The John 3:16 Dream

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

~John 3:16 (NKJV)

Imagine, if you will, being there at your birth—at a place and time where you were clearly not consciously aware of the personal gravity of the situation at hand: you, alive; the genesis of life begotten via the provision, alone, of God.

No one could possibly argue—besides the person with no will to live—that such a moment we ought to be undeniably thankful for. Others around cared for us before we could care for ourselves; watering the seed that God, through our parents, had sown.

Some Of The Facts Of Life

These, above, are some of the facts of life; such facts don’t end with the birds and the bees—they don’t even begin there. The beginning and the end of our lives is God. That’s a fact of life.

We all came into being with many facts of life stowed aboard; hardwired into our biological and spiritual DNA. These facts of life stand up for our attention and the more we dismiss them the more life will be confused for us. In the senselessness of life it is the facts of life that make sense—the facts of God.

The facts of life reveal, most fundamentally, a dream; one sown so deeply.

The Dream Sown Into The Heart

The resonant echo of eternity has been beating like a tom-tom within our souls since our very first breath. This is because we live in the realm of time and our fascination with the past and the future—realms eternal—is forever beyond us (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

The dream beckons. Forever, from within ourselves, we grapple and struggle and contend; we are people searching for a Saviour.

The dream, though it is a secret to be discerned, is the easiest thing on earth to make real. It is irrevocably unlike other dreams; we achieve this dream at the turning of our hearts back toward God. It’s never simpler.

It is our dream; yours and mine. It is recurrent through eternity and it resides, somewhere and somehow, within each human being’s soul.

This dream is the John 3:16 dream: fully revealed in real life; to experience an encounter with God that compels us to understand the everlasting plan of saving love and grace in Jesus Christ our Lord.

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If ever we feel lost, or even if we never do, Christian faith is made alive in deliberate meditation over the words of John 3:16. It will resonate with our hearts. It is God’s message of everlasting love to all humankind—every human being—in 25 words or less.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Acknowledgement: this article was inspired by Tim Tebow and his John 3:16 messages.