Tag: John 3:16

The Gifts of Advent: John 3:16

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“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (CSB – Read the chapter)‬‬

When the apostle Paul was trying to capture the overwhelming significance of the spiritual gift of love and its foundational importance for the other gifts Jesus gives His church for its proper health and functioning, He penned these famous words: ”Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love — but the greatest of these is love.“ Love is indeed the greatest, and as we celebrate one last gift of Advent together today, love is appropriately where we land.

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Broken from Birth

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As we continue our journey through some of the more unsettling results from the Lifeway and Ligonier Ministry The State of Theology survey, this week we are moving on from the doctrine of God to the doctrines of people and sin. One of the more common ideas about our status before God when we start out in life is that we are all born innocent in God’s eyes. Yet as we engage with the Scriptures carefully, we are greeted with the rather disturbing news that this isn’t the case at all. In this next part of our journey we are talking about why that is and why the truth is so much better. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Broken from Birth

I don’t watch as many of them as I used to, but I used to watch a lot of food competition shows. I’ll still occasionally tune in today just to see the sheer artistic splendor of the things the various food artists create. The level of detail and intricacy to some of their creations is simply jaw dropping. There’s a new series on Netflix called, “Is It Cake?” where judges have to guess which of the items on a display in front of them are cake and which aren’t. They get fooled a lot. The fact that someone can make a cake look so convincingly like something else like a shoe or a purse or even a burger and fries that you actually can’t tell which is which is amazing to me.  

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Morning Musing: John 3:16

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“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Happy Thanksgiving! As you celebrate with your friends and family today, don’t lose sight of the fact that we give thanks at all because someone gave us a gift. All gratitude is the result of a gift of some sort. Whether it is a gift of great cost and worth or something as simple as a gift of respect and courtesy as when someone holds open a door for us, all gratitude is the result of a gift. On our own, though, we are not a gift-giving people. By ourselves, we tend hard in the direction of selfishness. A spirit of gratitude begins when we recognize that we are not the source of the things that we have. A bit of thinking in this direction can begin to open our eyes and hearts to an awareness that life itself is a gift given to us by someone else. And while the most immediate someone else’s involved in that are our parents, if you trace things back far enough you arrive at one of two places: primordial ooze, or a God who created the world and everything in it. The former conclusion does not give rise to gratitude of any kind. How can you be thankful to a pool of goo? The latter, however, brings us to a place of permanent and overwhelming gratitude for everything. Today, as you gather and enjoy the fruits of someone’s labor, allow me to encourage you in the direction of this second conclusion on your creation. There is a God who created the world and everything in it, including you, and who loves it – and you – so much that He was willing for His Son to die in our place to pay the price for our sins so that we can have eternal life. Embracing that fact will bring more gratitude into your life than you will find anywhere else. Here, then, is your challenge: Accept the offer of life God has made to you in Christ Jesus and enter into a relationship with Him once and for all. Then you really will have something for which to be grateful today.

Morning Musing: John 3:16

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“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I don’t know about you, but this has been a powerful Advent journey this year. It has been for me a time to reflect deeply on the coming of Christ into the world and into our lives. It has filled me with a renewed hope in His return one day to complete His work that began in a stable. None of our reflections over the past month have been on passages that were at all unfamiliar. But in spending time with words we’ve read and studied before, we have discovered deeper truths that affirm even more powerfully just how great is our God. This morning as we bring this journey to a close (tomorrow will be a special Christmas Eve edition of our Songs of the Season series), I want us to land on the most important Gospel truth of all. Let us ponder for a moment together just how great is the love of our God.

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Merry Christmas!

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“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 – CSB – Read the chapter)

Merry Christmas to you! The day is finally here. Advent is behind us and Christmas has dawned. Jesus is born and the world is not the same. I hope and pray this is a day of joy and gladness for you and your family. We have been talking about the love that is part and parcel with the Christmas celebration and we will do that yet one more time this morning. But because I know you have many things to do, I’ll keep this one short. Let’s talk about the heart of love and the heart of the Gospel.

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