Rev. Alan J. Meenan
John, chapter three, is one of the most amazing and glorious passages in the Bible. I’m sure you would agree. The story is of this wealthy aristocrat, this religious Pharisee, making his way by night to speak with Jesus. Nicodemus was a good man. And even though we often gave negative press to Pharisees, this Pharisee was above reproach. He was just plain unadulterated goodness. He was a man of moral uprightness. He was an aristocrat with a keen sense of duty and responsibility, not the snobby kind of aristocrat that we might often associate with people of that class. He was just an honest guy, open, desperately wanting to be the best that he could be for God. That’s why he became a Pharisee, and that’s why he went to all the best schools to study the Torah and the Nebiim and the Kethubim, all parts of the Jewish Old Testament. He took life seriously and he was a good lawyer. In fact, he had risen to the top of his career to the point where they made him a Supreme Court Justice. You just don’t get higher than this or do any better than this. This was the pinnacle of his career and yet here is Nicodemus clandestinely making his way in order to speak with Jesus. Even though he was wealthy, intelligent, successful and happy at home, there was still something missing. There was something gnawing at him from within. It’s a sad thing when one feels that kind of emptiness, but even sadder when one feels that one’s religion does not give one all the answers that one needs. So what happens when life is empty and you can’t even turn to your own religion?
Nicodemus had heard about Jesus, and how all the crowds were following him. Thousands of people heard about the miraculous healings and the incredible miracles that Jesus was doing. He had heard about the wonderful things that Jesus was teaching and so he decided to make his way to see Jesus. He did this because being a celebrity, having "made it,” didn’t seem to answer the deepest need of his heart. I had the opportunity to watch Entertainment Tonight last night. And in that program they were talking about the various celebrities who had run-ins with the law, and they are a great many. They also talked about those who had finished up bankrupt, or divorced, after what they called "quickie marriages" that lasted anything from eight days to a few months. So evidently, being a celebrity doesn’t bring you the deepest longing of your heart.
One night, when the sun sets over the temple edifice, Nicodemus grabs his coat and runs off into the hills to find Jesus to ask Him all kinds of theological questions. You can imagine the excitement and the anticipation that he must have felt as he made his way up the slopes of the Mount of Olives, to meet this Man whom everyone was speaking about. With thoughts racing ahead of him, Nicodemus excitedly anticipated various theological debates he might have with Jesus. Jesus would be able to shed light on some of his rather confused theological thinking. But no sooner had he met Jesus, no sooner had he entered into a conversation with Jesus, when Jesus, in the beautiful way that He does, cut right to the quick, where the rubber meets the road. He didn’t get into a theological disputation. He didn’t get into personal polemic. He simply said, “Nicodemus, if you want to see the kingdom of God, if you want to realize the highest good of human kind, you must be born again. You must start your life over. You must cast it again in a new way.” And Nicodemus was quite perplexed, and yet I believe that it struck a chord in his heart. It struck something deep within. He didn’t need the theological discussion. Often times I find it interesting when people want to come talk with me or talk with one of the ministers about some deep theological issue. When in fact, the deep theological issue is an excuse for the longing of the heart beneath the issue, and the issue is not the issue. But it’s relationship with God that satisfies the fundamental dilemma of human kind.
The one thing that I find fascinating in the story of Nicodemus is that he never questions the desirability of rebirth. The thing that bewildered Nicodemus was not the desirability of it, but the possibility of it. He knew within his heart that the idea of beginning again, of setting aside all the mistakes, all the hurt, all the embarrassments of life, and starting life over, would be great. Getting a new shot at life, wouldn’t it be wonderful? Who would not welcome that? Nicodemus knew there was something intrinsically attractive about what Jesus said. That’s all very well, talking about rebirth, but is that not a philosophical abstraction? Is that not just "pie in the sky, by and by,” when a person is trying to "eek" out a decent livelihood for himself? Is that not mocking the dream of a person who’s really trying to do well in life, or trying to be a good person?
So here you have this marvelous scene on the Mount of Olives. How I would love to take you there, and just stand on the Mount of Olives and remember past generations: how Jesus stood with Nicodemus on that chilly evening, the wind blowing up the Valley and the little snarled olive trees, the branches blowing in the breeze, and the moon riding high above the city. Imagine Jesus trying to tell this scholarly lawyer, this judge, this theological expert, about the work of God’s Spirit in a human life. How God could take a life that was filled with meaninglessness, failure, sin and disappointment and transform it. How He could make it new, strong, vital and victorious. It wasn’t a dream…it was a reality! And that transformation can still occur in a human life even today! I dare to believe it’s going to happen in some lives right now. This is not a dream.
Nicodemus didn’t get it. don’t you love this? This great scholar, who studied more theology than you can begin to dream about, didn’t get it. He didn’t understand. And Jesus knocked him a bit. You see that in verse ten: "Oh, you said you're Israel’s teacher and you don’t understand what I’m talking about,” He said. Nicodemus didn’t get it. Then Jesus looks for an illustration. Now that is the mark of a really good teacher. “You don’t understand, let me try and explain it to you, let me give you an illustration,” and He didn’t have very far to look because the illustration was all around Him, and He said to Nicodemus, “Nicodemus listen to the wind. And if you listen to the wind you'll begin to understand the work of God’s Spirit.”
It’s interesting, if you'll forgive a little theological aside here, the word for wind in both Greek and Hebrew is exactly the same word that is used for Spirit. Isn’t that interesting? So the illustration was right there to look at. The Hebrew word is ruach and it means wind, it can be translated spirit, it can be translated breath. And Jesus is saying, “Listen to the wind-spirit-breath.” For it will teach you something about the spirit of Almighty God. For this wind of God’s spirit or the wind itself is invisible and yet it’s unmistakable. It’s impalpable and yet it is full of power. And it can accomplish great things even impossible things if you turn your face towards it. Oh, it’s a mighty thing the wind. You see the wind is always around us. That’s a basic fact of life and Jesus is saying just like the wind, the spirit of God, is forever circling around you. And that’s a great word of encouragement for those of us who follow Jesus. No matter how difficult life is, Jesus is saying, “Open the window of your heart and listen to the wind and you will know that God’s breath and God’s spirit is always working. It never stops.”
From beginning to end in the Bible you have this reference, right from the very beginning. Genesis one, the opening verses: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” It is right there from the beginning. Now before you close the last few verses of the book of Revelation it says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” …Whoever is thirsty, let him come.” Throughout the Bible, through Abraham’s dreary desert wandering, through the debilitating time of Egyptian exile through the depression of the Assyrian and Babylonian evasion, God’s spirit was ever at work!
We’ve been studying together in the Word is Out the period of the Judges. It would appear, if there was ever a time in human history when God was not there, it would have been during the period of the Judges. Yet He was there, always delivering His people. He was always interceding for His people, because the Spirit of God is there, just like the wind that is forever blowing, so is the Spirit of God. And in the worst of Israel’s history, when God said to the prophet Ezekiel that Israel was like the valley of dry bones: “I want you to go and prophesy to the dry bones and tell them that they will live again, that the Spirit of God will breathe upon them and they will rise up a mighty army.” The Spirit of God never ceases to work. Be encouraged, my beloved. It’s not just on a Sunday morning when you're in worship that you can experience the spirit of the living God. Listen to the wind. Its activity is always around us. And in the blackest night of your soul remember these words of Jesus: "Go and open your window.” Listen to the rustling of the wind and remember that God is always stirring, never slumbering, never desisting in His work in providence or redemption.
There’s also another thing we might notice about the wind-that it’s uncontrollable. Now this will date me, but I use to enjoy Donavan as a youngster. I was very young. And in one of my favorite songs, he kept repeating this and that and he would end each phrase with, “ah, you might as well catch the wind.” It’s an exercise in absolute futility. You cannot domesticate the spirit of God. Churches notoriously try to do that. Christians try to do that, don’t we? We put God in our box; He’s a Presbyterian God after all. Or our sect, or the way we do communion, or the way we do evangelism, it’s got to be our way; our way is the only way. Oh no, the spirit of God is uncontrollable; it is bursting out of the box. You can’t control God.
Did you know the U.S. Catholic Bishops have made a statement that Christians should stop evangelizing the Jews? Well, good luck trying to keep God in a box. Even the Catholic Church won’t be able to manage that one. You can’t do it. God’s activity is uncontrollable. Was that not true in Jesus' own day? Judaism had erected the high wall of partition and separation between Jew and Gentile and yet out of the darkness of Mount Calvary from the red dawn of an empty tomb there arose a stirring of God’s spirit that beat upon that wall and leveled it to the dust. And because the Spirit of God is uncontrollable there is no one or no thing that will be able to stand against that. Not Islamic terrorism, not militant atheism, not any ruling or design of the ACLU, because you can’t contain and control the spirit of God. Not even the hurting heart can stop the work of God’s spirit in a life.
We read here in verse eight, the wind blows wherever it pleases. It’s irresistible and powerful. And Jesus goes on to say in that verse, “you hear its sound" when the wind blows. When the wind blows, you have the evidence of it. It is unmistakable. It makes its presence felt. And so it was when the church burst into existence in the apostolic age, everyone in the world took notice of this new faith. These people would give their lives gladly for Jesus Christ. They faced death courageously and serenely. They brought an ethic that was revolutionary into the world. They believed passionately with all their heart. Strange things kept happening, you see-they made such an impact on society.
Jesus said you hear the sound of the spirit of God. There is evidence of it. When God’s spirit is at work within a human life, or an institution like the church, you will know it. It will be unmistakable. The evidence will be palpable. For there will be transformation of lives. There will be an effervescent joy. A stagnate church will throw off religious conventionality and become missionary and zealous for the Gospel. All that will happen when the spirit of God is at work.
But let me continue with the last part of this verse: "You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from." You can’t tell where the spirit of God comes from. You can’t tell where the wind comes from across mighty stretches of ocean and land. So it is with the great movement of the Spirit in the life of the church. You see, Nicodemus is asking the question, where does rebirth come from? How can I understand this, Jesus? How can I understand this new birth? In fact he says in verse four, is it possible for a man as old as me to climb back into my mother’s womb and be born again? What are you talking about Jesus? What we’ve tried to do historically with the Christian faith is we’ve tried to make it less mysterious than it actually is. We have rationalized it. We have psychologized it. We’ve demythologized it. It’s no longer a religion, so much as it is an anthropology. Jesus said, Nicodemus, don’t be so naïve. Stop asking where the wind comes from. You'll never understand the deep mystery of where the wind comes from. You'll never understand the deep mystery of the Christian faith. There are deep mysteries I don’t understand, but I don’t need to. I know what I need to know. And that is to hoist my sail and feel the Spirit bear me across the stormy waves and treacherous seas of life. And by God’s grace He does. No, Nicodemus, you don’t know where the wind is coming from. Nor do you know where the wind is going.
You never know where God’s spirit would carry a person if they abandoned themselves to the spirit of the living God. You never know. Nicodemus never knew that it would lead him right into the court of Pilot to claim the body of Christ. He never dreamed the spirit of God would do that. When I was fifteen years old living in Belfast, Ireland, on a cold January night outside a Methodist church, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I said, from this day forward I’m going to be a Christian. I’m going to follow this man of Galilee wherever the journey takes me. The little group in the Upper room never knew that the wind of God’s spirit would carry them into the conquest of the world for Jesus. Martin Luther never knew in his monastic cell that he would be called to revolutionize the church.
What of you? It is an incalculable destiny that the spirit of God takes us to, for you can never tell what God will make of a human life. You can never say, “my course is fixed, there’s no chance of anything noble or new for me now,” no matter how old you might be, because there are marvelous prospects for everyone. So by the time Jesus had finished, “listen to the wind Nicodemus,” Nicodemus got the message. And even though he did not fully understand, he could experience that new birth. And the evangelist John, who wrote these words, goes on to make it clearer for us to experience. Clearer than it ever was for Nicodemus. He goes on to say, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. That whoever believes in Him will have eternal life. For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. It means acknowledging that Christ, by His life and death, has purchased my salvation and yours. It means that I receive the love of God by faith. And I live the light of Christ from this day forward. Listen to the wind my beloved; listen to the mighty stirring of the wind, over the barren desert of your life. The intractable wind that is able to bring new life and new hope and transform your life. We are in the business of transformation. That’s what it means to discover faith in Jesus Christ. So I invite you, whether celebrity or seemingly non-entity, to listen to the wind and let it blow into your life and bring radical, transforming change for Christ’s glory.
John, chapter three, is one of the most amazing and glorious passages in the Bible. I’m sure you would agree. The story is of this wealthy aristocrat, this religious Pharisee, making his way by night to speak with Jesus. Nicodemus was a good man. And even though we often gave negative press to Pharisees, this Pharisee was above reproach. He was just plain unadulterated goodness. He was a man of moral uprightness. He was an aristocrat with a keen sense of duty and responsibility, not the snobby kind of aristocrat that we might often associate with people of that class. He was just an honest guy, open, desperately wanting to be the best that he could be for God. That’s why he became a Pharisee, and that’s why he went to all the best schools to study the Torah and the Nebiim and the Kethubim, all parts of the Jewish Old Testament. He took life seriously and he was a good lawyer. In fact, he had risen to the top of his career to the point where they made him a Supreme Court Justice. You just don’t get higher than this or do any better than this. This was the pinnacle of his career and yet here is Nicodemus clandestinely making his way in order to speak with Jesus. Even though he was wealthy, intelligent, successful and happy at home, there was still something missing. There was something gnawing at him from within. It’s a sad thing when one feels that kind of emptiness, but even sadder when one feels that one’s religion does not give one all the answers that one needs. So what happens when life is empty and you can’t even turn to your own religion?
Nicodemus had heard about Jesus, and how all the crowds were following him. Thousands of people heard about the miraculous healings and the incredible miracles that Jesus was doing. He had heard about the wonderful things that Jesus was teaching and so he decided to make his way to see Jesus. He did this because being a celebrity, having "made it,” didn’t seem to answer the deepest need of his heart. I had the opportunity to watch Entertainment Tonight last night. And in that program they were talking about the various celebrities who had run-ins with the law, and they are a great many. They also talked about those who had finished up bankrupt, or divorced, after what they called "quickie marriages" that lasted anything from eight days to a few months. So evidently, being a celebrity doesn’t bring you the deepest longing of your heart.
One night, when the sun sets over the temple edifice, Nicodemus grabs his coat and runs off into the hills to find Jesus to ask Him all kinds of theological questions. You can imagine the excitement and the anticipation that he must have felt as he made his way up the slopes of the Mount of Olives, to meet this Man whom everyone was speaking about. With thoughts racing ahead of him, Nicodemus excitedly anticipated various theological debates he might have with Jesus. Jesus would be able to shed light on some of his rather confused theological thinking. But no sooner had he met Jesus, no sooner had he entered into a conversation with Jesus, when Jesus, in the beautiful way that He does, cut right to the quick, where the rubber meets the road. He didn’t get into a theological disputation. He didn’t get into personal polemic. He simply said, “Nicodemus, if you want to see the kingdom of God, if you want to realize the highest good of human kind, you must be born again. You must start your life over. You must cast it again in a new way.” And Nicodemus was quite perplexed, and yet I believe that it struck a chord in his heart. It struck something deep within. He didn’t need the theological discussion. Often times I find it interesting when people want to come talk with me or talk with one of the ministers about some deep theological issue. When in fact, the deep theological issue is an excuse for the longing of the heart beneath the issue, and the issue is not the issue. But it’s relationship with God that satisfies the fundamental dilemma of human kind.
The one thing that I find fascinating in the story of Nicodemus is that he never questions the desirability of rebirth. The thing that bewildered Nicodemus was not the desirability of it, but the possibility of it. He knew within his heart that the idea of beginning again, of setting aside all the mistakes, all the hurt, all the embarrassments of life, and starting life over, would be great. Getting a new shot at life, wouldn’t it be wonderful? Who would not welcome that? Nicodemus knew there was something intrinsically attractive about what Jesus said. That’s all very well, talking about rebirth, but is that not a philosophical abstraction? Is that not just "pie in the sky, by and by,” when a person is trying to "eek" out a decent livelihood for himself? Is that not mocking the dream of a person who’s really trying to do well in life, or trying to be a good person?
So here you have this marvelous scene on the Mount of Olives. How I would love to take you there, and just stand on the Mount of Olives and remember past generations: how Jesus stood with Nicodemus on that chilly evening, the wind blowing up the Valley and the little snarled olive trees, the branches blowing in the breeze, and the moon riding high above the city. Imagine Jesus trying to tell this scholarly lawyer, this judge, this theological expert, about the work of God’s Spirit in a human life. How God could take a life that was filled with meaninglessness, failure, sin and disappointment and transform it. How He could make it new, strong, vital and victorious. It wasn’t a dream…it was a reality! And that transformation can still occur in a human life even today! I dare to believe it’s going to happen in some lives right now. This is not a dream.
Nicodemus didn’t get it. don’t you love this? This great scholar, who studied more theology than you can begin to dream about, didn’t get it. He didn’t understand. And Jesus knocked him a bit. You see that in verse ten: "Oh, you said you're Israel’s teacher and you don’t understand what I’m talking about,” He said. Nicodemus didn’t get it. Then Jesus looks for an illustration. Now that is the mark of a really good teacher. “You don’t understand, let me try and explain it to you, let me give you an illustration,” and He didn’t have very far to look because the illustration was all around Him, and He said to Nicodemus, “Nicodemus listen to the wind. And if you listen to the wind you'll begin to understand the work of God’s Spirit.”
It’s interesting, if you'll forgive a little theological aside here, the word for wind in both Greek and Hebrew is exactly the same word that is used for Spirit. Isn’t that interesting? So the illustration was right there to look at. The Hebrew word is ruach and it means wind, it can be translated spirit, it can be translated breath. And Jesus is saying, “Listen to the wind-spirit-breath.” For it will teach you something about the spirit of Almighty God. For this wind of God’s spirit or the wind itself is invisible and yet it’s unmistakable. It’s impalpable and yet it is full of power. And it can accomplish great things even impossible things if you turn your face towards it. Oh, it’s a mighty thing the wind. You see the wind is always around us. That’s a basic fact of life and Jesus is saying just like the wind, the spirit of God, is forever circling around you. And that’s a great word of encouragement for those of us who follow Jesus. No matter how difficult life is, Jesus is saying, “Open the window of your heart and listen to the wind and you will know that God’s breath and God’s spirit is always working. It never stops.”
From beginning to end in the Bible you have this reference, right from the very beginning. Genesis one, the opening verses: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” It is right there from the beginning. Now before you close the last few verses of the book of Revelation it says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” …Whoever is thirsty, let him come.” Throughout the Bible, through Abraham’s dreary desert wandering, through the debilitating time of Egyptian exile through the depression of the Assyrian and Babylonian evasion, God’s spirit was ever at work!
We’ve been studying together in the Word is Out the period of the Judges. It would appear, if there was ever a time in human history when God was not there, it would have been during the period of the Judges. Yet He was there, always delivering His people. He was always interceding for His people, because the Spirit of God is there, just like the wind that is forever blowing, so is the Spirit of God. And in the worst of Israel’s history, when God said to the prophet Ezekiel that Israel was like the valley of dry bones: “I want you to go and prophesy to the dry bones and tell them that they will live again, that the Spirit of God will breathe upon them and they will rise up a mighty army.” The Spirit of God never ceases to work. Be encouraged, my beloved. It’s not just on a Sunday morning when you're in worship that you can experience the spirit of the living God. Listen to the wind. Its activity is always around us. And in the blackest night of your soul remember these words of Jesus: "Go and open your window.” Listen to the rustling of the wind and remember that God is always stirring, never slumbering, never desisting in His work in providence or redemption.
There’s also another thing we might notice about the wind-that it’s uncontrollable. Now this will date me, but I use to enjoy Donavan as a youngster. I was very young. And in one of my favorite songs, he kept repeating this and that and he would end each phrase with, “ah, you might as well catch the wind.” It’s an exercise in absolute futility. You cannot domesticate the spirit of God. Churches notoriously try to do that. Christians try to do that, don’t we? We put God in our box; He’s a Presbyterian God after all. Or our sect, or the way we do communion, or the way we do evangelism, it’s got to be our way; our way is the only way. Oh no, the spirit of God is uncontrollable; it is bursting out of the box. You can’t control God.
Did you know the U.S. Catholic Bishops have made a statement that Christians should stop evangelizing the Jews? Well, good luck trying to keep God in a box. Even the Catholic Church won’t be able to manage that one. You can’t do it. God’s activity is uncontrollable. Was that not true in Jesus' own day? Judaism had erected the high wall of partition and separation between Jew and Gentile and yet out of the darkness of Mount Calvary from the red dawn of an empty tomb there arose a stirring of God’s spirit that beat upon that wall and leveled it to the dust. And because the Spirit of God is uncontrollable there is no one or no thing that will be able to stand against that. Not Islamic terrorism, not militant atheism, not any ruling or design of the ACLU, because you can’t contain and control the spirit of God. Not even the hurting heart can stop the work of God’s spirit in a life.
We read here in verse eight, the wind blows wherever it pleases. It’s irresistible and powerful. And Jesus goes on to say in that verse, “you hear its sound" when the wind blows. When the wind blows, you have the evidence of it. It is unmistakable. It makes its presence felt. And so it was when the church burst into existence in the apostolic age, everyone in the world took notice of this new faith. These people would give their lives gladly for Jesus Christ. They faced death courageously and serenely. They brought an ethic that was revolutionary into the world. They believed passionately with all their heart. Strange things kept happening, you see-they made such an impact on society.
Jesus said you hear the sound of the spirit of God. There is evidence of it. When God’s spirit is at work within a human life, or an institution like the church, you will know it. It will be unmistakable. The evidence will be palpable. For there will be transformation of lives. There will be an effervescent joy. A stagnate church will throw off religious conventionality and become missionary and zealous for the Gospel. All that will happen when the spirit of God is at work.
But let me continue with the last part of this verse: "You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from." You can’t tell where the spirit of God comes from. You can’t tell where the wind comes from across mighty stretches of ocean and land. So it is with the great movement of the Spirit in the life of the church. You see, Nicodemus is asking the question, where does rebirth come from? How can I understand this, Jesus? How can I understand this new birth? In fact he says in verse four, is it possible for a man as old as me to climb back into my mother’s womb and be born again? What are you talking about Jesus? What we’ve tried to do historically with the Christian faith is we’ve tried to make it less mysterious than it actually is. We have rationalized it. We have psychologized it. We’ve demythologized it. It’s no longer a religion, so much as it is an anthropology. Jesus said, Nicodemus, don’t be so naïve. Stop asking where the wind comes from. You'll never understand the deep mystery of where the wind comes from. You'll never understand the deep mystery of the Christian faith. There are deep mysteries I don’t understand, but I don’t need to. I know what I need to know. And that is to hoist my sail and feel the Spirit bear me across the stormy waves and treacherous seas of life. And by God’s grace He does. No, Nicodemus, you don’t know where the wind is coming from. Nor do you know where the wind is going.
You never know where God’s spirit would carry a person if they abandoned themselves to the spirit of the living God. You never know. Nicodemus never knew that it would lead him right into the court of Pilot to claim the body of Christ. He never dreamed the spirit of God would do that. When I was fifteen years old living in Belfast, Ireland, on a cold January night outside a Methodist church, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I said, from this day forward I’m going to be a Christian. I’m going to follow this man of Galilee wherever the journey takes me. The little group in the Upper room never knew that the wind of God’s spirit would carry them into the conquest of the world for Jesus. Martin Luther never knew in his monastic cell that he would be called to revolutionize the church.
What of you? It is an incalculable destiny that the spirit of God takes us to, for you can never tell what God will make of a human life. You can never say, “my course is fixed, there’s no chance of anything noble or new for me now,” no matter how old you might be, because there are marvelous prospects for everyone. So by the time Jesus had finished, “listen to the wind Nicodemus,” Nicodemus got the message. And even though he did not fully understand, he could experience that new birth. And the evangelist John, who wrote these words, goes on to make it clearer for us to experience. Clearer than it ever was for Nicodemus. He goes on to say, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. That whoever believes in Him will have eternal life. For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. It means acknowledging that Christ, by His life and death, has purchased my salvation and yours. It means that I receive the love of God by faith. And I live the light of Christ from this day forward. Listen to the wind my beloved; listen to the mighty stirring of the wind, over the barren desert of your life. The intractable wind that is able to bring new life and new hope and transform your life. We are in the business of transformation. That’s what it means to discover faith in Jesus Christ. So I invite you, whether celebrity or seemingly non-entity, to listen to the wind and let it blow into your life and bring radical, transforming change for Christ’s glory.
