a denomination or a doctrine? None of those things can save you. The only thing that we can have our faith in is in the work, the complete work the finished work of Jesus Christ. See, we treat faith as another work that we must do. We act like it's something that we must muster up, and we've got to read our Bible so we can have faith. Yes, reading our Bible does increase our faith because we read stories of those who had faith, but our faith needs not to be in the Bible, but in the Christ the living word that supersedes text and paper. We need to have our faith, our trust, and rely upon the fact that Jesus is who he said he was and that the Father is exactly who Jesus says he is, which is love. See, we have nothing to do here. We have no part of this. We believe and we have confidence in, we enjoy our confidence in the fact that God loves us. He loves us with a love that we cannot fully understand until we look him in the eye. But that love is enough to keep us and to redeem us and to call us his own love. and that is what we have faith in that god loves us and that jesus has done everything to bring us to that love see this is so important for us to understand we need to grasp that christianity is not a list of things that we must do but it is a understanding of what God has already done. See, because of Jesus, we can know who the Father is. Because of Jesus, we can enjoy Zoe life. We can be a part of the kingdom of God. We are declared righteous because of Jesus. We are made holy. we enjoy oneness with the father and the son and the holy spirit because they all enjoy our presence see god doesn't only love you he likes being with you he enjoys surrounding himself with you he enjoys being with you every day this is a crucial step in learning how to be loved the first thing you got to understand is that god enjoys being with you yes he knows where you struggle and he wants to be the one that you turn to to help through those struggles he wants to be the one that heals you see we have lived in this world of lies and separation and Pain caused by sin for so long. But Jesus came to bring us back to peace and love. He came to heal us so that we could enjoy being with him as much as he does being with us. Thanks for listening today. God, I pray that you would help us to know God who you are. God, that deep in our hearts we could know that you came to redeem everyone, that it's a completeness, a whole, that your redemption doesn't come and go, but it is a perfect sum. God, I pray today, God, that we would understand that faith is not something that we do but it is something that we turn to we rely upon that we have confidence in that we sit back and relax in the fact that you have done it all god let this faith let this Peace wash over us, God, as you heal us and bring us back to a place where we enjoy being with you just as much as you enjoy being with us. God, we thank you for all these things. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.