Christmas 3:16 - part 2

Christmas 3:16 - part 2 - That He GAVE

This is post 2 of a series where we are looking John 3:16. If you haven't read the first post go to the link here --- . Please read John 3:16 again and we will be looking at the underlined text.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 NIV

He GAVE - The Greatest Act¹

Have you ever been given something really awesome and you didn't know what to say? Maybe it's a toy that you received for Christmas when you were a child. Maybe it was a needed amount of money so you could pay a bill. Maybe it was a car that a friend let you have after you were in a car accident. Maybe the person in front of you at McDonalds paid for your food. Maybe someone gave you another chance after you messed up. We have all been given something in life. Something that we didn't really deserve. Something that we didn't have to pay back. But it changed our life.

God did the same thing when He gave us the greatest gift we could have ever received. We didn't deserve it. We didn't ask for it. We didn't do anything for it. God just gave it to us. God looked down on the mess that earth had become and knew that something had to happen if we were going to be saved. So God gave the greatest gift.

His only Son - The Greatest Sacrifice¹

I have a son and I could not imagine giving him up for anything. But here, we see God looking down on the mess the world had become and realizing that the only way to give hope to the world was to send Jesus to be that hope. We couldn't do it on our own. We needed help. We needed someone to trade lives with us and that is what Jesus did for us when He became the greatest sacrifice.

So Jesus came from Heaven and lived the life that we could never live. Jesus lived a perfect life, and He did that so He could become that sacrifice that the world needed. In the book of Matthew, we see a conversation between a scared Joseph and an angel. The angel tells Joseph these words:

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save the people from their sins.” – Matthew 1:21, NIV

Jesus’ mission on earth was to save us from our sins. That is the only reason why He came to earth - to be that sacrifice we desperately needed.

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Questions or comments... please email breathequestions@gmail.com

Edited by Kay Beam

¹The underlined outline headings were taken from Harvest Bible Chapel in Granger, In. All other content in this post are my original words.

God, You Failed

"God, you failed me!” Many of us have probably heard these words, thought these words, or even said these words. We get tired of waiting for God to do something. We feel like God’s inbox is full and our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling and coming right back at us. So, in some cases and with some people, they give up and say “God, you failed me!” I feel these words in certain areas of the Bible: Peter, Paul, Moses, Joseph, the disciples and the people that followed and believed in Jesus just to watch Him get crucified. The one that is probably the most obvious is David as he writes in the Psalms about feeling abandoned by God. For this post, I was directed to a familiar story in the Gospel of John. In this story, we are going to see this happen as two women he frustrated with Jesus. The women’s names were Mary and Martha and they had a brother named Lazarus. Lazarus has talked ill and the women had sent for Jesus urging him to come quickly saying “the one yo

Eyes Up - part 5 - Patience

“...where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.... Psalm 121:1-2 NIV Ahhhh..... patience. That’s it. That’s all I have for this post. Anyone suffer from a lack of patience? I know I do and that is why I find it hard to give advice on the topic. This is why I’m not giving advice. I’m going to let God do that. I want to draw you attention to Exodus 14 for this week’s post. Moses has already been summoned by God to go back to Egypt and free the Israelites from Pharaoh. After much talking, plagues and stubbornness - Pharaoh lets the Israelites go. Moses leads them out of Egypt and they get as far as the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Pharaoh has changed his mind and is in hot pursuit of them. The people begin to grumble at Moses because of their situation. They said things like: “They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egy

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“...where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.... Psalm 121:1-2 NIV There are just some things that we need help with and that is just a fact. So in this series of posts we are looking at a few of those kind of things and trying change our focus to the One that can give us true help with these things. We have been focusing in on Psalm 121:1-2 for this “Eyes Up” refocus. The psalmist realized that there is really only one true source of help and refocused attention to that source. The topic of today’s post is one that is really only found in Jesus. Peace. What is that anymore? Look around you, turn on the news or scroll Facebook/Twitter and you will see there is really no such thing as peace anymore. People are constantly at each other because of their opinions and refusing to accept one another’s views and move on with life. There is chaos in the line at Walmart because someone cut in line and instead of just letting them have the spot - a verbal fight brea

Kryptonite

“[looking away from all that will distract us and] focusing our eyes on Jesus , who is the Author and Perfecter of faith....” - Hebrews 12:2 a AMP Have you ever lost focus? Maybe it was a task you were working on and one of your kids (or spouse) come into the room or called out to you from another place in the house causing you to turn your attention from what you were doing to them or their calling out. Then you look back at your task and have to remember where you were or what exactly you have done. Did I add salt to this? Did I put in the sugar for the cookies? How many cups of flour did I put in the mixing bowl already? You get the idea. Have you been there? There are times in life when we can be the same way. We are going along in life - our day to day activities - our gaze is laser focused on Jesus. Then all of a sudden something happens in our life that seemingly comes out of nowhere and takes our focus off of Jesus. We begin then to fall into the storm of what

I

Last Thursday night, I was sitting in service and Pastor Beeson started the service with a prayer. He started with the words "I need you God" and this is what came to me over the course of that opening moment of prayer. Take a minute to read these words, reflect on these words or pray these words. ---------------- I need you God I need grace I need your love I need your patience I need your forgiveness I need you God I need your joy I need your self-control I need your kindness I need your knowledge I need you God I need your strength I need your hope I need your presence I need your power I need you God I need your peace I need your goodness I need your gentleness I need your mercy I need you God I need what I am not worthy of ___________________ Questions or comments... please email secondstagequestions@gmail.com PLEASE VISIT THE SECOND STAGE MINISTRIES FACEBOOK PAGE - CLICK LIKE!! PLEASE VISIT THE SECOND STAGE MINISTRIES

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