How do I believe?

whenpigsfly

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?
 

Full O Beans

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?

Choose to believe what Jesus, our Lord is saying there, and tell God you believe it, and see what happens in your mind and heart---and life. It is with our hearts we believe and with our mouths we confess these truths, and thereby our salvation is sealed.

Romans 10:9-10
that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.



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Lamb

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?

Hi.

The Christian faith grasps onto the truth that God has given us in the bible. That is that God loved the world so much that He provided a way for man's sinfulness to be forgiven and He achieved that by dying in our place on the cross. Our sins are forgiven. Those who believe in that forgiveness will have eternal life.

Sometimes hearing that one verse will cause man to believe immediately and sometimes it takes years and years and years of receiving what God has told us concerning Him before belief happens.
 

psalms 91

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Keep reading, especially Romans and I pray you do believe and if not that you will come tto the knowledge of Christs love for us and His sacrifice for all of us. I will try to answer any questions you may have and other s will as well, just ask. Belief will come if you stay in the word of God
 

Stravinsk

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?

That is a good question. I do not want to answer it as a Christian, but as a Deist who respects the teachings of Yeshua.

I could not believe just on this one verse either, and especially not how many Christians interpret it.

If you want to get to know more about Messiah, it's highly recommended that you read what He Taught, and to the best of your ability, put it into practice. THIS will increase your faith in the teachings, because you will see it manifest in your life. "Believing in" Messiah means believing in, and participating in the practice of (because you believe) what He taught.

If I were to start anywhere, I would start with the Beatitudes. It begins with Matthew chapter 5.
 

Alithis

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?

why do i suspect a loaded question -i wish i didn't .

however ..

If i say to you - "Hey if you take these set ingredients iv provided free for you at huge cost to myself .. and then folow these set instructions im giving you .. you will end up with an orange chocolate meringue

if you say "no thanks i don't believe that ".. then off you go . you don't want it you don't get it can't transfer the blame of that onto anyone else .

but if you truly desired to have an orange chocolate meringue ..then you would receive the ingredient im freely offering you ,and then folow the set of instructions given ,in order to to receive the result promised .
That's how you believe .. by receiving and acting on the knowledge freely given (which in this case refers the the good news of the lord Jesus and the promise of eternal LIFE )

If you reject the offer you don't miss out on what you weren't getting it in the first place .you just continue with what you have. the surety of DEATH.


----------
we don't have faith based on one verse ..the essence of the reflection of Gods love is in that one verse but that one verse alone is not the whole message .
 

Brighten04

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?

If that is your desire, then pray and ask our Father to help you to understand His love for you. This one verse says God loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to die in your place. You just have to believe He did it. I know, it is too simple right? Well, that is how great our Father's love is for human kind, for you, for me, for the whole world.
 

MoreCoffee

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?

You won't have faith based on that one verse. Faith doesn't come from that verse or any other verse.
 

Full O Beans

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It just takes one verse from God's powerful and holy WORD for one's faith to be quickened to life!
 

Brighten04

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That one verse tells of God's great love for mankind.
 

tango

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?

For me it didn't work like that at all... it's not really the sort of thing where you just apply a universal formula and BAM!

For me it was a fairly slow process that involved quite a lot of thought about a lot of things. For me something triggered a series of questions about why we are here, how we are here, what defines us, and so on. I'd got to thinking about the people in prison camps whose lives are totally managed and who own more or less nothing, and how at least some of them retain a sense of identity that transcends anything the guards can take away from them.

When I was thinking about how we got here it seemed there were two conflicting theories - fundamentally either life was designed, or life is the result of a bunch of random events (in other words either it was designed, or it wasn't). Science seems to be constantly trying to create a godless universe but has to keep kicking the can down the alley as one theory hits its limitations. In simplistic terms if life is not designed then we evolved from something and evolution theory can take us back to the first living thing. But then evolution has to hand the baton over to the idea of abiogenesis, which in turn has to explain how the first living thing came alive out of a bunch of things that weren't living. And if abiogenesis can explain how something that wasn't alive spontaneously came alive it still needs to explain how the non-living thing came to be there in the first place. Then there are the so-called "irreducibly complex" systems within living things that make evolution seem less likely, on the basis that such a system would have to develop all at once or it wouldn't work at all. To take simplistic examples, how many spiders died before the first one figured out how to build a web, and how many mammals bled to death while the really very complex system of blood clotting to repair damaged vessels while not clotting in healthy blood vessels evolved?

For good measure I had also been looking at economics and demographics and concluding the economic future is extremely dark. Most people I know who consider themselves pessimistic about the economic future don't like my predictions because they are far more pessimistic still. I don't see how my predictions are avoidable at all, although I desperately wish I did. Anyway, thinking about how to survive an economic meltdown when money becomes worthless overnight, when it's all but impossible to grow crops and when a nomadic existence is necessary just to stay alive, it gets hard to live. As the forces that require such a transition get more and more hostile, so it gets harder and harder to live. As I looked at what was developing in the world around us and comparing it to the Revelation (the last book of the Bible) I could see more and more ways that things could play out. The most obvious one is the mark of the beast where the beast prevents people from buying and selling unless they have the mark. As the global banking system becomes more and more far-reaching, as governments seek to exert ever-more control over financial transactions and make it harder and harder to use cash, it's not difficult to see how the government could exert total financial control over people. If you don't comply with the government, your cash card stops working and at a stroke you can't make or receive payments. As a recent development, since some central banks have recently been experimenting with negative interest rates it's easy to see why people would keep cash in a sock under the bed rather than in a bank that charged them to keep it, and with that in mind it's easy to see why governments would gain from doing away with cash completely.

If we take the first few words of the Bible we see "In the beginning God..." If we focus on those four words alone we have to make a choice. I'll drop the g to lowercase for now because I'm going to use the term "god" to refer to one or more eternal beings, in other words anything that has no beginning counts as "god". So we can conclude either "in the beginning god", or "in the beginning not-god". In other words, either god does exist, or god does not exist. Of the options I found it vastly easier to believe in "god" than in "not-god". From there it was just a question of figuring out what form this god took, and which (if any) of the world's religions had the right concept of god.

So for me the answer to your question was simple - I didn't. For me it came through a totally different process. For you it might be one verse that swings it for you, or it might be the result of months or years of soul-searching and seeking before you find Christ. Certainly there are lots of us here who would be very happy to help you with any questions you have along the way.
 

Full O Beans

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That one verse tells of God's great love for mankind.

Amen! That is sometimes all we need to propel us into faith! I was 10 years old when that childlike faith God calls us to just came to life. There need not be any contemplation of anything, but God calls us to believe on His Son, who took His wrath for our sin on Himself! What love!

[MENTION=232]whenpigsfly[/MENTION]: Receive Jesus Christ by simple faith, believing, and let the Lord who comes to dwell in you teach you the truth about the questions you may have as you go along. He is faithful, and He will do it!





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Brighten04

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For me it didn't work like that at all... it's not really the sort of thing where you just apply a universal formula and BAM!

For me it was a fairly slow process that involved quite a lot of thought about a lot of things. For me something triggered a series of questions about why we are here, how we are here, what defines us, and so on. I'd got to thinking about the people in prison camps whose lives are totally managed and who own more or less nothing, and how at least some of them retain a sense of identity that transcends anything the guards can take away from them.

When I was thinking about how we got here it seemed there were two conflicting theories - fundamentally either life was designed, or life is the result of a bunch of random events (in other words either it was designed, or it wasn't). Science seems to be constantly trying to create a godless universe but has to keep kicking the can down the alley as one theory hits its limitations. In simplistic terms if life is not designed then we evolved from something and evolution theory can take us back to the first living thing. But then evolution has to hand the baton over to the idea of abiogenesis, which in turn has to explain how the first living thing came alive out of a bunch of things that weren't living. And if abiogenesis can explain how something that wasn't alive spontaneously came alive it still needs to explain how the non-living thing came to be there in the first place. Then there are the so-called "irreducibly complex" systems within living things that make evolution seem less likely, on the basis that such a system would have to develop all at once or it wouldn't work at all. To take simplistic examples, how many spiders died before the first one figured out how to build a web, and how many mammals bled to death while the really very complex system of blood clotting to repair damaged vessels while not clotting in healthy blood vessels evolved?

For good measure I had also been looking at economics and demographics and concluding the economic future is extremely dark. Most people I know who consider themselves pessimistic about the economic future don't like my predictions because they are far more pessimistic still. I don't see how my predictions are avoidable at all, although I desperately wish I did. Anyway, thinking about how to survive an economic meltdown when money becomes worthless overnight, when it's all but impossible to grow crops and when a nomadic existence is necessary just to stay alive, it gets hard to live. As the forces that require such a transition get more and more hostile, so it gets harder and harder to live. As I looked at what was developing in the world around us and comparing it to the Revelation (the last book of the Bible) I could see more and more ways that things could play out. The most obvious one is the mark of the beast where the beast prevents people from buying and selling unless they have the mark. As the global banking system becomes more and more far-reaching, as governments seek to exert ever-more control over financial transactions and make it harder and harder to use cash, it's not difficult to see how the government could exert total financial control over people. If you don't comply with the government, your cash card stops working and at a stroke you can't make or receive payments. As a recent development, since some central banks have recently been experimenting with negative interest rates it's easy to see why people would keep cash in a sock under the bed rather than in a bank that charged them to keep it, and with that in mind it's easy to see why governments would gain from doing away with cash completely.

If we take the first few words of the Bible we see "In the beginning God..." If we focus on those four words alone we have to make a choice. I'll drop the g to lowercase for now because I'm going to use the term "god" to refer to one or more eternal beings, in other words anything that has no beginning counts as "god". So we can conclude either "in the beginning god", or "in the beginning not-god". In other words, either god does exist, or god does not exist. Of the options I found it vastly easier to believe in "god" than in "not-god". From there it was just a question of figuring out what form this god took, and which (if any) of the world's religions had the right concept of god.

So for me the answer to your question was simple - I didn't. For me it came through a totally different process. For you it might be one verse that swings it for you, or it might be the result of months or years of soul-searching and seeking before you find Christ. Certainly there are lots of us here who would be very happy to help you with any questions you have along the way.

The verse is provocative. It causes one to wonder about this God and this great love of His. Maybe it does not cause instant repentance resulting in salvation. But imho it provokes further investigation into the love of God. It is a wonderful seed.
 

Josiah

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I read John 3:16, but I can't wrap my head around it. How do you have faith based on this one verse?


1. IMO, you are confusing understanding with relying. IMO, one of the biggest problems for Western Christianity has been a confusion of the two. It is NOT our "job" to "wrap" our puny, sinful, limited brain around the things of God (what Scripture calls the MYSTERIES of God). It's not God's job to submit to OUR understanding, OUR brains, OUR thinking, OUR ideas, OUR theories, OUR "logic", OUR "philosophy", OUR anything. IMO, the medieval church got itself in a deep MESS because it forsook the concept of MYSTERY and began to think of itself as smarter than God, that God had to submit to its theories, ideas.

2. The verb "faith" means to RELY, to trust oneself to something. While this is related to knowing/understanding, it's not at all the same thing. I suspect that 90% of those that board a plane don't really understand the physics of flight (it's WAY more complex than your 6th Grade teachers' paper airplane point). But does that mean they ergo can't board a plane? A lot of people don't know the engineering of a bridge yet cross it. A lot of people hardly know the name of a surgeon yet agree to place their very lives into the hands of that surgeon. How many understand how their LED, flatscreen TV works, have "wrapped their brain" around that? But they enjoy it.


As for John 3:16, no, I don't think anyone "isolates" it. But it IS an excellent summery of the Gospel and as such has probably been THE most beloved, quoted, memorized verse in the Bible. And for good reason.




Thank you.


- Josiah



.
 

Brighten04

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1. IMO, you are confusing understanding with relying. IMO, one of the biggest problems for Western Christianity has been a confusion of the two. It is NOT our "job" to "wrap" our puny, sinful, limited brain around the things of God (what Scripture calls the MYSTERIES of God). It's not God's job to submit to OUR understanding, OUR brains, OUR thinking, OUR ideas, OUR theories, OUR "logic", OUR "philosophy", OUR anything. IMO, the medieval church got itself in a deep MESS because it forsook the concept of MYSTERY and began to think of itself as smarter than God, that God had to submit to its theories, ideas.

2. The verb "faith" means to RELY, to trust oneself to something. While this is related to knowing/understanding, it's not at all the same thing. I suspect that 90% of those that board a plane don't really understand the physics of flight (it's WAY more complex than your 6th Grade teachers' paper airplane point). But does that mean they ergo can't board a plane? A lot of people don't know the engineering of a bridge yet cross it. A lot of people hardly know the name of a surgeon yet agree to place their very lives into the hands of that surgeon. How many understand how their LED, flatscreen TV works, have "wrapped their brain" around that? But they enjoy it.


As for John 3:16, no, I don't think anyone "isolates" it. But it IS an excellent summery of the Gospel and as such has probably been THE most beloved, quoted, memorized verse in the Bible. And for good reason.




Thank you.


- Josiah



.

Amen!:amen: And to think, and know that there is God and He loves me is wonderful to contemplate.
 

MoreCoffee

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come on folks, the chap who wrote the first post hasn't responded and he chose "whenpigsfly" as a nickname and I reckon that ought to give a hint about what's going on here. Don't make this into a debate. It isn't really suitable for it.
 

Brighten04

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come on folks, the chap who wrote the first post hasn't responded and he chose "whenpigsfly" as a nickname and I reckon that ought to give a hint about what's going on here. Don't make this into a debate. It isn't really suitable for it.

It does not mattere who started the thread MC. We are discussing the love of God as expressed in John 3:16. That is a good thing.
 

Full O Beans

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come on folks, the chap who wrote the first post hasn't responded and he chose "whenpigsfly" as a nickname and I reckon that ought to give a hint about what's going on here. Don't make this into a debate. It isn't really suitable for it.

Who's debating? Who's being contentious, here?
 
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