A friend of mine recently did a devotion on John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." She asked us to recite it out loud just like we had done since we were little in Sunday school.

Then she asked us to say it as if we were telling someone who had never heard it before.

This hit me pretty hard that night. I don't think I've ever even really looked at John 3:16 and thought about what it meant, though I've had it memorized for as long as I can remember. If a person who wasn't saved were to ask about who God is, John 3:16 would be one of the first verses that come to mind. Not simply because it's one of the few I know by heart, but if you dissect each part of it, you come to realize that that is the basic message of the gospel wrapped up in that one verse. Who is God that He would give His only son on our behalf? He is love. For God so loved the world. If you believe this, you will live with Him forever and never perish. This is the good news; this is Christianity. So many people have the wrong idea about Christianity, but it really should be simple enough for a child to understand. Children in the church are memorizing verses, and that's awesome, but are we making sure they know what the teachings mean? We have a tendency to take what we know as Christians lightly. I believe this is a glimpse of how we tend to treat our entire faith as individuals. People are watching us, whether we know it or not, or whether we even want them to or not. They see what we stand for and they watch to see if we practice what we preach.

When we are saved, we are born again. That means renewal -- a new life, a different life. Our actions have to reflect what's in our hearts, which is Christ. If Christ is truly in our hearts then it will show, but in order for that to happen, we spend quality time with Him in His Word and in His presence as often as we can. We are so used to saying that same message over and over. The words "pray and read your Bible" have been repeated so many times that they've almost lost their meaning. We say them without even thinking anymore and describe them as the "Sunday school answer." But this is how we bring people to Christ. A lot of people have never heard this before.

There are a lot of things that are hard to talk about in the church, but this is how we grow closer to Him and closer together. So many topics go unspoken, which is a problem, but the same one about spreading the gospel is often repeated, yet it seems to be the hardest to accomplish. So many things hold us back: pride, fear, shame, etc. None of those things are of the Lord. We are so used to living a safe and comfortable lifestyle that we forget there are people being persecuted all across the globe for this cause. We don't even have a right to feel like for some ungodly reason we can't go up to someone who is looking for love in all the wrong places and share with them the good news that He loves us so much that gave His only son for us. His victory over death is alive in us, and the world needs to see it, no matter how cheesy it might sound to us.