For The Love

(About this post: I embraced an experiment with my kids over the past few years. The idea is pretty simple... Learn for the love of the Lord and to reach toward the calling He has on our lives (learn more in our For Love workshop, coming soon.) For my 11 year-old son, Cam, that meant setting aside his Language Arts workbook and asking him to do something that felt more meaningful for both of us. Cam has always felt a pull towards mission work and preaching so it seemed fitting to allow him to spend his "Language Arts time" reading his Bible and writing an essay to apply what he learned to life. Once I saw the results, we felt called to share. So with Cam's permission, we will be posting some of his work. Enjoy :) ~Laurie)

Insights from John 3:16 and John 10:28-29

By Cam

John 3:16 say “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.” What I thought when I read this verse is, I thought, WOW, God loves us so beyond astronomically much.  Think about it, this world has eight billion people.  Each person sins say like 100 times a day.  So we have to multiply 8,000,000,000  x 100 x 365 to find out how much sin goes on in just one year.  That’s 288,000,000,000,000 sins if my estimates and math were correct. That’s so much sin in just one year.  God can’t be by even one sin, so He definitely couldn’t be by us.  But He loved us so much He sent His one son, who He loved, to be crucified and beat up to make atonement for that huge amount of sin so that He could be with us.  Now that huge, huge (biggest of all time) love.  That’s alot of pain and suffering to go through because He loved us so much.

John 10:28-29 says “I give them eternal life and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Now what a relief to know that the undefeated God is holding us in His all powerful hands. Now nothing will ever harm us unless it is for our good in the end.

If we truly put our faith in Jesus and repent, we know without a doubt that nothing will ever take us out of that gift of eternal life. Once we’re saved, we are in the almighty hand of God. And it says no one is able to snatch us out of His hand (not even the devil and his works). And how do we know so strongly that satan’s hand and strength is not stronger than God’s? Because God has already beat satan. And that means we will always be in God’s mighty hand no matter what. And that means we can know that when we die we will enter into eternal life in heaven with God. How do we know Jesus is talking about us in this passage? Because in verse 27 (when He starts talking about us) He says “My sheep.” Whenever Jesus talks about sheep in the New Testament, He’s referring to His born-again followers (we see that plainly). How do we know it’s Jesus talking? It shows that in verse 23-25.  Some good passages on this subject are Eph. 2, 1 Tim 1:12-17, Hebrews 2.