In this month that’s all about love, I wanted to share something special to me, which I wrote in my own studies awhile back. I had started studying the book Searching the Scriptures, by Charles Swindoll, and honestly, if you want to be challenged in going deeper in your studies, this is the book for you. It’s been sitting on my nightstand “on hold” a little longer than a few months, I really should get back to studying it.

Anyway, each chapter has some “homework” assignments, and I want to say it’s chapter four, that includes an assignment to study the well known and loved verse, John 3:16, and write down twenty five observations, just from that verse, after reading the full chapter for context. Twenty five!! Talk about a challenge! This one got me… I studied the verse and read the full chapter, multiple times, but was coming up short on those observations.

I decided to do what, if you’ve read my series about our identity in Christ, you know I love to do, to help me with this assignment- I looked it up in the Greek. I wrote out the definitions of every Greek word of John 3:16. I still don’t have twenty five observations, but I do have, a new, extremely powerful version of this verse, that truly tells us, in depth, how God so loved the world:

This is the way God, the Creator and owner of all things indeed took pleasure in, longed for, preferred, had good-will towards, wished well for, regarded the welfare of, prized above all other things, was unwilling to abandon or do without, and welcomed with desire, all the inhabitants of the world: Therefore he offered His only descendant of its kind, Who came forth from His being and shares His nature, for the purpose that as many as believe and place confidence in Jesus; have faith to give themselves up to Him, rule out any implications that they should vanish away, be blotted out, and given over to eternal misery, but on the other hand will possess, cling to, be closely joined with the reality of the gift of life intimately shared by the Lord, which operates simultaneously outside of time, inside of time, and beyond time- Those who believe live in eternal life RIGHT NOW, experiencing the quality of God’s life RIGHT NOW, as a present possession, which is without beginning or end, always was and always will be, never ceasing, everlasting.

John 3:16… we’ll just call this the Gerri translation 😉

Would you just take some time today, and meditate on this? YOU are an inhabitant of the world, therefore

God takes pleasure in YOU,

He longs for YOU,

The Creator of the universe prefers YOU,

He wishes well for YOU,

He regards YOUR welfare,

He prizes YOU above all other things,

God, the Creator of the universe, is unwilling to abandon or do without, and welcomes YOU with desire!

So much so, that when you choose to believe and put your faith in His Son Jesus, Whom He sent to save YOU from the consequences of the curse of iniquity that fell upon the human race at the fall of Adam and Eve, you become closely joined with the reality of the gift of life that is intimately shared by the Lord, which is what Adam and Eve walked in before they sinned. Eternal life is not just for when we leave these bodies, we have it NOW! We have the God-life IN US NOW! It is a CURRENT and PRESENT possession!!

Do you understand what that means?! Everything that belongs to God, also belongs to YOU! Everything that Jesus has, is YOURS too- You have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, living in you. You have the same authority, as Jesus in the earth, because of what He did for YOU! You should be living and walking in that authority!

What a great, unfathomable love, our God has for us, that He desires to restore us to Him, that we might live in close union with Him the way He intended, despite the fallen world around us.

–Walking by Faith in Awe of our Father’s Great Love for Us, Gerri

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